HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

If you want to see some other opinion about your exact analogy, Richard Stallman--one of the most influential thinkers of the free software world--gave an answer to the same question, at large [1].

As a summary:

- Output from a proprietary program (in this case it would be food) is not unethical.

- The _user_ must be free, not the developer. The users of the recipes are the cooks, not the customers. Cooks are free to change and distribute recipes. There is no recipe that a cook can't make, because in this case, the cook is the executant, not some computer. There are no compiled recipes.

- If there were cooking robots that would cook compiled recipes that would not be free, he would be against it, as he is with proprietary software.

[1] https://youtu.be/jUibaPTXSHk?t=914

⬐ chauhankiran

People do not like RMS's "extremeness" for "free" software. But, I personally thing that - if this level of "extremeness" was/is not given by RMS then "free" movement might died within couple of years with loosely couple definition and then more loosely definition of free software by organizations (supported by "evil" companies).

⬐ teekert

Ever since I listened to this episode of the Linux Action Show [0] I can't take RMS serious anymore. He bases everything he believes on one assumption he doesn't dare to argue himself: "Proprietary software is evil." That is it.

When you attack his values and stances, he falls back to that sentence. When you argue: But aren't you restricting freedom when you would keep a creator from sharing his software under his own terms? He comes back to "Proprietary software is evil" in the end. He is incapable of defending beyond that point. I think Bryan makes some very good points in the podcast below [0] that RMS fails to answer properly to.

I love open source, I love the philosophy, I want to use as much FOSS as possible and I see how it ultimately will protect our society, I get that. But I see no evil whatsoever in someone making a software tool and selling only the binaries to someone who is happy to use said binaries under the terms the seller and buyer agree upon. That to me is freedom, nobody is forced in that scenario.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=radmjL5OIaA

⬐ cyphar

You should note that Bryan Lunduke has changed his opinion significantly since that podcast, and he has become a very vocal activist for free software[1]. He's also stopped developing proprietary software, and is actually a board member of the openSUSE project now. A lot of things change after 5 years.

Oh, and they did an episode immediately after that show where they decided to talk about RMS's arguments "behind his back" so-to-speak[2]. Personally that episode is the reason why I stopped watching LAS, because it was clear that their own personal biases were getting in the way of what they were talking about.

Other people have already debated the reasons why user freedom is different to "vendor freedom" (and why the former is more important than the latter). In short, it's the difference between "freedom from being harmed" and "freedom to harm others". Also please remember that vendors are also often users, so user freedom does benefit them as well.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0y0oXU8YNk [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn9WWVmINGg

⬐ teekert

If the vendor is a user or at least, a person. Making one more important than the other creates a paradox, doesn't it?

It's not important who benefits, it's import that one should have the right to offer ones own creation under their own terms.

⬐ syshum

Lunduke has also done another interview with Stallman recently as well on his own channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0y0oXU8YNk

⬐ cyphar

Which is what my first link was to. ;)

⬐ teekert

Thanx I only read your comment later.

⬐ teekert

Oh, that is a must watch for me, thanx. I remember Lunduke being vigilant because he was trying to sell his software on Linux without the risk of it immediately going into a repo for free (if I remember correctly). And why shouldn't he? I still think Linux would benefit from a strong offering of closed source software, as Lunduke did back in the day as well.

⬐ ZeroGravitas

"When you argue: But aren't you restricting freedom when you would keep a creator from sharing his software under his own terms?"

I hope you're aware that this is the oldest argument in the book.

It literally goes back to Plato and arguments about how you can be free if you're not free to make other people slaves.

⬐ teekert

Exactly, by forcing a license (you made up) onto my creation, you are basically taking my property and enslaving me.

You are saying to me: "Nice work you got there, now, I am going to use it under my conditions. Oh you don't want me to share the software? Too bad, not sharing is evil! I'm sharing it anyway."

Yes, you are free to say this but then I can choose not to share my software with you. I will only give you my software if you agree to MY conditions. I made the software hoping to share it with people on my terms, so that I can earn a living from it.

Am I evil for expecting you to honor the terms we agreed upon when we made the exchange of your money for my software product? Am I evil for setting terms that I like for the trade that we are making?

Imo any party can have any terms in a trade, if you agree to mine and I agree to yours we have a deal, otherwise: go find another solution to your problem.

⬐ AlgorithmicTime

Well no one's forcing a license on you. As a condition of building on software which currently uses that license, you must also use that license if you intend to distribute your derivative work.

⬐ snakeanus

I would argue that you are evil if you do not allow the user to use for any propose, distribute, and modify the software.

⬐ reacweb

The best metaphor I have ever seen to understand why proprietary software is evil.

⬐ teekert

The freedom to make other people slaves creates a paradox because such freedom can not be applied to all humans at the same time. We can not logically be each others slaves, now can we? I find this metaphor (or thought experiment... is this actually a metaphor?) to be very poor personally.

⬐ afarrell

But the metaphor does not actually succeed at doing the heavy lifting required to demonstrate that the licence for photoshop falls into the category of "contracts which are unjust and ought be prohibited".

⬐ None

None

⬐ legulere

Your argument: Not giving away what you wrote for free under the terms dictated by Richard Stallman is literally slavery.

⬐ reacweb

Yes, because you becomes dependent of the good will of the seller if you encounter bugs, limitations, incompatible hardware or if the OS updates in incompatible ways.

⬐ cJ0th

If you use FOSS only, you still remain dependent on the maintainers of your stack since realistically speaking you don't have the time to understand and hack every piece of software you rely on.

⬐ TeMPOraL

That's just the consequence of professional specialization. But the expected consequence with FOSS is that, if you can't or don't want to do it yourself, you can always pay a third-party specialist to go in and fix your copy of the software. In fact, it may be further expected that in this case, you'd have multiple competing specialists to choose from - just like it is in e.g. appliance / home / car repair, where you can go to whichever repair person you like and they'll fix stuff for you.

You can observe that most software is leased, not sold, thus restrictions apply. And indeed - the same holds in physical world; if you're the house/appliance/car, you might not be able to use it the way you like, or get whoever you like to repair it. But that's precisely the problem! Renting instead of owning has serious drawbacks, and Stallman is fighting against those, trying keep us at something more akin to personal ownership model.

⬐ al_chemist

"I don't have time to learn how to fix it myself! Fix it now, asshole!"

If you have any open-source project, you've probably received a lot of e-mails like that.

⬐ zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC

Just because you yourself cannot be competent in everything, does not mean that being dependent on a monopoly is the same as having to buy certain things from people who are more competent at producing or maintaining them than you are.

Noone guarantees you that a year from now you will be able to find anyone who is willing to fix your plumbing. That does not mean you might as well have proprietary Microplumb products installed in your house that noone can repair or extend without permission from Microplumb Inc.

⬐ bobstaples

Isn't that comparable to going to a restaurant where they don't give away their recipes? If you encounter a problem with one of their meals you are dependent on their good will to change it for you. Isnt it that you are just using a service someone provides? Or are you enslaving yourself the moment you walk in a restaurant where they keep their recipes secret?

⬐ ForHackernews

There is nothing in the GPL that prohibits charging money for your software. You just have to provide the source code and allow users to make modifications & redistribute.

⬐ legulere

GPL mandates that anyone that gets hands on your software can give it away for free, effectively making it impossible to sell it

⬐ ForHackernews

The existence of bittorrent means that anyone that gets their hands on your software can give it away for free, effectively making it impossible to sell it.

⬐ None

None

⬐ belorn

The argument is that freedom is often restricted if the end results is harmful.

Proprietary software depend on copyright to prevent owners, which today often mean property owners of physical objects with DRM in them. Property owner is deprived of all rights that personal property is normally given to their owners. That power is instead taken by those that produced the object.

If sale of property actually follow traditional first sale principles and gave the new owner rights which used to be naturally aspect of private property, then practically all freedoms under Richard Stallman definition is given. You don't have to give away the apple (in the classical example), but once sold you can't have copyright or patents preventing the new owner from using the apple to grew a orchard.

⬐ majewsky

Tell that to Monsanto.

⬐ mseebach

> It literally goes back to Plato and arguments about how you can be free if you're not free to make other people slaves.

He may have been the first (recorded) philosopher to make that point. But he's not exactly the last to think about this, and the enlightenment was largely about finding a good answer to it.

Basically (hyper-abridged version), the answer is self-ownership, and self-ownership precludes selling yourself into slavery, because once you've sold yourself, you don't own yourself and therefore cannot accept consideration for the sale, which then is invalid (a sale without consideration isn't a sale, it's a give (or take!) away). It does not preclude contracting a limited commitment (eg. to do work for renumeration), nor does it preclude accepting conditions in such a contract.

⬐ teekert

In short: A definition of Freedom is wrong (or at least sub-optimal, bigoted, biased) if it can not pertain to all humans at the same time without creating a paradox.

At the risk of being down-voted (but less so due to this very sentence), the quote below can be true for everyone and I believe it to be very important Interpreting it I would say that a creator is free to choose a license, any attempt to try and force the use of another license upon a creator than that of his choosing will lead to paradoxes in freedom. I.e., such a definition can not be applied to all humans (for example: I can force conditions upon you by which you should share your work, you can do so to me and you can they force me to not share my work or at least under arbitrary conditions):

“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

-John Galt (Ayn Rand; Atlas Shrugged, which is a nice book if you like the philosophy of freedom)

With regards to forcing "a mind" I love this piece of literature: [0]

[0] http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/physical_force.html

An excerpt:

Do not open your mouth to tell me that your mind has convinced you of your right to force my mind. Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins. When you declare that men are irrational animals and propose to treat them as such, you define thereby your own character and can no longer claim the sanction of reason—as no advocate of contradictions can claim it. There can be no “right” to destroy the source of rights, the only means of judging right and wrong: the mind.

⬐ cbenz

Freedom of users is more important than freedom of vendor. That's because users are the society, the citizens, everyone in fact.

So defending the freedom of the creator to sharing software under her own terms is way less important than defending the freedom of users.

⬐ ajuc

That depends on the software and market, surely. If there's 5 open source alternatives, is it more important to get 6th for the minimal gain in freedom for the users, or is it more important to let the creator keep his freedom to share it under whichever licence he prefers?

What if there's 100 open source alternatives already?

⬐ madez

An "alternative" is is not necessarily a factual alternative. I'd said if a solution has many users, the freedom of the users has priority.

⬐ legulere

The only freedom of the three freedoms that applies to users (almost nobody is a developer!) is the freedom to redistribute .

So it is basically about the freedom to copy someone else's work without compensation.

⬐ majewsky

Even the freedom to use is a freedom that applies to users.

With a proprietary product, the vendor can make changes behind your back via the auto-update backdoor, and you cannot do anything about it. With an open-source product, if a user does not like what the vendor is doing in the new version, they can just stick with the old version.

(It used to work that way with proprietary software, too, but today I cannot really think of software that cannot be forcefully end-of-lifed by the vendor. For example, look at how Samsung disabled the Note 7 phones with OTA updates.)

⬐ zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC

That's like saying that the freedom to repair your own car does not apply to car owners because almost nobody is a car mechanic.

The free software freedoms are what allow any end-user to freely choose anyone they want for audits, repairs and extensions of their software, instead of being dependent on a monopolistic supplier. Whether the individual user has any clue of software development is completely irrelevant.

⬐ CaptainZapp

Your remark reminds me of a /. signature of old:

  If you don't like the GPL write your own damn software

I agree with the sig, but certainly not with your comment.

⬐ reacweb

I think that everybody should be a developer and that programing should be far more easier. Why programming languages are so tricky ?

⬐ jrimbault

Because natural language is ambiguous and rocks are dumb.

⬐ belorn

The right to repair movement is in direct opposition with current US copyright law over DRM. The reason is not for "copy someone else's work without compensation".

Karen Sandler and several security researcher want free software freedom in regard to medical devices. They want to verify the code and even out the power balance between those that depend on the code for their life and the producer of it. That too is not about "copy someone else's work without compensation".

Yesterday there was an article that said that voting machines should be open source. The concern people have there is not about "copy someone else's work without compensation".

⬐ legulere

I agree that the current DRM laws are bad and that you should be allowed to inspect medical software in certain circumstances.

That has nothing to do with the GPL or the three freedoms though.

⬐ belorn

Companies that avoid GPL also avoid licenses that forbids DRM and guaranties access to source code.

But to reiterate the four freedoms:

Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program for any purpose. With DRM this is impossible. The DRM business model to prevent generic parts rely on users not having freedom 0.

Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works. Without this researchers can't do inspection of medical software or voting machines.

Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program. Without this a person can't improve their tractor that they bought, even if they are by law the private property owner of the device.

That leaves:

Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute and make copies so you can help your neighbor.

So for the cases above, three out of four software freedoms is required.

⬐ teekert

If you think your rights should make it possible for you to do with my creation as you please, then I shall never do business with you. Hell I don't even want to create anything in or for a world that thinks they have anything to say about my creations. I shall share my creations with you as a I damn well please and if you don't want to stick to the conditions that I set for sharing something with you, I shall simply never share anything with you.

Note that I may choose the GPL for my creation and you may share said creation in that case. But only because I choose the GPL as the conditions that applies to my creation.

In fact, I love the GPL, it makes the world a better place but a creator is the only one that can apply it to his creation, not you nor society at large, not in the name of common good or anything else. The creator only, you shall not force a creator lest he will stop creating and you will be worse off because of it.

⬐ cbenz

Despite the "damn" and "hell" words you use, let me develop my opinion.

It is not the user rights which allow them to do whatever they want. I totally agree that one must not violate the terms expressed by the author.

I don't like to talk about "my" creation or "yours" or somebody's. Because every creator is inspired from previous ones. Someone obviously works for a certain amount of time, but the concept of paternity is strange given all the inspiration. When I write free software, I always consider it would not have been possible to do it without libraries and other inspiration. So it's normal to give back the product of my time to the world, which gave me the base to do it.

I create things not to do business, but to make the world match my ideas and hope people will follow and improve. And I would really be pleased if somebody has a complaint or criticism, and takes the time to "fix" it concretely by coding it, not just expressing it.

In arts (music, painting, etc) this is natural, as in science and research. About computer science, how people can improve then if it's not free software? That would be a "use it or drop it" situation, not adapted for collective improvement.

So using free software licenses, as a creator, makes the world better. The contrary doesn't make the world worse, but freezes it until free software appears. That's waste of time in a sense!

That's why I don't recommend people to use proprietary software. Because it maintains the world in a situation which is not ideal, globally.

I understand people want to make money for a living. But there are economic models quite OK with free software. We have to find a way, I mean collectively, to finance free software. That would be an improvement for society,better than defending proprietary software.

Finally pardon my English, I'm not native.

⬐ willtim

Sure 'evil' is hyperbole, but he gives many examples in the posted video of control, security and privacy issues. Essentially with proprietary software, there is a fundamental conflict of interest between the proprietor and user.

⬐ akvadrako

How is it hyperbole? The devil doesn't usually reign down fire and brimstone; he's in the details.

⬐ teddyh

You’re assuming one thing, that the creator should be allowed to set terms for software they have created. A clothing designer, for instance, has no such rights. Why should software users be restricted in their use of the software by a law giving enormous power to the creator?

That is the essential question you must answer. Arguments against are legion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_copyright

The GPL license is not an end in itself. It is simply a holding action – a means to carve out a bit of freedom for end users using the current rules of copyright.

⬐ syshum

>But aren't you restricting freedom when you would keep a creator from sharing his software under his own terms?

That is the Open Source vs Free Software debate in alot of ways

Stallman and the Free Software movement is about the USERS freedom, ensuring that the END USER of software retains the rights to modify, use, and examine the software they use

Where Open Source is mainly focused on the DEVELOPER of the software, most Open Source advocates are developers that want to have their libraries, dev tools, frameworks, languages, compilers, etc all open so they can create closed software for end users, and use code interoperably between projects with out having to worry about Licensing, this is why Open Source favors MIT, BSD, and other non-copy left licenses, where Free Software is GPL

Also you might want to watch the newer interview between Byran Lunduke and Richard Stallman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0y0oXU8YNk

⬐ icebraining

aren't you restricting freedom when you would keep a creator from sharing his software under his own terms?

How is rms doing that? Has he been granted lawmaking powers?

No, he is only putting conditions on the software he made, nothing more. If selling binaries under any agreed terms is freedom, how can giving away source under agreed terms be restricting freedom? Your position is contradictory.

Meanwhile, rms' position is clear and unambiguous: there are four freedoms that users should have, and software either respects them or not.

⬐ rmc

RMS is basically a Pope of free software. He's ideologicaly "pure", he sticks to what he believes in entirely. It's useful for a discussion "Would this pass muster with RMS? Do we want to make this RMS-approved?". We don't have to imagine someone who's completly against propritary software, we can just think of RMS.

⬐ smithsmith

> But I see no evil whatsoever in someone making a software tool and selling only the binaries to someone who is happy to use said binaries under the terms the seller and buyer agree upon.

Same thing can be said about slavery. Some very very small minority may be happy being slaves. The rest of the slaves(people who just use binary) just does not know what it means to be being free(the freedom that comes with changing their software they use at will).

⬐ SeanMacConMara

"But I see no evil whatsoever in someone making a software tool and selling only the binaries to someone who is happy to use said binaries under the terms the seller and buyer agree upon. That to me is freedom, nobody is forced in that scenario."

to hopefully explain more clearly...

RS's FOSS agenda is promoting some very very specific legal freedoms for all the people in a state. Not "freedom" in general. Not just for software developers or any other niche group. Those freedoms are specific to software as he believes that it's impact on societies, especially democracies is fundamental now and in the future.

If one were to think FOSS is just "open source" or a "nice thing for developers" one would have entirely missed the point. FOSS _is_ a "nice thing for developers" but that is just a side effect. FOSS is a hard-line political tool to very strongly promote specific kinds of legal rights/freedoms. RS drew a line in the sand and never crosses it. Thats why the GPL is so strict. It's the whole point of it.

His use of the word "evil" can be non-obvious. He sees users of software who have had their legal rights restricted via proprietary licensing as having been harmed (possibly in a very small way, possibly in a very serious way) by that situation, even if they entered into it willingly (with or without knowledge of FOSS's philosophy). Even if the proprietary vendor didn't mindfully intend harm, harm can still be done.

RS is not primarily concerned so much about the tiny individual incidents but the "network-effect" they have on society as whole when multiplied by billions. RS refers to that overall effect on democracy as "evil".

⬐ tequila_shot

well RMS has nothing to do with Open Source. Open Source is different from FSF. But I generally agree with your comments. I have seen in a number of videos that RMS tends to always fall back on the "Proprietary software is evil".

⬐ dijit

To be fair, he's clarified why he feels this way many times.

Repeating the same arguments has got to be frustrating and people might pick up on it. (assuming that RMS has very little to say but says it often).

FWIW his reasons of proprietary software being evil are[0]:

* Proprietary software obstructs the use of its programs

* Proprietary software obstructs social cohesion, fragments communities.

* Proprietary software obstructs the customisation and adaption of programs.

* Proprietary software has network effects: if you have skype, I am more likely to have skype.

* Proprietary software prevents choice; swapping out proprietary software with something else can be tricky, if it's not resting on standards then sometimes it's simply impossible.

[0]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.en.html

⬐ teekert

I agree with all of them. But please don't try to interfere with my freedom to ignore them as I please, which is what RMS would do if he got his way.

⬐ majewsky

> Proprietary software has network effects: if you have skype, I am more likely to have skype.

In fact, it's more vicious: If you have Skype, I am more likely to need Skype.

⬐ AsyncAwait

Well, the funny thing is that Bryan[0] has since pretty much defected to RMS's side, so clearly it wasn't as bad as you seem to suggest.

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/user/BryanLunduke/videos

⬐ teekert

Because anyone who ever changes his principles always only exchanges them for better principles?

⬐ None

None

⬐ vcanales

> I love open source

Stallman doesn't.

⬐ deepnet

Stallman's view is perhaps a little more nuanced.

Don't forget Stallman saw the destruction of his beloved Hacker Culture of Sharing and Academic Discourse eroded and broken by the LISP machine debacle and the change to a closed anti-sharing approach of UNIX by the newly privatised Bell in the 1980s.

And it was a proprietary printer driver which initiated his epiphany that in a world governed by proprietary software the user would have no freedom or a freedom that could be taken from them so no right to freedom. RMS could easily have made the modification to the driver he wanted but he was not allowed the source code.

From this he invented his four essential freedoms [1] manifesto and the GPL which allowed developers to develop with out fear of the closing of their contributions behind paywalls.

In the early 1990s the Linux kernel flourished with its GPL license ensuring it remained a bastion of freedom.

As Stallman advocates for a future where users have maximum freedom then proprietary software is opposed to that.

If I use Photoshop over GIMP and write tutorials and encourage others to use Photoshop then the world is a little less free for those users in the sense of the four essential freedoms [1]

By this definition proprietary software is opposed to Stallman's vision and insiduously so.

To oppose the freedom of others is in RMS's eyes not a good act, thus it can be rightly called evil in that context and IMHO he is not wrong in this.

Proprietary software 'may' not steal your freedom today but it can lock away your contributions and data tomorrow and one has no recourse - Stallman having lived through this wishes to oppose it and fight for the right to Freedom for us all and forever.

His is a glorious vision and he is not wrong, without free software competing with it, proprietary software would likely offer much less freedom and can and has taken what freedom it offered away !

We will live in an increasingly computerised and robotised society. We must choose : will we only have tenuous freedom exchanged for conveniences and mind-candy, rescindable freedoms only for some given by the whim of corporations; or will we work together on GNU and other Free projects and live as Free peoples of the solar system ?

Free as in Liberty, Egality, & Community.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

Oh ye of little faith, history has so far found that :

https://stallmanwasright.reddit.com

⬐ TheSpiceIsLife

RMS bangs on about freedom being the ability to have collective / individual control over software by being in possession of, and compiling the, source code.

How does he reconcile this with, say, being in possession of his own DNA, but not knowing how to compile from source.

Is RMS really free if he can't inspect, modify, and tinker with, his own software and hardware.

In the RMS World there would be no life allowed unless all life came with GPL'ed Abiogenesis.

Because non-free abiogenesis is unethical.

⬐ teekert

He can't but nothing stops him from developing methods with which he can edit his DNA and subsequently applying those methods. So the DNA analogy is not valid, he is the owner of his DNA.

⬐ ajuc

I think it's similar to third wave feminism. It's a revolution that has already won for most practical purposes, but keeps on fighting.

In a world, where almost all software was proprietary, and open source only made sense if you're living in towers of academia - RMS made sense and contributed greatly to society. Nowadays - not so much.

It isn't worth it to restrict freedom of creator and force him to write open source software for minimal increase in the freedom of the users, when there is already an open source alternative for the given task.

⬐ dijit

Free Software has not "won", in any sense of the imagination.

I am sitting in an office of 500+ Windows machines compared to 2 FreeBSD (and no Linux) machines.

I have to use Outlook otherwise I can't book meetings.

I must use Slack otherwise I can't communicate with my colleagues. (Or, alternatively, Skype For Business, but same issue)

"Free Software" is _not_ winning anywhere that isn't servers. (and they have fierce competition there too).

⬐ aaronbrethorst

The most-used operating system in the world has a Linux kernel. But, it might not be in front of you...except when you're checking email, waiting in line, playing Angry Birds, making a photograph, or checking up on Facebook.

⬐ oblio

> except when you're checking email, waiting in line, playing Angry Birds, making a photograph, or checking up on Facebook.

You've just proved his point more than you ever wanted.

> checking email

On the (probably) proprietary Mail or Gmail app.

> waiting in line

On the (probably) proprietary app for whichever thing you're staying in line for.

> playing Angry Birds

...

> making a photograph

...

> or checking up on Facebook

...!

Who care if the kernel, heavily modified and buried 100 layers deep is Open Source if all the apps users actually use are proprietary?

⬐ aaronbrethorst

Given your sense of fatalism about this, I assume you don’t spend your free time building OSS apps for mobile platforms?

⬐ oblio

I'm not a fatalist, I'm just pointing out a fact. FOSS is far from winning.

FOSS has barely "won" the lower levels of the stack and the highly technical niches. But the more you move towards user-facing applications, the more proprietary things become.

⬐ aaronbrethorst

If you genuinely care about reversing this, then I recommend spending more of your free time building open source apps meant for end user consumption.

⬐ qplex

>Who care if the kernel, heavily modified and buried 100 layers deep is Open Source if all the apps users actually use are proprietary?

I guess by this definition any open sourced library that an "end user app" uses doesn't count either.

⬐ loup-vaillant

> But aren't you restricting freedom when you would keep a creator from sharing his software under his own terms?

GPL vs BSD all over again. Freedoms conflict. The one "freedom" RMS would restrict is the freedom to restrict the freedom of others (one's users). One has to chose at some point. Since there are more users than creators, the freedom of many users is more important than the freedom of one creator. (Assuming any two humans have roughly the same moral value.)

So yes, we would restrict a bit of freedom. But that's the only way to prevent even greater restrictions.

By the way, RMS never called permissive licences evil. Just weak. And he's not opposed to GPL/proprietary dual licencing, as long as the two versions are the same. It's not weaker than a permissive licence, and the creator has another way to make a profit.

⬐ teekert

BTW, ask yourself, if Freedom conflicts, are you really using the correct definition of Freedom? I strongly believe the definition of Freedom should be applicable to all human without creating any paradoxes. Check all your premises, carefully.

⬐ loup-vaillant

> La liberté des uns s'arrête là où commence celle des autres.

Few French people don't know this proverb. It surprised me when I noticed US citizens were much less cognizant of it. Maybe because Freedom is praised so highly we cannot even acknowledge its fundamental limitations?

If someone is at liberty to kill you, your freedom to live peacefully might be severely limited. If someone has the freedom to spread lies about you, your freedom to preserve your own reputation might be severely limited. And so on.

⬐ csydas

Well, to a degree Freedoms compete. As the old adage often misattributed adage goes, "Your right to swing your arms ends where my nose begins." Sometimes our freedoms encroach on other people's own freedoms; despite the notion of an unalienable right, such freedoms are only available via force of some means; monetary compensation, organized violence (state or otherwise), and so on. As rights need some external force to validate, to me it seems reasonable and sensible that you're going to have both competing freedoms as the enforcers will hold different freedoms in higher/lower regard than others.

I understand that such a position basically strips away all human dignity and reduces everything to a "might is right" argument, but is that not very much true in many ways? We agree on the freedoms we want to have protected and are more lax about those less important.

⬐ teekert

The nose hit is a transaction, you supply, I "enjoy". However, I do not agree on the terms of this nose hitting, it only leaves me with a lot of pain. If you would offer me 1 million BTC I might be inclined to agree to the nose hitting, I'm free to do so. I can not be forced into a transaction but I can choose to accept all consequences. No freedom is lost in this case. You should not engage in nose hitting without negotiating the terms of such a transaction, as your should never. You don't know yet if this is a consensual transaction and you should thus withhold from taking an action which clearly involves me.

Yes this is a ridiculous example and yes there are many examples where explicitly negotiating terms is not necessary. When this is, and when it not, is a cultural thing. I mean I shake hands with a woman without second thought, an Islamic Imam may need some special compensation before agreeing to it.

I'm pushing this discussion to the edge because it feels extremely significant to me. Pushing it over my own boundaries also is a way of testing my premises. I'm certainly willing to change my mind.

⬐ syrrim

What if the hit nose is not a transaction? What if an individual swings their arms without care, and your nose merely happens to be in the way? I might get mad at you when I find an obstruction to my swinging. You might equally get mad at me for having hit you. Deciding between these constitutes deciding who has a right in that situation. In the example, you have a right to not be hit. Therefore, I have no right to swing my arms about if it conflicts with that right. However this decision is completely arbitrary; a society could just as easily exist that decides that I have a right to swing my arms about, and you have a responsibility to get out of my way.

⬐ teekert

This discussion is one level higher, it is about the freedom of the creator to choose a license for his software. GPL is not better than BSD or the other way around, it is about the freedom to choose a license. The freedom to say to a buyer: "Ok, we have a deal under these conditions." The buyer has the freedom to reject the deal. This is the scenario with the most freedom imho.

I'm afraid, but correct me if I'm wrong, that if RMS would be dictator of the world, he would rob people of the freedom to offer their products under their conditions. To me, the RMS world is less free.

We could even start to argue things like: In RMS world there would be less software so less ways for people to express themselves freely. Photoshop frees a lot of people from the inability to express themselves in the exact way they want.

What is freedom? To me it is the freedom to make deals with others under your conditions and the freedom to reject deals of others because they don't match the conditions you like. This works even when everybody has said attitude, that is the beauty of it.

⬐ craigsmansion

> Photoshop frees a lot of people from the inability to express themselves in the exact way they want.

It's not quite as binary.

Creative urges and most other human endeavours do not exist in a vacuum.

If you are at a friend's house--say a fellow artist, and he shows you how to effortlessly create new art with Photoshop. You might be impressed and enthused and say: "This is great! I want to be part of this," but your artist-friend would have to say: "I'm sorry, but I can't give you a copy, I promised I wouldn't do that" or, more likely, he would have to break laws to support you in your enthusiasm.

Now, had your friend be using GIMP he would gladly have given you a copy. Not only because he's your friend and wants to support you creatively, but also because more users generally leads to more development and a better program. He's not just helping you, he's helping himself as part of a greater creative community.

So no, Photoshop doesn't completely free you. Someone would have to break the law, or you would have to submit yourself to an arbiter to ask them if you can be part of their community. Usually they just ask for money and a promise not to let anyone else be part of that community without referring those people to them.

Free Software lets you share your ambitions without breaking laws or referring to an arbiter. It's a decision you have to make for yourself, but one choice does not free more people to express themselves by default, even if it might feel more free towards your own person at a particular time, but that freedom is not transitive.

⬐ teekert

I agree! And I use Gimp for that very reason!

However, my Photoshop inclined friends would experience the absence of the liquify and Refine Edge tool as an inhibition of their desire to reach their goal (the image they have in mind). In that sense, Photoshop is an enabler for their wishes, Photoshop gives them the freedom to make what they want.

⬐ loup-vaillant

Surely GIMP could copy those tools, as well as any missing functionality?

Couldn't the funding that currently goes to Adobe be devoted to further the development of GIMP instead?

⬐ teekert

Not sure why I can't reply to you loup-vaillant but here it is:

Do you mean the "funding" (more like "income") that Adobe generates by selling their software instead of giving the source code away?

⬐ loup-vaillant

> Not sure why I can't reply to you

Replies are rate-limited. The deeper the thread, the longer the down time. There might be other criteria.

I mean the income that Adobe extracts from their customers. The only thing they generated in this case is Photoshop itself. This nitpicking aside, yes, that's what I was talking about.

⬐ Joeri

In RMS world there would be less software so less ways for people to express themselves freely. Photoshop frees a lot of people from the inability to express themselves in the exact way they want.

In RMS world all software woud be GPL licensed, including photoshop. In his view there are other ways software companies can make money than selling licenses, and it is up to their customers to demand them to do that.

It's impractical to be sure, but crazier things have happened given enough time.

⬐ rglullis

In RMS' world Photoshop wouldn't even come to existence.

⬐ teekert

The question is indeed: would Adobe have created Photoshop in RMS world.

It's very short sighted to think everything else would be the same except for software licenses.

⬐ loup-vaillant

In a capitalistic society where proprietary software were forbidden, we may not have Photoshop. To me, that indicates a problem with capitalism itself.

⬐ sokoloff

In a capitalist world where food could not be sold or traded for consideration, I believe we would obviously not have restaurants/supermarkets and it seems very likely either more people would need to be farmers and/or more people would starve.

Is that also a problem with capitalism, or a problem with "not capitalism"?

⬐ None

None

⬐ loup-vaillant

I was just saying that if capitalism requires proprietary software, then capitalism has a problem. The unstated (yet obvious) assumption was that proprietary software is evil.

I'm not sure food trade is evil. Forbidding it doesn't make much sense to me. Regulating it however makes a whole lot of sense. But we already do.

Isn't the cold war finished by now? Surely there could be viable alternatives to the current corporate capitalism veering cyberpunk?

⬐ sokoloff

Capitalism doesn't require proprietary software, but it enables it.

⬐ loup-vaillant

A little good faith, will you?

The idea was that capitalism gives you a choice between proprietary, shitty, or non-existent software. Not much of a choice. Photoshop is often showed as an example where free alternatives aren't up to snuff (I personally don't have an opinion on this one).

Hence the short "requires".

⬐ sokoloff

It's not for a lack of good faith in interpreting your words (IMO), but a genuine difference of opinion on a critical point.

I don't view software on a spectrum from proprietary through shitty to non-existent. I view it more as a two-by-two matrix of high quality/shitty on one axis and FOSS/proprietary on the other. All four quadrants are populated.

The economic incentives that capitalism and proprietary software provide allow for the massive investments that Adobe is able to make in Photoshop/CSuite, by providing a clear path to financial returns on those investments.

In the 22 years since GIMP started, it hasn't caught Photoshop. (There are many other examples where free or open source software has caught and surpassed the proprietary alternatives/previous market leaders.)

⬐ loup-vaillant

Well, I agree. Capitalism may not need proprietary software. I was mostly exploring rglullis's hypothesis above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14977956

I do see many problems with capitalism itself, though, so I didn't word my initial comment as well as I should have. I should have said "it would indicate a problem with capitalism".

⬐ ue_

>In the 22 years since GIMP started, it hasn't caught Photoshop.

I think it's important to look in that quadrant, though. Why does that quadrant exist? In my judgement, it's beacuse such software requires a large amount of research and time to be devoted to it, and while certain free software projects are able to catch up to it, they are few and far between.

The next question to ask is why such development-intensive software is proprietary. In my judgement, the answer to that is because the development must be funded somehow, primarily in the case of programming that funding is wages. Open source/free software business models, while existing, do not have the same return, especially for these sorts of programs (though they do for Red Hat for instance.)

So presumably, such software could exist being free software if its developers were already accounted for in terms of wages, so they can spend more time making it.

This is where alternatives to capitalism enter - Socialist systems do not have wages, and people have much more free time to pursue their interests, while being sustained by communal production, to which they also participate in part. As such, such development may be possible under Socialism, but not capitalism. There is much less incentive to have proprietary software under Socialism.

⬐ rglullis

Oh, please. When are going to stop making objective comparisons between the Real World and crazy Utopias?

If we are getting closer to living in a post-scarcity world, it is thanks to these "horrible" things Capitalism brings us like private property, freedom to enterprise, rule of law that enables trade, etc, etc.

"In Socialism people have more free time to pursue their interests"? People in North Korea are more busy trying not to starve to death. Venezuela is facing shortages of toilet paper, and their government is pushing for forced labor. How can one even think that there will ever be a society rich enough to afford people universally free to do whatever they want?

⬐ snakeanus

And this is a good thing.

⬐ newscracker

Just in the image management space, we do have GIMP [1], Inkscape [2], Krita [3], just to name a few FOSS applications using GPL that come to my mind right now, among many others. Photoshop may probably not have come into existence in RMS's world, but that wouldn't have precluded any of these from coming up (even if they appear not to be of the same caliber or if they seem like clones of proprietary applications). Your statement would've made a lot of sense probably several decades ago though.

[1]: https://www.gimp.org/about/

[2]: https://inkscape.org/en/about/license/

[3]: https://docs.krita.org/KritaFAQ

⬐ rglullis

As much as I am big supporter of FOSS - writing open source software as much as I can, financially support developers, and actively try to avoid proprietary solutions when there is an adequate free alternative - I am yet to see any kind of open-source software that is original or that it has managed to create a new industry on its own.

All praise to GIMP, Inkscape and Krita, but they only exist because some proprietary software already existed and created the demand for an free alternative.

⬐ cyphar

That's true for proprietary software as well. Hell, most software is a remake of something that existed in the past. You can find examples of original free software projects that have caused real change (one that comes to mind is the whole Zones/Jails/Containers thing), but that's not really a good measure of whether free software is succeeding.

There are countless free software projects that were created as alternatives to proprietary software and have exceeded the original by orders of magnitude. If you want to look at a measure of success other than "amount of work you can do with free software" then that's what you should be looking at. Improvement and innovation often doesn't come from some massive new technology, it's always gradual improvements that really make the difference.

⬐ rglullis

I never said that FOSS is worse than proprietary software. This is not what the discussion is about.

What I am arguing is simply that if proprietary software was forbidden, a lot of innovation would be restricted.

Imagine today if we were living in RMS world and everyone that writes software needed to have their software openly published and freely distributed. How many would simply not even start? Would there be a Microsoft, Google or Apple or Facebook? No. Who would be the big player that would have any interest in seeing the development of any technology that could threaten their business?

Most "innovation" would happen in academic settings, and it would never make the jump to any industry.

⬐ cyphar

That feels like a backwards argument to me. There are many free software companies (RedHat, SUSE, Canonical, etc) that create plenty of innovative software. I'm sure you know the difference between "free as in beer" and "free as in speech", but your argument appears to be conflating proprietary and commercial. Especially when you start discussing academic settings (which, by the way, uses a lot of proprietary software).

But more importantly, a discussion of "what could've been" is not really helpful to a discussion of what we should do today. I could equally argue that if users were more empowered than they are now, that you would see much higher levels of technical literacy and much more innovation. Do I have evidence to back that up? No, but neither do you.

I can give you more examples of free software that didn't have a proprietary counterpart, but I don't think that you really want such examples. You want to discuss an alternate universe where proprietary software doesn't exist.

> Would there be a Microsoft, Google or Apple or Facebook? No.

How on Earth could you possibly know that? You're possibly right that they wouldn't be identical to their current counterparts (they probably wouldn't be able to mistreat their users to the same extent), but those companies and those products might still exist.

Social networks existed before Facebook. Hand-held computers existed before Apple. Search engines existed before Google. Operating systems existed before Microsoft.

⬐ rglullis

The discussion is not about "what could've been", much less about "what should we do today". It is mainly about what "would've been if we lived in a world where RMS managed to forbid proprietary/closed-source software". I posit that if this prevailed in the 70's or 80's, there would simply be no software revolution.

⬐ cyphar

> I posit that if this prevailed in the 70's or 80's, there would simply be no software revolution.

And I would claim that you have no evidence for such a statement. Given how much technical innovation happened in the hobbyist computer revolution that predated the "software revolution" (where proprietary software was unheard of) I would argue the opposite. But neither of us can possibly know what would've been in an alternate timeline.

⬐ None

None

⬐ rglullis

You are right that we can not make a perfectly quantifiable experiment to check the rate of innovation in a "purely Free, RMS-style" world vs the current one where proprietary software is also allowed.

But using that as an excuse to keep believing that "we could have gotten where we are only with Free Software" is a cop-out. We don't need to have an alternate timeline. We can think of our existing one as the (non-linear) superposition of two competing philosophies and their development: the hobbyist/academic/free one & the commercial/private/proprietary/profit-motive-based one on the other. We can surely come up with some kind of model to see how the "free economy" would fare if there was no "proprietary" agent.

You have said it yourself: there was a revolution going on, but it was only affecting the hobbyists, the enthusiasts. It took the "proprietary" side to exist to make it computing something as universal as it has become.

Without proprietary software, there would be no BSD 4.4, Linus would not have anything to clone for the PC, there would be no Free/Open/NetBSD, and so on.

Remove these from the "software economy" of today, and what would we have? Minix? HURD? "Innovative", alright. But certainly never able to compete with the proprietary (or proprietary-clones) alternatives at any point in time.

⬐ zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC

There are limits on what is enforcable in a contract. Like, you cannot enslave yourself. It is true that that limits freedoms in some sense. But it serves to protect freedoms that society at large deems more important.

⬐ afarrell

There is indeed a set of contracts with the property that banning them makes people more free. This set is non-empty.

But the argument still needs to be made that proprietary software licences are part of that set.

⬐ zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC

Sure, but (a) RMS actually does make that argument and (b) he AFAIK doesn't actually call for making proprietary software illegal, but just tries to convince people to not produce, endorse, or use it.

⬐ None

None

⬐ afarrell

Ah, then someone should reply to the top-level comment with a link to where RMS makes that argument.

⬐ chriswarbo

> But aren't you restricting freedom when you would keep a creator from sharing his software under his own terms?

Nobody is stopping anyone. If you create some software, you're free to share it (or not) under whatever terms you like. RMS would not stop you, and would not want to stop you (although he may try to persuade you to favour FOSS terms if you were to discuss it). What RMS would do is avoid your software if your terms aren't FOSS, and perhaps he'd encourage others to make a FOSS alternative if it looks like that might be useful.

Of course, this is assuming that the software in question really was made by that "creator". If it actually contains a bunch of other people's work (e.g. FOSS components) then it's not "his" to dictate the terms of. It's this latter situation where the GPL/BSD debate takes place, and it would be a strawman to claim that the GPL restricts a "creator" from doing what they want with "their own work" (since it's precisely the bits which they didn't create and aren't theirs that are the point of the discussion).

> I'm afraid, but correct me if I'm wrong, that if RMS would be dictator of the world, he would rob people of the freedom to offer their products under their conditions. To me, the RMS world is less free.

No, in RMS's ideal world everyone is free to use whatever terms they like, but most users would shun anything that denies them the '4 freedoms' they've come to expect from everything else.

Whilst "freedom of speech" is important, it doesn't imply we should have "freedom of having-people-agree-with-you". Likewise, "freedom to license however you want" doesn't imply "freedom to have-people-use-your-stuff".

⬐ loup-vaillant

> This discussion is one level higher, it is about the freedom of the creator to choose a license for his software.

In part only. You cannot ignore the freedom of whoever that choice of licence affects.

We already have restrictions over deals one can make. Stuff like "Grab this gun and kill yourself on camera for the enjoyment of our snuff movies fans. In exchange, your family will get $1M." Sure, it sounds extreme, but many people would give their lives for their family, and I'm sure some sick powerful people take advantage of this.

Which leads to my next point:

> The buyer has the freedom to reject the deal.

Not really.

There's a point where the actual choice is between using such and such spying service or proprietary software, or stop participating in society altogether.

Don't want your position to be tracked at all times? Imagine your life without a cell phone. Many people would lose friends if they quit Facebook —if only because they would no longer receive their messages.

The real reason why so many people are using proprietary software is because they don't have a choice. Microsoft Word is a prime example: everybody uses it, so everybody else has to use it.

---

No matter how you cut it, freedoms conflict. You cannot maximise the freedom of the provider without sacrificing the freedom of consumers. More generally, you cannot maximise the freedom of anyone without sacrificing the freedom of everyone else —if only by a little bit.

That's freedom's most basic principle: one's freedom stops at others'. One way or another, there's a limit. The question is where we should put that limit.

⬐ missbit

He is obviously brilliant. The interviewer wants to steer him into being a crazy nut corner. Pepsi vs. Coke.

I realize historically there was only low level software that existed. These days we've got much higher level services which really could benefit from free software.

He hits on these ideas. Maybe he'd be open to working on these sorts of things.

Services have gotten to the level where they are taking a piece of people's livelihoods. Uber & Airbnb takes 20-30%. why?

Amazon is a system of warehousing & distribution... could something like that be run in a distributed / cooperative way which provides as much opportunity to 3rd party retailers as it does Amazon? A level playing field.

These are the sorts of things that the free software movement could move towards now.

⬐ fwdpropaganda

> The interviewer wants to steer him into being a crazy nut corner. Pepsi vs. Coke.

Absolutely wrong. The interviewer even said at one point "The things you're describing I believe should be of a concern to many more people than they are." You're totally off.

⬐ firefoxd

Ok, 2 seconds in and I'm shocked. All my life I pronounced gnu as new, like Nutella.

⬐ lsh

Do you pronounce Nutella "Nu-tella" or "Nut-ella" ?

FWIW, I pronounce 'GNU' as 'nu'.

⬐ snvzz

There's a p2p network called gnutella. It's not associated with GNU. It gets confusing.

⬐ imron

He appears to pronounce it newtella.

⬐ firefoxd

Nu-tella, though i don't have an american accent.

⬐ champagnepapi

The only reason as to why I pronounce "GNU" with a 'g' sound is because of Richard Stallman. Otherwise, I use the silent 'g'.

⬐ gschier

Don't forget g-nome too!

⬐ dllthomas

The name of the animal has a silent g. In software that would be a bit too confusing, though. "Do you use <nu> make?" "N-E-W or G-N-U?"

⬐ Boothroid

I was amazed to see that Stallman doesn't install his OS himself - hasn't for years. He seemed diminished in my eyes after I learnt this.

⬐ rand98765

This is just a practical thing afaik. fsf sysadmins are more knowledgeable about it and they do it for the rest of fsf computers already, so why not let them do it?

What does diminished mean? I mean, like as a person he's not impressive? When I remember I'm reading a comment that's hiding behind a pseudonym, they are also diminished in my eyes.

⬐ jrimbault

I think I agree with you, buuuut "rand98765" is your current username.

⬐ copperx

Diminished for not installing an OS? The man who could write an optimizing C compiler from scratch in a few days just so he could make it free?

⬐ Boothroid

Fair point - perhaps it was his comment that everyday users could just go along to a user group to get Linux installed, and needn't worry about doing it themselves. This seemed painfully out of touch to me, as if he were talking about finding someone to solder your Altair together or something.

⬐ ezoe

Probably for the tough requirements for the free enough computer he can get today.

He is currently using Lenovo thinkpad X60, flashing free bios, then install Trisquel(Ubuntu minus non-free binary blobs).

Probably harder to install than most of us do(get non-free binary blob infected compute and install linux kernel with a lot of non-free binary blobs)

⬐ ue_

His programming and social acheivements in my opinion vastly outclass installing an OS by himself, though I wonder why he doesn't do it; I assume he knows how partitioning etc. works.

And to be honest, how often do most people need to reinstall their OS? I would be surprised if he has reinstalled more than 3 times in 5 years.

⬐ krick

I'm still struggling to understand, what exactly Stallman's social acheivements are. It's not like he is the reason people care about proprietary software and surveillance. No, the real reasons are these things themselves, because — I won't say "all people", but many people understand the dangers and inconveniences of it pretty damn well. I myself perfectly agree with Stallman on many (if not all) of his convictions, but so what? I still use Android phone and many other nasty things, because it's convenient and actually less harmful than making "normal people" around you too dismiss you as some "conspiracy freak". I hate it, but I use it. Not using Facebook alone is pretty troublesome in my social life.

And GNU project software (with a few important exceptions, of course) now feels more like a legacy, than a salvation. It has it's own statute of limitations, so to say.

So I don't see how complaining without actually making a difference helps someone.

⬐ quadrangle

RMS created the foundations for the existence of a fully-free OS, both technically and socially. He created the concept of copyleft and the GNU GPL, a fundamental feature of the free software movement. He founded GNU and FSF which remain important enough to be notable.

Even the Linux kernel started off with a weird non-free license until Torvalds decided the GPL was a good fit, changing his views on commercial-restrictions after hearing RMS talk.

RMS is a philosopher of sorts and is already seen historically as a fundamentally important figure in the philosophy and ethics of technology.

Sure, the ideas would be out there some way even if RMS wasn't around. Similarly, biological evolution was inherently an idea that was even being thought about by others at the time of Darwin, but we still acknowledge Darwin's major contributions even though we'd almost certainly at some point know everything we know now even if Darwin had never published anything.

⬐ setr

Probably because the process is at best dull and at worst, a massive PITA; either way it has little to no relevance to his actual work. If I had the chance, I'd avoid any kind of software installation/maintainence as well...

⬐ em3rgent0rdr

RMS ought to try installing one of the easier free OS's listed on https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html such as Trisquel (based on Ubuntu), which I think even he will find is easy to install. You don't need to know anything about partitioning if you don't care about it and don't have anything you need on your harddrive or anything else (just accept all the default options).

⬐ ovao

Doesn't it speak rather poorly for free software if installing it is a "massive PITA"?

⬐ setr

ALL software does this. If it works, I might as well have let someone else do the waiting.

If it doesn't, then It requires a few hours mindlessly running around until you find some stupid flag that was set. Which I might as well leave to somebody else to do.

That this is the state of software is a pretty damn good thing, that most of it has become busywork. But its still busywork and I don't why I'd ever want to do it more than a couple times (once I know the general process)

⬐ wutwutwutwut

I wouldn't consider it busywork. You don't have to sit and wait for the progress bar to move. Start the installation and go for lunch.

⬐ oblio

That's if the installer is designed well and all the questions are front-loaded. Unfortunately not all installers are... Heck, I think it took Microsoft until Windows Vista to do it for the OS.

⬐ __s

Non free software is too. Especially when you start dealing with licensing. Where I work we have people assigned to licensing & other people assigned to actual install. Of course the licensing goes through a third party provider... for which we're a third party provider to our clients

⬐ drakenot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umQL37AC_YM

A video where he talks about never installing his own OS.

⬐ taneq

"A beginner shouldn't be installing operating systems"?

If a moderately-intelligent, moderately-literate beginner can't install your operating system, then your operating system (or at least, its user interface) is crap.

Edit: Just to be clear, I'm responding to the quote, not calling Linux crap. I run a combination of Linux and Windows machines and VMs and they're both very straightforward to install, a complete beginner can just click next / next / next and still get it working.

⬐ boomboomsubban

No one installs Windows, and frankly it isn't a ton easier than installing free operating systems. It's only easier because you rarely run into driver issues, the computer was probably built to run Windows, and you're rarely trying to install it as a second operating system.

⬐ jrimbault

Last week I installed Windows on my laptop (which was, is, running linux).

Sidenote: I was really happy to successfully install it on the same disk as linux and not crap up my bootloader.

⬐ boomboomsubban

UEFI? It's nice that Windows automatically finds an ESP and tosses it's bootloader on there but I wish there was some user input on the issue. It does the same thing even if you give it a separate disk.

⬐ jrimbault

UEFI yes, before Windows would have just f* up grub, with UEFI and rEFInd I just had to go to the UEFI and tell it to use rEFInd rather than Windows.

⬐ yellowapple

"rarely run into driver issues"

My decade's worth of experiences having to transfer over wired (wired!) NIC drivers onto computers that are completely supported by the average Linux distro because Windows doesn't ship with them strongly suggests otherwise.

Windows has thankfully gotten better about this lately (e.g. in the Windows 10 era), but the continued lack of drivers in the default install is really annoying when said drivers are for devices that virtually every free operating system supports out of the box.

⬐ generic_user

There are hundreds of Linux distributions with install media for usb/dvd install. Installing a distro like Fedora is as easy as setting up windows and has about the same UI quality.

Distros like Slackware or Gentoo give you more complicated setups but they are designed for experienced users.

There are so many places online to get help with a Linux install now. If you stick with the main distros as most do for there first taste of Linux its really simple.

⬐ yellowapple

Makes sense to me. I'd assume that an org the size of the FSF would have pretty standard imaging procedures. If Stallman doesn't need or want to deviate from, say, the FSF-wide Trisquel image, then why should he?

⬐ wmf

Stallman reminds me of a king who has everything done by servants and knows only what his courtiers tell him. Being free of menial tasks like installing software leaves him more time to tackle serious issues. But it also insulates him from the problems that real people face.

⬐ quadrangle

He's intimately aware of the problems real people face and spends lots of his time discussing them. If he's a king with servants, he's one who knows the value he receives and thinks constantly about how to achieve a world in which everyone can easily get the results he has (e.g. not worry about installing their OS but still having fully-free/libre software)

⬐ totalZero

I imagine he is deeply knowledgeable.

My criticism of him is a separate, but similar, issue. I believe that he misses some of the social aspects of modern life, and that's why he views certain innocuous proprietary behaviors as totally damning. Based on his occasional emails to other members of the MIT community, he also seems to have a lack of empathy for people (not just organizations) who don't share his disdain for non-free things.

Not to mention that I find it difficult to see eye to eye with any man who would use a public urinal without shoes on.

⬐ teddyh

This phenomenon was described beautifully by Czechoslovakia President Václav Havel in 1991; he called it “power unto death”:

https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/vl/notes/havel.html

⬐ wizardforhire

Surely he takes care of his own parrots.

⬐ gboudrias

I find your comment unduly harsh and disrespectful, both toward Stallman and his crew. And I don't even like the guy.

⬐ mikegerwitz

It's not really something you can observe well from the outside, but in working with Richard on many things, I was surprised early on how much respect he gives to those he trusts, and how appreciative he is of help.

So "servants" is far from how he views volunteers. And after working closely with him for a few years within GNU, I don't feel at all like a servant---there is mutual respect, and we're not afraid to state our opinions or disagree with one-another. Much of the time he makes me feel like I work beside him, not below him. It's quite constructive.

And this is typical with others as well.

⬐ na85

This seems incompatible with what I read recently in an emacs discussion on HN, wherein they were unable to merge a popular package into emacs without Stallman's rubber stamp despite him being essentially uninvolved since 2008.

⬐ mikegerwitz

Are you referring to Magit? All code that is part of Emacs requires copyright assignment to the FSF; it's that simple. If Jonas Bernoulli can make that happen, then the issue is resolved.

Jonas' original response: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2017-07/msg00...

⬐ unityByFreedom

Stallman argues that free software enables users to control programs, whereas paid software is controlled by corporations. I see two problems with that.

(1) Isn't knowledge also power? In this context, developers have the knowledge. Users who aren't programmers don't control free software any more than they do paid software. Further, training more users to become developers requires money.

(2) Corporations don't exist unless they serve users in some way. There's an interdependency that I think Stallman ignores.

That said, free software is important, and a useful way to challenge the paid model.

⬐ etiam

Anyone have an idea what's the project raising funds mentioned at 5:32? The "new computer that will be manufactured specifically for free software".

⬐ 11thEarlOfMar

I suppose it's a philosophy. Are there enough who share Stallman's view to advance computing technology at a pace that can match what we see with commercial sector? For sure, I am amazed at the power and scope of open source software and it's a highly influential movement. But at some point in the food chain, software developers need to put food on the table and send their kids to school. How does that happen if all software is free?

⬐ zitterbewegung

RedHat , Sentry , gitlab elastic.co all take away some pain point while their source code for these projects are available. RedHat provides Enterprise support , Sentry , elastic and gitlab offer hosted services . Even GNU software when Stallman was originally distributing it on physical media had an associated cost of distribution with a profit margin .

⬐ zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC

> Are there enough who share Stallman's view to advance computing technology at a pace that can match what we see with commercial sector?

Stallman does not object to commercial software. He objects to proprietary software. You may charge for free software as much as you like.

⬐ newscracker

Leaving the "free" part aside for a moment, since this sometimes gets confusing for people and may go in different directions on licensing, why have more proprietary software companies started open sourcing their efforts in the last several years? Is it purely a marketing tactic alone? Isn't there a lot of benefit they derive from giving something to the community and also having the community participate and accelerate the development a lot more than they themselves could do it? Of course, not all projects are the same, and community interest and involvement would wary. But on average, if there is no advantage except for marketing, I doubt for-profit companies even wanting to do it (the process of open sourcing itself adds some overheads, plus the overheads of getting feedback, coordinating and maintaining it - it's almost like expanding a team of 10 people to a team of a hundred).

> But at some point in the food chain, software developers need to put food on the table and send their kids to school. How does that happen if all software is free?

Support, sponsorships by proprietary software makers, donations from people who want to make a better world. Not even the technical folks have the time or would want to get the source code for software and maintain it all the time. So some dedicated person would still be working on the maintenance and improvement of the software. Free software doesn't mean one cannot sell it either. It's just that others will also have the same freedom to sell it if they invest the time and money to compile/build/distribute it.

Before anyone asks how a lone developer would find the market, that problem exists even for developers of proprietary software (mobile app stores are great examples of the huge skew in the distribution of total earnings from app sales across developers/companies).

⬐ Ace17

> But at some point in the food chain, software developers need to put food on the table and send their kids to school. How does that happen if all software is free?

Please note "free" has nothing to do with price, but with end-user freedom (to use/study/modify/share).

(example answer to your question: custom/internal software).

⬐ 11thEarlOfMar

I could use a little help. Are 'Free' in the sense that Stallman means and 'Open Source' synonymous?

Indeed there are many engineers who earn a living by maintaining an open source code base. To their employer, the software is free to modify and customize and free from licensing, but there is still a cost (the developer's salary, etc.) to maintain it, so not free in the sense of cost.

Others develop and distribute software and rely on voluntary payment. But if there were no volunteers, would they still be able to produce and maintain that code? Some would, purely as a hobby, labor of love or mission. They'd still need a day job where they get paid for writing code...

⬐ Ace17

The word "free" has shown to be very confusing, especially to people wanting to discuss funding or business model. Richard Stallman tried to attenuate the confusion with the following slogan:

"Think 'free' as in 'free speech', not 'free beer'."

When we're talking about software, "Open Source" and "Free Software" are mostly synonymous. However:

The Free Software movement concerns itself with preventing software users to be at the mercy of software vendors/providers (on things where it's technically not needed). This requires, amongst other things, (unobfuscated) source code access.

The Open Source movement has different goals, mostly non-ethics oriented, about a collaborative model of development.

It happens that these different goals meet similar requirements, and that both movements were started by hackers initially wanting source code access.

⬐ lloydde

It actually does have to do with price. All free software is one user away from the possibility (likelihood) it is free as in beer.

The parent comment is correct that free software has put magnitudes less food on kids bellies.

⬐ tho9Ohx1eo

> The parent comment is correct that free software has put magnitudes less food on kids bellies.

At the same time it empowered those who could not afford to pay or could not pay (legal/geo-restrictions, DRM etc).

⬐ lloydde

Absolutely! Additionally, if we are able to create more cases where this inherently collaborative delivery leads to better software then it would unlock real economic growth. Unfortunately, these are ultimately hard people problems.

⬐ ebcode

>>The parent comment is correct that free software has put magnitudes less food on kids bellies.

uh... citation needed?

⬐ lloydde

Citation needed that software industries are dominated by proprietary offerings? It's very hard to measure when there are so few public open source companies.

How many open source companies are there? By open source company I mean companies whose each software product is open source. How many are public companies? Maybe, even just compare those to companies who's products are "open core", which seems to include most (all?) of the open source SaaS offerings.

Or look just at the largest public software companies and estimate their commoditization through open source and community participation through open source.

⬐ icebraining

All free software is one user away from the possibility (likelihood) it is free as in beer.

And yet, my and others' salaries have been paid for over six years writing free software without it ever being published publicly by its users, despite being GPL licensed.

⬐ lloydde

That's a fantastic! I don't mean to insult, but the likelihood of the software being shared freely by a user increases with success. Your situation is an exception. And likely contributing factors are the specific field and sophisticated, like minded customers.

⬐ icebraining

Thanks. But actually, no, we write software for many fields and most of our customers are certainly not sophisticated, nor do they care about our philosophy (to most of them, open source means roughly "not as good but cheaper").

It's true that our customer base is not very large, though.

⬐ shp0ngle

YouTube is proprietary and not a free software.

⬐ snakeanus

If you have mpv with youtube-dl installed then you can watch the video without using anything non-free.

⬐ nannal

Kind of funny you're all in here posting youtube links, I didn't know they were GNU friendly and I can only imagine how RMS feels given his zealotry.

⬐ cyphar

You can use youtube-dl[1] to download videos from YouTube (and transcode them to free formats) without runnning their proprietary JavaScript. There's even a free software Android project[2] that lets you stream videos without running their proprietary JavaScript -- and in my opinion it's much better than the proprietary YouTube app.

RMS's concern with YouTube is that they use proprietary JavaScript and they use patented media formats. However, RMS has always made it clear that if you have the ability "at hand" to rip DVDs then purchasing a DVD is not unethical. Both of the pieces of software I mentioned allow you to avoid running proprietary software.

His other concern is that RMS wants people to publish things he appears in in a way that is much easier to access with only free software. The Internet Archive and CCC provide video hosting that is completely free software, with non-patented formats like VP9, and is easy to use. The idea is to make those forms of publishing more widely known about.

[1]: https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl [2]: https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe

⬐ mikojan

You can also just pass the url as an argument to mplayer or one of it's derivatives (all of which use youtube-dl under the hood, I believe). Not even concerned with freedom here. It's just a better user experience when the video is longer, IMO.

⬐ trentgreene

Great video!

However, I would like to point out that the name "Richard Stallman" is incorrect. Who you're referring to here should actually be called "GNU/Richard Stallman"

⬐ nvr219

This is still my favorite Stallman video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ

⬐ generic_user

Its the two girls one cup for geeks.

Stallman is as they say, a very special guy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S76pHIYx3ik

⬐ bamboozled

What does this have to do with what he is talking about in the linked video? Does it make him a bad guy or ruin his credibility or something?

⬐ generic_user

Occasionally people in the FLOSS community have been known to crack jokes and 'have fun'. Even tho most of the jokes are not very funny and the fun that is had is rather autistic by most peoples standards I see no reason why we should stop.

Many of us have been listening to Stallman for close to 20 years and have been part of free software movement for that long. Having a good chuckle at Comrade Stallman expense is rite of passage in a way.

⬐ bamboozled

I'm aware of that, but this is just bullying the guy, how would you like it if that was a video of you?

⬐ generic_user

Richard S has a great appreciation of self deprecating humor. Which is why he does silly things.

Being able to criticize each other and crack jokes about each other is essential to open source and it helps to build community. We can criticize and crack jokes at each others expense because we learn to trust each other. That's how you build real community.

When people are two afraid to criticize each other or crack jokes about each other then you really can not have a healthy community where people have a true respect and admiration for one another. And you certainly can not build a community that has to have critique about code quality, architecture and so forth to sustain itself.

⬐ taejavu

I would blame myself for that time I pulled something off my foot and ate it in front of a room of people and a camera.

⬐ gonzo

> Many of us have been listening to Stallman for close to 20 years

Some of us for over 30. rms enjoys jokes.

⬐ generic_user

Its a mystery to me how some people don't understand that when Richard S puts a 5 inch disk platter on his head and gives a St. IGNUcius Sermon he wants you to laugh along because it a Joke.

Hes smart enough and confident enough to make himself the butt of the joke so we can all laugh along and have good time. Good grief.

Its a bit off topic sure but down votes, really? I suppose that's why I left the soul crushing corporate cathedral hell for a life in the bazaar in the first place. Can't say I miss the culture one bit.

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⬐ trestletech

I feel like we're not far off from a digital version of the Amish. "Technology was perfected by the FSF in 2003; everything developed since is evil."

⬐ amelius

Everything developed by big companies that deals with our data on their premises is evil.

We should simply not allow that, and let big companies just develop the hardware.

⬐ possiblydave

I mean, given the recent and continuing rash of hardware backdoors, wouldn't that just make your premises their premises?

⬐ teekert

""We" should not allow that"... Yeah that sounds like freedom to me.

You are free to deal with these companies or not. Whether you agree with these companies and their ways is irrelevant. This is same as not agreeing with another persons' religion, you are free do choose a way to lead your life, don't try to force your way upon others. Others happily share their data with Google and reap the benefits of a very helpful Google Home assistant.

Direct your efforts towards educating these people about the potential downsides, yes, but don't try to use law or other forms of powers to change their ways. That is not freedom.

⬐ icebraining

Worrying about free software advocates using the law against others is hilarious. It's like worrying about Walmart cashiers demanding to make more money than software developers.

⬐ the_cyber_pass

I see someone hasn't had GPL conflicts in their code base before. There is a reason companies specifically look for them and it's because the FSF and it's communities will make your life hell.

⬐ icebraining

Try using proprietary libraries in your software without complying with their licenses and you'll see what having your life made hell means. GPL license holders barely ever sued anyone, and when they do (like FSF v Cisco), it's usually after years of trying to get them to comply. That they (rightly) complain about your practices is not using the law.

⬐ teekert

It's not and I am glad it isn't. The GPL is sometimes enforced and rightly so, code authors choose this license and donated their time and skill under this condition (the GPL) of their choosing. Re-licensing it or ignoring the licenses is a crime, you lied that you would uphold the license when you started using the software.

Don't get me wrong, I love the GPL, I love free software! Choosing a license though, GPL or proprietary, is entirely up to the author of a piece of code though. Forcing open licenses upon authors is detrimental to freedom in general.

Worrying or not worrying about it has nothing to do with the ethics of breaking the GPL (or any license).

⬐ amelius

> ""We" should not allow that"... Yeah that sounds like freedom to me.

Absolute freedom does not exist. Every kind of freedom requires sacrifices.

⬐ peterwwillis

Just operating systems, and it was 30 years earlier by AT&T. Our user interfaces have gotten progressively worse, though, along with almost all user apps.

⬐ quadrangle

I think you're completely missing the point. RMS and FSF have never claimed to even create an adequate free-software ecosystem, let alone perfect. They celebrate tons of free software progress since then and maintain a high-priority list for things that are yet to do: https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/

Many people confuse this, but being critical of ethical problems with the way technology is built in practice need not have anything to do with being anti-technology in general.

⬐ missbit

Geez. I just realized a problem here.

If he doesn't want to use any commercial software. This includes IntelliJ or other IDEs? Good luck writing software! Then again, the time he saves from not dealing with iOS provisioning might give him a couple extra years to write other software.

Man that interviewer is dumb. Says he is surprised he didn't vote Trump? Eh?

⬐ number6

Use emacs?

⬐ lsh

Hats off to the interviewer, I thought he did a good job of curbing Stallman and keeping him on topic. He does have this fantastic meandering style that would undermine his agenda if his audience has a short attention span. Like so many of us these days.

I first read about RMS in 1999 in an Australian PC Authority magazine, it also featured an interview with Linux Torvalds. The distinction between the two personalities was felt keenly at the time as well. RMS really hasn't changed in those 18 years.

⬐ _-david-_

I thought Stallman didn't like his videos on Youtube?

⬐ gravypod

From what I understand youtube allows viewing without the use of non-free software (youtube-dl) and allows you to get copies in free codecs.

⬐ ulisesrmzroche

The content belongs to Pakman. Its a progressive political show. I'm not sure what the backstory is, I don't think it was even announced. People are digging it though.

⬐ _-david-_

I know it doesn't belong to Stallman. I thought I remembered reading before that Stallman doesn't like videos with him in them on Youtube due to some kind of patents on the codecs or something like that.

This is the only source I could find though. Not sure if its accurate: http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2007/02/08/no_more_stallm...