Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software
I'm not a big fan on GPL anymore.
When I create some software I prefer the user of my software to have all freedoms including the freedom to embed it in closed source software.
All I know is that the proponents of Free Software are constantly trying to tell me what to think and tell me what my ideals should be, whereas just-plain-Open-Sourcers are happy enough to see that I'm using their software, regardless of what I do with it.
Free software offers the end user benefits that the end user only rarely understands or appreciates.
Open source offers developers benefits that lots of developers understand and appreciate.
Therefore open source is a much better marketing tactic. (Which is exactly what it was designed to be.)
Does it bother anyone else that people circumvent the dupe-prevention code on HN by adding a CGI question mark to the end of the URL?
This link was submitted quite a while ago[0] without the question mark, and it clearly didn't gain a lot of traction, so in this case it was a good idea to resubmit it. However, it seems wrong that the dupe-prevention code isn't more sophisticated.
My problem with Free Software as opposed to Open Source is that Free Software people have a greater tendency to end up doing things like this:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.distributions.gnu-linux-...
(The whole thread, not just the specific post linked to).
Unfortunately, "Open Source" is easier to market than "Free Software". The real benefits of true free software evidence themselves in the end and that's what counts, not what you call it.
Edit: It is however important to distinguish between free software and thinly veiled proprietary software marketed as Open Source.
With a BSD or Apache license you are giving your project away for anyone to use how they see fit.
With GPL you are giving your project away only to those willing to work with you on improving it.
The arguments back and forth are so tiresome when they don't recognize that sometimes one license makes a lot of sense and sometimes the other license makes a lot of sense. There will never be one license to rule them all.
Stallman's insistence on unlimited and unrestricted redistribution at a price not exceeding cost is the critical flaw with the free software movement. While I agree that this is good and should be encouraged where possible, if there were a license or some support for persons that allowed access to and modification of the code and redistribution of the code only to persons who were appropriately licensed by the copyright owner, then I think we'd have a much better ecosystem here.
Everyone would weld the hoods of their cars shut if leaving it open meant they had to give the car away for free. Since it doesn't, most people are free to access the internals of their vehicles and do whatever they like. The same principle should apply to software -- if we make it reasonably easy for people to leave the hood open but still make some money, there'd be more freedom to go around for everyone.
I read these comments and think that this article wasn't directed at HN readers; it was directed at free software people.
I tend to use GPL for fairly pragmatic reasons. If I've written some software - typically voluntarily and without payment - and put it out there for others to use then I would rather that the code remain in the public domain where improvements can be made which benefit everyone, including the original author.
When Stallman says "free software is an ethical imperative, because only free software respects the users' freedom", is he saying that I don't have the freedom to create closed source software for my own benefit? Is he saying that I'm not respecting the end user's freedom by distributing closed source services?
With all due respect Mr Stallman, given those conditions I may not want to code at all.
Free software people continually miss the value of just letting people use their stuff to do whatever.
Letting people put back patches if they want to, but otherwise do what the hell they feel like is powerful, useful and practical for many more applications than the GPL et al licenses.
Some of us like sharing, but also like selling software and not giving away the source.
If they only called it Liberating Software, they wouldn't have had this happen. After all, open source software is also free (as in, costs nothing). But liberating software sounds like it confers freedom on the person -- actually liberating them.
Remember, branding is important.
if the term free is ambiguous, why not just call it Freedom Software? I suppose may have the unfortunate side effect of being co-opted by patriotic zealots :)
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Or, why Free Software misses the point of Open Source :)
Open Source is about the developers. Free Software is about the end users (or, it's supposed to be).
In reality, Free Software ends up being useful only for programmers, hackers, technical people, and well, institutions which require programmers, hackers and technical people to run and grow their infrastructure (such as Universities and Governments).
Free Software (as an ideology) offers nothing to the typical end user of, say, the iPhone. It offers a lot to Apple (the iPhone makers).