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posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday December 26 2017, @07:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the interesting-viewpoints dept.

Joseph Graham has written a very short blog post about software freedom and the direction we might take to achieve it.

The free software movement, founded in the 80s by Richard Stallman and supported by the Free Software Foundations 1, 2, 3, 4, preaches that we need software that gives us access to the code and the copyright permissions to study, modify and redistribute. While I feel this is entirely true, I think it's not the best way to explain Free Software to people.

I think the problem we have is better explained more like this:

"Computer technology is complicated and new. Education about computers is extremely poor among all age groups. Technology companies have taken advantage of this lack of education to brainwash people into accepting absurd abuses of their rights."

Source : The Free Software movement is Barking up the wrong tree


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Pino P on Tuesday December 26 2017, @10:37PM (2 children)

    by Pino P (4721) on Tuesday December 26 2017, @10:37PM (#614473) Journal

    "Would you buy a house without its blueprints?"
    "Of course not."
    "Then why do you buy an app without its source code?"

    "Imagine if there were only one plumber or electrician legally allowed to work on your house. Now imagine that plumber or electrician going out of business. Now what do you do?"

    Starting Score:    1  point
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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 27 2017, @03:24AM

    by Thexalon (636) on Wednesday December 27 2017, @03:24AM (#614585)

    "Computer programs without the code is like a car where you aren't allowed to lift the hood for any reason, and could be sued if you tried to tinker with anything. Even if the problem was that your car was busted and you needed to fix it."

    An interesting point is that one population that understands this problem perfectly well are farmers, because John Deere has been using code copyrights to make it illegal for farmers to repair their own tractors.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
  • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Wednesday December 27 2017, @03:00PM

    by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 27 2017, @03:00PM (#614748)

    > "Would you buy a house without its blueprints?"
    > "Of course not."

    Umm, what?

    I have no blueprints for my current house, in fact it was built before blueprints were even invented (I think, it's close). In fact I have never been offered plans or blueprints for _any_ house I have looked at buying, even a new-build. It wouldn't help anyway, in most houses the stuff you want to know like where exactly the plumbing and wiring is, bears no relation to any plan, you just have to trace it.

    > "Imagine if there were only one plumber or electrician legally allowed to work on your house. Now imagine that plumber or electrician going out of business. Now what do you do?"

    Knock the house down and build another one, not repeating the same mistake? If the plumbing and electrics _cannot_ be fixed shouldn't take long for the house to become uninhabitable and you should be able to get an insurance claim out of that. If not, a quick flood or fire should make it certain - and what happens with can't-be-fixed plumbing and electrics?, yep, floods & fires.

    In reality, source availability is orthogonal to proprietary lockdown and software freedom - I've worked with proprietary software that was source available and proprietary software that had source in escrow (that's your insurance against supplier going out of business, but it costs, of course).

    Your second analogy is closer, but it's also the kind of s**t that _does_ happen to houses in real life:
        What if no one makes parts for your boiler any more, or your fridge, or cooker (and it's built into the kitchen)?
        What if your gas pipes no longer meet current standards?
        What if your phone-home IOT supplier (even if it uses free software - unless it's something like Affero GPL) suddenly switches off it's servers/service (think Revolv)?