Ask HN: Do you believe in GNU's Free Software?
Do you believe in Free Software? People often talk about the benefits of open source, but they tend to switch to proprietary, partly-proprietary (Jetbrains is a good example. Only parts of their products are open source), or corporate controlled open source (Corporations like Microsoft who espouse open source, but not free software because most of their stack is proprietary), when there's convenience to be had.
Is free software a lost cause? If we believe in things like right to repair, must we also believe in free software? Is using free software for financial benefit and then not contributing back simply by promoting and using free software immoral? Are we building a bad future for software by not fighting for something like the Free Software movement?
93 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 130 ms ] threadSo yes, I believe in GNU's Free Software.
Unfortunately there is a low ceiling to the utility of copylefted software as my experience in commercial software development shows that any commercially successful development based on copylefted software invites scrutiny such that one must constantly prove that every feature of the software can be directly linked to published source code changes. Any failure to do this can result in costly and distracting legal actions. Because this is onerous software developers who seriously wish for success and profit minimize exposure to copylefted source code. This makes it clear that freedom is a complicated business of trade offs and not a matter of ideological purity tests as the hype surrounding copyleft implies.
> The free software movement gave me an operating system and critical applications so I can do my work without big company garbage interfering.
[...]
> Because this is onerous software developers who seriously wish for success and profit minimize exposure to copylefted source code.
I couldn't say them without feeling I'm internally adopting a double moral standard in order to justify my goals.
Well, where I live the burden of such proof is on the accuser. I am not aware of any case as you describe [but I could be wrong].
In practice enterprises avoid using everything licensed under GPL v3 (e.g. Apple freezing Mac OS's Bash veraion), that blocks innovation cause good software usually backed by large amount of budget, especially those with GUI, like Windows, Android, Microsoft Office, Chrome etc.
[0]: https://youtu.be/PaKIZ7gJlRU
As an individual, free software is valuable for a me if I can modify it at will, say at most with one month work and without having to learn arcane techniques. However this is not the case most of the time, so using free software not so different from using a proprietary system.
For example I type this on a Linux laptop, which is unable to enter a proper sleep mode even if it was possible on Linux 20 years ago. The fancy keyboard lights up its key every few minutes without clear reason. I am using the Chromium browser but it does not display correctly the non Western characters and when I make a right click, garbage appears.
How could I modify all this within a month time frame or even a few years? It's impossible.
The situation would not be different if I was using a proprietary system.
This is just not true for most modern open source software.
Yet, at the same time, TurboC from Borland was an incredible product. I would be happy to have today a similar editor for Java and PHP.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-C
For example, if the world of web browsers consisted of a non-free browser that was ported to run on almost any platform that had a well documented extension/plugin system, vs. a Free web browser that was a mess of spaghetti code that no one would really want to touch, and didn't support any extensions -- which browser would be more valuable (both in general, and in specific ways)?
A simple example might be a free, open-source blueprint for a typewriter. People can improve the blueprint, anyone can use it. Now, to build an actual typewriter based on this blueprint, there's where individual investment of time and money is required - but anyone can do it, there's no patent lawyer waiting to halt that process.
Note also that branding and reliability do matter even in open-source. Two typewriter manufacturers working off the same open-source blueprint could make very different quality typewriters, and the one with the better reputation has a market edge (just not one based on exclusive access to some old IP).
Now, let's say you use the typewriter to create a best-selling novel. Here the creator should be able to retain rights to the novel, and since good writers are not all that common, the notion that the novel should be free and open-source doesn't really work that well if we want to have writers making a living and continuing to write. An alternative approach, such as a state-sponsored program to support authors, or a billionaire-financed private foundation program, would quickly become little more than a propaganda factory.
The kind of scenario that gave rise to the open-source movement might be described as the notion that authors who used a propriety typewriter to write their novel owe a fraction of their revenue to the typewriter blueprint owner. The whole Oracle-Google-Java-Android business comes to mind for example.
See: https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html
"Debian also maintains a repository of nonfree software. According to the project, this software is 'not part of the Debian system,' but the repository is hosted on many of the project's main servers, and people can readily find these nonfree packages by browsing Debian's online package database and its wiki."
So Debian isn't kosher because it's too easy to load non-free software?
I wish any effort, particularly those built around online communities, weren't infiltrated and run by the militant.
I don't believe you believe in free software.
> Free software (or libre software)[1][2] is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions.
If you believe in that, how can you consider what the FSF stands for 'zealotry'? They are simply standing by their principles, which has undoubtedly pushed forward the state of the art in software over decades.
Serious question - why should OP of that comment care at all?
This is the equivalent of a deeply religious person saying "I don't think you're very Christian"
Ok, that's fine. Good for you?
I don't think the FSF as an organization is very effective in working toward that goal or promoting that goal. They're pushing away too many people and organizations who could've been their allies.
It takes a super strong moral foundation to stand firm against the onslaught of corporate commoditization, and the FSF has managed to do it. I know RMS rubs some folks the wrong way, but he's been not only extremely prescient and decades ahead of his time, but THE main reason that the FSF has endured where so many others have failed.
It's a common saying that the FSF is old or promotes an aging philosophy that's not current with the times, usually meant as a stepping stone to some sort of modernization not only in procedures but principles, which is exactly how other projects have been destroyed. Popular appeal may wax or wane, but there can be absolutely no concession in the core philosophy of the FSF. Keep broadcasting an uncorrupted message, and let people tune in [1].
RMS fully understands this and it'll be a sad day when/if he's replaced by someone who doesn't.
[1] A look at the -healthy and invigorated by newcomers- Emacs community is testament that the state of affairs is not dire.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj02_UeUnGQ&t=1705s
Okay, I can understand that line of reasoning, and I agree to a certain extent.
The FSF is aging, and their philosophy is not playing well anymore with the public.
AMD Radeon cards shouldn't require a blob to even turn themselves on and get 3D acceleration.
If I was a programmer, I also couldn't practically exercise my user freedoms for most of the software I use. Maybe one programmer could maintain a fork of vim, but it takes a small company to maintain a true fork of larger projects like Firefox, Chromium, and LibreOffice.
If you want control over your workflow, a program with a stable extensions API will go a lot farther than a free software license.
I prefer free software because it is gratis and doesn't spy on me.
Anyone here with some experience single-handedly maintaining a fork of a large project?
"But I'm never going to patch it anyway" is a bit like "Privacy? But I have no secrets", which implies you will never have secrets and don't want to have the option to, even if external factors not under your control change.
By the same token, just the mere existence of free alternatives does a lot to keep developers of non-free software honest in some cases, even if they don't gain competitive market share.
OTOH, ironically the existence of free software has also let the developers of non-free software off the hook in important ways. For example, if you look at any large proprietary software maker, you will often find that their most skilled engineers are the ones with experience developing free software - because they have additional years of high-density experience that companies fail to provide an equivalent environment for (low incentives to mentor, more extreme specialization, etc.). So proprietary development shops have had to be far less sustainable wrt/ training and recruiting because the community has picked up the slack. Which I'm not sure is a good thing - healthy teaching relationships and learning opportunities for experts on the one hand, business models and competitive salary on the other, rather than both in one spot.
You underestimate the effect of other programmers having that freedom. Even without being a kernel hacker myself, I get the benefit of an OS that does not spy on me.
That's why the freedom to redistribute modified copies is so key - the resulting ecosystem of free software is in many ways more important than the individual rights from which it results. So it's a mistake to think you don't benefit from the software freedoms, just because you individually don't exercise them.
Even though it's not a fork, I have constant problems with trivial changes in libraries between versions. I'd think a fork could be even worse.
I suspect someone with an hour a day, or a few hours a week, could maintain a fork of LibreOffice and keep it in sync with upstream, if they didn't change too much, but it would suck.
The ability for small companies to do forks is where the real benefit is IMHO. I'm using Kiwi Browser on Android, which seems to get security updates within a few days of Chromium, and supports extensions on mobile.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Side_Public_License
Without a way to pay for work of developers no software can be good enough. So in a way I do not believe in a FS. But I believe that we need to find a way to a Free Software, and that it can be found.
The GNU idea of Free Software being a side effect of learning and science is getting out of fashion due to constraints over the academic workers. Publish or perish is killing it.
The Linux idea of Free Software being "hey, I've solved this thing, maybe it can help you too" is being reborn with the recent revolt over maintenance burden and community bureaucracy.
The RedHat way of Free Software being a marketing tool was never reliable, but if you make developer tools, you must deal with it nowadays.
So, the same idea has a world of different motivations. Some are being fulfilled perfectly well, while others are hurting. In particular, the GNU ideal got spread way outside of the public that could hold it, and if on its core public, it's suffering. But it's not the only one motivation, and it's certainly not the most important one either, because it could never scale.
My personal views -- it really depends on what the software is for. In the case of foundational software (OS, libraries, utilities) then Free software has some major advantages that outweigh the disadvantages. The disadvantages of Free software come from the lack of paying customers that fund development. But in the above use case many of the primary users are also developers, who have an incentive for contributing back improvements. (In the case of OS an Libraries, I consider the primary users to be developers, as end-users use software that runs on top of this foundation, even though users also use the OS, they typically primarily use it to execute other applications).
For the next layer above, you have applications software. If the app is aimed towards businesses, then the funding model of businesses licensing the software from a vendor with a pool of developers seems to have positive returns, that outweigh the potential contributions that can come up from making the code follow the four Software Freedoms. Same may apply if the app is aimed at non-technical users. For apps aimed at technical users, many of these can fall under the previous category of foundational software.
The next category is entertainment related software. This I consider almost equivalent to books, a movie, or music. Most of the value is in the creative side, vs the technical side. Therefore Software Freedom applied to a game brings not much more value than the same type of Freedom applied to a blockbuster movie.
Yes.
> If we believe in things like right to repair...
> immoral
When it is phrased like that (and it often is phrased like that) it sounds like a religion. Also the notion that there is no compromise to be had also seems very religious. I already have a religion and Free Software isn't it.
I support the majority of the goals of the FSF, SFC, OSI, and EFF. Some of them overlap, some I don't agree with (particularly the FSF's stance on handling nonfree firmware), and some goals of mine aren't represented by any of the above groups.
What I absolutely reject is the all or nothing approach even implicit in the question. If I buy a piece of proprietary software or hardware that does not mean I don't "believe" in Free Software or that it is a lost cause. It means I want to play video games with my friends. It means the way I put food on my family's table depends on it sometimes (although 99% of what I do is FOSS even for work).
Even in religion we make these moral distinctions of how closely we're willing to cooperate with evil in the course of our daily lives. I don't want to live the ascetic lifestyle of Richard Stallman. And to imply that I should to really consider myself a supporter of Free Software is what drives me and a few other people away from such a movement. Not to ramble about my FOSS CV, but I release software under the GPLv3, I've donated to FSF, SFC, OSI, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD just to name a few, I've spent hours tabling for the FSF at different events. Because I sometimes use proprietary software does that excommunicate me from the belief of Free Software?
So my question is twofold: do we believe that FOSS is a right, and where do we draw the line between dedicating our lives to fighting for FOSS, and only using it when its completely convenient.
On the one hand we have RMS, whose ideology has led him to a path where he can pick from maybe a handful of computers where he can get everything FOSS, and if he needs something where there is nothing FOSS to cover it, he can't use it. He can't enjoy modern gaming, or VR, etc. On the other hand, we have people who will buy a tool if it's better than the FOSS solution, who never consider FOSS into their calculus of picking one tool over another on principle, or an even greater sacrifice - refraining from doing an activity on a computer because the only solution is not FOSS.
Do you have a source for this? His writings and talks are extensive and I have not seen an instance where he makes this argument. He's said evil and not evil, moral and immoral, but I've never seen him make a constitutional argument. I've never seen him lobby to even make proprietary software illegal.
> So my question is twofold: do we believe that FOSS is a right
Would this right to Free Software be absolute where our other rights are not? Let's say we made Free Software a constitutional right. What about Germany? What about Japan? Would we outlaw the use of nonfree software from those countries? Why stop at software? What about copyright and patents? Isn't in immoral to not copy and share a textbook with someone? To try to only solve this at the level of rights it ignores the sociological and economic solutions and impacts as well.
> where do we draw the line between dedicating our lives to fighting for FOSS, and only using it when its completely convenient.
So to be in favor of Free Software I have to dedicate my life to it? If that's the case then I draw the line at the very beginning. I'm not dedicating my life to Free Software, or even to software for that matter. If you mean am I willing to give FOSS the first look and even ignore some of its warts to use it over proprietary software? Then I do that almost 100% of the time. Am I going to to release any software I have control over under a free license? I do that 100% of the time. I jump through A LOT of hoops to try to use as much FOSS as possible. But... I enable DRM in Firefox and install ffmpeg and nonfree codecs so I can watch streams instead of using Chrome. I use Steam on Linux and use Proton instead of just installing Windows. My life _could_ be a lot simpler if I didn't try to support FOSS as much as possible.
Also, there has been a lot of really cool and really interesting work done in FOSS since the FSF. Like I said my job is almost entirely based on and around FOSS. If you would've told me that in 1998 when I first installed Red Hat for the first time I wouldn't have believed you. I would've hoped it would've been true, but it seemed like a dream. There are so many interesting ideas around FOSS. To focus on the narrow definition and work of just the FSF is a mistake.
Its incredulous that I can use a Linux distributions, compilers, multimedia tools and various application for my day to day use; not just a side hobby. You may argue about how good it is, but more or less you would get by. Yet I am not tied to a company with trillions of worth. The development happens in open and its driven by community of developers contributing out passion.
Playsatation and macOS are the examples where companies built heavily out of open source software, but they kept their systems closed. So you can have the code but its not a useful. You still are not in control about how software runs on it. Your only option is to not use it.
I own a PS4 and enjoy it very much. Thankfully its only for gaming, so I am not restricted. I wonder if it was an open platform people would have built many amazing things for it.
I wish companies weren't so hostile towards this sort of thing. I'd certainly buy a PS4 if I could confidently use it as a media server without worrying that Sony could shut it all down overnight.
https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM?t=57
I do, however, believe in property rights. As such, if a developer wishes his/her creation to be freely available, I believe that this wish should be respected under the creator's terms.
As for free software as an idea, I think it has been equal parts awesome and crap.
In general, I think the way I would say it is that I agree that, all things being equal, it would be better if all software were FOSS. The problem is not all things are equal and the GNU vision of FOSS is not helpful with that reality. Most often, when I find myself discussing FOSS, it's in a context where the FOSS advocate wants to push their overall goal for all software over the specifics of the situation.
There are a minority of software projects where I think it's very important, but I think the bulk of software projects can be closed source if that works best for the creators and I'm skeptical the harm outweighs the good.
So I believe in it but not the way GNU talks about it? And I think their approach probably does more harm than good.
their goals might not be reachable, cause reality is rarely pure, but to me it's a principal necessity.
why? it's the counter weight to the microsoft of the late 90s and early 2000s. profit above all, we will try to get you, bind you and squeeze you with everything we can use - and more. GNU is the natural mirror perspective, which is needed for - balance.
and if we get a "more GNU" world ... i personally would think that is a good thing.
I've made some experiments on my phones (bot Android and IOS), and you would surprise how many of the apps are "calling home". Because those apps are closed source, God knows what information they are sending back to their servers.
I think this is something that the majority of programmers don't care about. I mean, most programmers only concern themselves with engineering. They rarely care about the societal affects of what they build, let alone how it's built. One area I agree with RMS on is that open source is essential to transparency from companies as to what they are doing with our inputs.