posted by
cmn32480
on Thursday September 14 2017, @04:01PM
from the you-can't-use-logic-to-justify-things dept.
from the you-can't-use-logic-to-justify-things dept.
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is now running a campaign to require that publicly financed software developed for the public sector be made publicly available under a Free and Open Source Software licence. The reason being that if it is public money, the code should be public as well. General benefits include overall tax savings, increased collaboration, public service, and fostering innovation. Money is currently being wasted on code that cannot be modified or even studied, let alone redistributed. Code paid for by the people should be available to the people!
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FSF Campaign : Public Money Should Mean Public Code
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(1)
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday September 14 2017, @04:11PM
No
No no
No no no no no
Yes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRlqmTKyQx0 [youtube.com]
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Insightful) by crafoo on Thursday September 14 2017, @04:23PM (10 children)
It's odd that this wasn't the default position. It seems obvious. It's indicative of the balance of power of all decisions I guess.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @06:12PM (9 children)
It isn't odd at all. "Public money" refers to nation-level funds, usually, but releasing something "to the public" releases it to the entire world. If you develop 10 public projects and your enemy develops 1 publicly funded but private project, your enemy has the result of 11 projects with much less resources spent. That's a good way to end up invaded and have your citizens be far worse off.
I'm not against the idea, I just don't think it's really practical with humans being what they are.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by lentilla on Thursday September 14 2017, @06:53PM (2 children)
Can't argue with your statement that "public" means nation-level; at least without resorting to sophistry which would invite a pointless and circular debate. So instead, let me suggest a different way of looking at the situation:
Why don't we strive to do things for the betterment of all humanity, and leave the "enemies" part for the unrepentantly bellicose?
Frankly, this artificial balkanisation along the lines of nation-states is immature - particularly when we are dealing with a good that is essentially free to reproduce. (Although I won't argue either with your insight that humanity often falls short of a gold standard.)
Let's leave the squabbling over resources to the stuff that can't be infinitely divided - food, land, water, etc - and share the stuff that can be given away, and given away, and given away - all without diminishing what we ourselves hold. Hopefully tomorrow I will (yet again) be the beneficiary of something someone else has invented.
Software freedom is a really good place to fight, and right now is the right time in history. Knowledge has always been shared to a large degree - but what makes software so particularly unique is the ease with which it can be disseminated - it doesn't even need face-to-face instruction or books. All that is required is the legal facility to copy - or rather making sure sharing doesn't get made illegal through the poisonous combination of outmoded thinking, lack of imagination, small-mindedness and just plain greed.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday September 14 2017, @10:50PM (1 child)
If you exclude military software (which the premise in TFA does) you are left with very little software that is really usable outside of the targeted sector it was designed for. Most public funded software is not designed for the "public sector" (however vaguely you want to define that.
So what are we discussing here? Software for reporting taxes? Software for registering for Obama Care?
Where do I go to get some? What would I find when I got there?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Thursday September 14 2017, @11:43PM
That's not particularly difficult to answer. For starters, public servants should be using an entirely free software stack. So to get the ball rolling: goodbye Microsoft, goodbye Adobe.
You're not wrong insofar there is no trove of free software waiting at the bottom of the proverbial rainbow to solve all your government-interaction needs - but that may have more to do with the fact that we have been conned into paying licence fees rather than sponsoring software development. (Honourable mention in passing: open standards, too.)
The real effort for business (including government) is in the integration - not usually the software itself. The individual pieces may as well be free to facilitate reuse where possible. There is still a great deal of work to ensuring all the pieces fit together and integrate with existing systems which will keep programmers and administrators busy for years to come. Just the profits won't be floating ever-larger yachts belonging to software-company CEO-types. Those profits instead will pay dividends in perpetuity in the form of better software and reduced expenditure on now-unneeded licence fees.
Simply getting rid of Windows, Office and subscription-based services for everyday office work would be a great start.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Thursday September 14 2017, @07:49PM (1 child)
Good point. I didn't even consider the implication to national security and the well-being of the citizens in a hostile global environment.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday September 14 2017, @10:51PM
Military software was already ruled out.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Thursday September 14 2017, @08:09PM
The reverse is true as well. All public projects elsewhere are ours to use.
That is the Public Domain, and it is available to everybody. I wouldn't worry so much about some code reuse in another country. Quite frankly, all the problematic code is going to be within AI, and *nobody* can read or write that code. Only the AIs can read and write it, and all we can do is use it and trust the AI isn't stupid. The truly scary information is old information by now. The making of nuclear weapons, dirty bombs, and even a great deal of biowarfare exists in the Public Domain. I can remember arguing here about whether or not the results of biowarfare research should be published at all, lest it enable bad actors to use it.
It's irrelevant anyways. All trust is gone, have been murdered by the avarice of industry and the paranoid delusions of control in the intelligence communities. The only code that can be trusted in the future by the people is code that was produced for them specifically, through their own financial contributions, and remains completely open and readable.
I'm operating on code that is free right now, and only a few binaries/blob bullshit is keeping me from true unfettered freedom. I have zero intentions of using hardware and software that isn't. Alexa/Siri/Cortana can suck my dick, and I don't participate in the Walled Garden platforms like Amazon/Apple. I would love a Cortana of my own, but that is highly unlikely since it requires the vast resources of the "cloud" to operate. The moment I can have neural hardware, or whatever runs that code, capable of a personal Cortana that actually answers to me alone, and zealously protects my information, I will use it.
Also regardless of the national security implications, I'm not giving some executive fuckface a lot of money he doesn't deserve, and investors a ton of money they don't deserve, out of my taxes. Totally sick of that corrupt fucking shit ruining science, and local governments thinking they can "own" the train schedules. If it is public money, then it goes to the Public Domain. Period. End of Discussion. The executives can go die in a fire with their proprietary code wishes, and those fascist fucks in government can keep trying to block my scraping attempts all they want. That information is free, and paid for by the public, which directly means that I can use it.
With human beings being what they are, Public Domain code and projects are needed to fight back against the more avaricious sociopathic pieces of shit that infest humanity now.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by meustrus on Thursday September 14 2017, @08:29PM (1 child)
Not necessarily. If we're talking about weapon-targeting software, then you don't want your enemies to get a hold of it. But if we're talking agricultural tracking software, your "enemies" getting access to it might actually prevent them from starting a war with you.
The reason why is simple: wars don't get started arbitrarily. Wars are most often fought for access to resources. So any time you increase access to resources for other nation-states, those nation-states become less likely to attack you to steal your resources.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by pdfernhout on Friday September 15 2017, @01:38AM
Exactly. I made a similar point here about the need for open source intelligence tools:
http://web.archive.org/web/20160508005451/http://pcast.ideascale.com/a/dtd/-The-need-for-FOSS-intelligence-tools-for-sensemaking-etc.-/76207-8319 [archive.org]
"This suggestion is about how civilians could benefit by have access to the sorts of "sensemaking" tools the intelligence community (as well as corporations) aspire to have, in order to design more joyful, secure, and healthy civilian communities (including through creating a more sustainable and resilient open manufacturing infrastructure for such communities). It outlines (including at a linked elaboration) why the intelligence community should consider funding the creation of such free and open source software (FOSS) "dual use" intelligence applications as a way to reduce global tensions through increased local prosperity, health, and with intrinsic mutual security. ...
As with that notion of "mutual security", the US intelligence community needs to look beyond seeing an intelligence tool as just something proprietary that gives a "friendly" analyst some advantage over an "unfriendly" analyst. Instead, the intelligence community could begin to see the potential for a free and open source intelligence tool as a way to promote "friendship" across the planet by dispelling some of the gloom of "want and ignorance" (see the scene in "A Christmas Carol" with Scrooge and a Christmas Spirit) that we still have all too much of around the planet. So, beyond supporting legitimate US intelligence needs (useful with their own closed sources of data), supporting a free and open source intelligence tool (and related open datasets) could become a strategic part of US (or other nation's) "diplomacy" and constructive outreach."
Another essay I wrote related to the broader topic of public funding:
http://pdfernhout.net/on-funding-digital-public-works.html [pdfernhout.net]
See also Alfie Kohn's book "No Contest" The Case Against Competition" for a broader exploration of the benefits of cooperation.
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @09:58PM
So, to avoid the enemy residing in other nations you become slave of the enemy residing in yours.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Thursday September 14 2017, @04:25PM (8 children)
Can we apply the same to hardware?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @05:05PM (7 children)
To which "publicly financed hardware developed for the public sector" are you referring?
(Score: 5, Funny) by bob_super on Thursday September 14 2017, @05:11PM (5 children)
Nuclear warheads.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @05:37PM
While I [soylentnews.org] concur with your assessment, I wonder if the thread author does. How about it, fustakrakich?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday September 14 2017, @05:52PM (3 children)
To answer both of you (That silly AC will just have to read it here), I would prefer an A-10 Thunderbolt. You can use it more than once, and who doesn't want a 30mm Gatling gun? I wonder if there's a two seat version. For carrying the beer and steaks, there's the UH-1 Iroquois.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @06:48PM (2 children)
To that end, what would you do about 18 USC 922 [cornell.edu] of US federal law which has some pretty nasty punishments in store for unimportant people such as yourself taking possession of what is both a machinegun and a destructive device in the form of the GAU-8/A autocannon, without even considering that its typical ammunition consists largely of depleted uranium rounds?
(Score: 3, Touché) by bob_super on Thursday September 14 2017, @07:53PM (1 child)
Depleted Uranium is perfectly safe. That's why we don't mind dispensing it in vast quantities all around the planet, and not cleaning up afterwards.
Any oncologist claiming otherwise is clearly an anti-American Terrorist.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Thursday September 14 2017, @08:37PM
If an oncologist does care about depleted uranium, it just means that it wasn't depleted enough before use. Toxicologists, on the other hand, might have a problem with it.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1) by In hydraulis on Friday September 15 2017, @04:50AM
How about anything developed by Australia's CSIRO [csiro.au]?
Our top 10 inventions [csiro.au]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 14 2017, @04:29PM (6 children)
What we have today, runs effectively like this:
"We make the laws, and we license businesses to operate for the benefit of society and the country, as well as for the benefit of government. But, we will also create laws that allow some select few businesses to butt-rape the citizenry for profit."
I know it's contrary to capitalistic dogma, but, corporations exist to benefit mankind. Mankind doesn't exist to benefit corporations. When do we pull our collective head out of our ass, and put business in it's proper place?
Oh, wait, stupid question. Military industrial complex and all - few senators or congress critters are unwilling to prostitute themselves to big business. Especially if the act of prostitution brings even more business to the congress critter's home district.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by requerdanos on Thursday September 14 2017, @04:42PM (3 children)
The fact that a contingent of our supporters habitually does things like equate injustice in the form of proprietary software with injustice in the form of rape is one of the reasons that our issues are not taken seriously by many.
I assure the reader and the world at large that even though these people agree with our views, we do not agree with theirs.
Injustice delivered by software that subjugates others in the realm of data processing is bad because it is bad in and of itself, not because it resembles unspeakable crimes against the physical and emotional being of others (it doesn't).
All the two things have in common is that on the good-bad spectrum, they are on the "Bad" end.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @04:48PM
Your right of course, it should be called by it's correct name FASCISM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 14 2017, @05:22PM (1 child)
"unspeakable crimes against the physical and emotional being of others"
Yes, that. Have you forgotten the dude who committed suicide, because the law enabled federal law enforcement to bully him into doing so? Do you have the remotest concept how many man-years people have wasted trying to clean up the messes that software has made of their computers? Worse is when the law punishes a person for troubleshooting, and solving a problem, then having the audacity to PUBLISH his findings.
How many well-meaning hobbyists have uncovered a flaw in some corporate web site, only to be threatened with prison when they notify that corporation? And, ten times more if it happens to be a financial institution!
Have you ever really given serious thought to the stratified society in Europe, when royalty was still royal? THAT is the sort of stratified society that we have to look forward to, if corporations have their way. With all the surveilliance, corrupt laws, coyright and patent nonsense going on today, ordinary citizens are damned if they do, damned if they don't and damned even when they have no idea what is going on.
Just where do YOU think society is going? Believe me, there is a lot of physical and emotional injustice going on right now, and it will only get worse.
The fact that you don't see, and/or ignore all of that injustice, doesn't mean it's not real.
A nice freindly butt-rape might be preferable to where society is headed. Remember stoppoliceware.org ? The citizenry stopped the installation of surveillance software on home computers that one time. Since then, the government and corporations have been waging a mostly silent war to keep us all under surveillance, 24/7. And, they keep getting new tools to do it with. When stoppoliceware.org was active, there were no "drones" to worry about. Cell phones weren't ubiquitous then, and government interception of phone calles wasn't even thought of.
It gets worse, and worse - and the current administration is right on board with all of it. The previous administration was as well. AND the previous one to that.
Butt-rape. What's happening to net neutrality, right now? The Great Orange Leader has appointed a lackey who is promising the telcos that he is trashing net neutrality. What is that going to cost you in terms of cash, in terms of frustration, and in terms of legalities? You can have unlimited data, at unlimited speed, but ONLY if that data is pre-approved by some board of directors.
Doesn't all of that strike you as Orwellian?
I used the term butt-rape, and I think that I'll stick with the term. BTW, there are no "unspeakable crimes".
(Score: 4, Informative) by edIII on Thursday September 14 2017, @08:17PM
I agree with you. Rape is an appropriate term to describe what is happening to us. Yes, it strongly evokes emotions and fears, but it is ACCURATE. All of the shit you mention is done to us against our will, takes away our dignity, in some cases takes away our autonomy, and by sociopathic fuckers that could not give less of shit about the consequences of their actions.
Rape shouldn't be thrown around lightly, or trivialized. In my opinion, you did neither. What corporations, government, and the 1% are doing to us and the planet can very easily be described as rape, and additionally, pillage.
We often disagree on most social issues, but I'm right with you on this one.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Thursday September 14 2017, @06:36PM (1 child)
When do we pull our collective head out of our ass, and put business in it's proper place?
When the benefits dry up, when they cancel our favorite TV show, when we realize that out laundry detergent really doesn't give us *whiter whites and brighter colors*
And you have it kinda backwards. Under Soviet Capitalism, government serves business. If it fails to do so, business will finance the opposition candidate, color revolution, arab spring, US independence from Great Britain, and various other forms of mayhem.
It is said that the people are revolting.
You said it! They stink on ice!
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @07:56PM
> when we realize that out laundry detergent really doesn't give us *whiter whites
I think I found the way to make KKK and neonazis useful :D
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @04:41PM (1 child)
How about all software used in the public sector or used to collect information on people(private company or pubic institution) be open source, how about all algorithms used to determine credit worthiness, housing eligibility or any of the other critical things all of this data is supposed to make easier and more fair be open source? that MIGHT be a good BEGINNING
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @05:37PM
"Open source" is not enough; it must be Free Software, which is more specific.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by nobu_the_bard on Thursday September 14 2017, @05:06PM (2 children)
Could they give some examples of where this would be beneficial besides the pretty video? Like an actual article maybe?
It IS pretty complicated. That's a really big suggestion. Software is hugely varied. Doesn't mean its a bad idea; I just want to know more about the proposal before I sign anything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @07:09PM
god forbid the people that had their money stolen to pay for gov software actually get the source code! won't someone think of the slave children?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @08:17PM
Plasma physics simulations for Xray transfer in thermonuclear warhead interstage material.
Kidding.
(Score: -1, Disagree) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday September 14 2017, @07:52PM (6 children)
It's a beautiful idea. On paper.
In practice, there are many reasons why we stick with proprietary software. One of the more altruistic ones is that requiring periodic updates to a paid company keeps the economy moving. Software which never requires updating doesn't keep developers fed anymore. (Enough of them, macroeconomically.) You might not like letting Microsoft and Google become even more large. I don't. But they move a large chunk of the economy.
And yep, I'd rather trust the air traffic control system to a company who has been fully paid for what they develop and you can hold that company responsible. If they are not so help, that's a political failure and not a contractual one. Much nicer than splashing a plane because FluffyBunny_22 didn't consider their code.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @08:23PM
Hahaha... bwaaahaahaa... oh, good one.... oh wait, you were serious?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Thursday September 14 2017, @08:29PM (2 children)
Sorry, but bullshit. By moving large parts of the economy, you mean slave wages and the executives being vastly, vastly, vastly, overpaid for their anti-worker contributions. If we all had living wages and tremendously less one-sided duress when evaluating work offers, I might agree with you. We don't. So I couldn't give a fuck about whether or not those executives continue to get money. Especially with Citizens United and you basically handing them all of the extra votes. We already know how these people vote, which is always against the interests of small business and the American worker.
What you want to accomplish though, can be quite easily accomplished by a foundation with a board of directors comprised of the truly skilled and intelligent engineers and coders among us. One of the many reasons why SystemD sucks so much ass (and other code bases to lesser extent), is the lack of proper peer review. I no longer believe in that myth; Peer review will save us. There is public code that has been around for 20 years and vulnerabilities were found. When we actually looked, nobody was performing the activities thought to lead towards secure, free, and excellent code.
That is how you get your economic benefits. PAYING coders to contribute to the Public Domain. It's not unheard of either. We just had an article where some very valuable code was almost patented by Google, even though a gentlemen in Norway produced it specifically for the Public Domain. Coders need organization to protect themselves, and to get paid. I would rather see a large foundation, not corrupt as fuck like Redhat, create the code and help the economy by paying coders. Additionally, I see no reason why it cannot be publicly funded. My county *should*, and *could*, pay a few million to such an org to help keep the software high quality and updated.
That, and Microsoft produces shit. Windows 7 was the best thing they ever made, and now they moved on to cloud bullshit and shoving everything into Azure. I sure as fuck wouldn't want my tax dollars paying for shitty abhorrent code. Fuck, I would pay Apple before Microsoft.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday September 15 2017, @07:42PM (1 child)
No, by moving large parts of the economy I mean that getting you to pay for an annual subscription to Office 365 instead of downloading LibreOffice 5 and using it for ten years has a net economic benefit to the country.
I mean that Forbes (where I won't go but I'll quote headlines from Google) stated that Apple is worth about .5% GDP. I mean that IBM is larger economically than the country of Slovakia and Apple is larger than Bangladesh. ( https://makewealthhistory.org/2014/02/03/the-corporations-bigger-than-nations/ [makewealthhistory.org] )
The payment of any single person or even group of people DOESN'T MEAN A DAMN when it comes to comparing it with numbers like those.
Do I like that? Hell, no. I'd much rather see a worker-driven economy similar to what you describe. The world ain't been that way for quite some time, though. The reality is thus: The corporations drive the economy.
And all too often these magical little, "Oh, if people would only dump the corporate overlords the world would be free and beautiful," is past charmingly naive into dangerously idealistic. And unless you're prepared to pick up a gun and start shooting people who disagree with you, the system we have won't change. It's sad that it makes the trains run on time, but it does. Literally.
I agree with you about Microsoft. But in the end, it doesn't matter one whit if you're dealing with MS, or Apple, or HP, or IBM from a macroeconomic perspective. And from the macroeconomic perspective, having the congloms in the driver's seat is a far preferable alternative than most band-aid solutions I see proposed.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Friday September 15 2017, @09:00PM
Getting there. I'm not the only one saying it. I didn't even bring it up to this other person I speak with, and they came up with the idea of shooting the entirety of the 1% to get real change in America. Heck, that's reality. We now have Superman in the comics defending the homes and lives of the 1%. A fucking comic book now is trying to push back against it.
From the human perspective, killing the heads and investors of the congloms is preferably to letting them continue to kill the planet, and waging war on the poor.
Yeah. Pretty close. If civil war broke out tomorrow, I already know I'm not choosing other disillusioned pissed off workers to shoot. I'm choosing the board of directors of the local "health plan" that live like kings off what is supposed to be our medical care. I'm choosing the head of PG&E for his culpability in all the lives lost in the natural gas explosion, while he got a million dollar pay raise that year. I will choose the people truly responsible for the hell on Earth that we live now.
If civil war did break out, I would look into stealing a ton of money and paying the Yakuza to assassinate the 1% that escapes. Much better than finding some poor person I disagree with and proceeding to killing each other while the 1% survive like the hell bound cockroaches they are.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @08:36PM (1 child)
Nonsense. Having the government dependent upon large corporations to do their computing is a complete disaster and sets a bad example for everyone else that it is okay to be dependent on your abusers.
In what world is it true that Free Software never requires updating? Simply pay developers to modify the software as necessary.
Freedom is more important than money, even if what you're saying is true.
I'm not sure how anyone can argue it's a good thing for the government to be dependent upon large corporations and essentially use black boxes to do all of its computing; that is just foolish.
(Score: 1) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday September 15 2017, @07:57PM
Or it allows for economic development outside of the realm of government. I'd rather not have the entirety of the economy shifting on having the Guv'mint paid programmers doing their jobs.
I'm sorry. *Who* pays *which* programmers *what* money *how and when*? To replace the existing system requires something on the scale of the existing system.
And where I was going with that is that you can have a Word Processor (to pull one example out of the hat) that is essentially complete and really needs no further updating. It can be very primitive (I think of what we were using 35-40 years ago being perfectly adequate for over 99% of current tasks.) And I'm saying that software like that is entirely possible: Get something done, work the bugs out, and let people use it from then on. Except that does not move the economy at all. Or, at least not enough to keep things going.
Freedom is important. I'm not saying it isn't. But first tell me how I cook and eat a Freedom. I'm afraid if you force a linear choice between "give me liberty or give me death," you'll find a lot of people will trade their freedom for a Big Mac. And food ranks ahead of freedom in terms of primal needs, or rather, it's lower on Maslow's hierarchy if you believe in that.
If computing wasn't the coin of the realm it wouldn't matter. If the basis of our economy would be mining instead of service then I'd say be careful of saying one should metal detect instead of dealing with Asarco and Reynolds holding.
But if the black boxes put out the same answer as transparent box, but also the black box causes more taxes to be paid and secondary investments to happen from the profits.... yeah, I'm not scared of letting them have the black boxes.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @08:47PM
The FSFE and FSF are separate and distinct organizations, even if FSFE is modeled on the FSF. They cooperate as noted here https://fsfe.org/about/fsfnetwork.html [fsfe.org]
I only really mention this as I was surprised to see the headline in the queue, as I had not seen anything about it despite being subscribed to the FSF's various RSS feeds. Also, Stallman loves to be pedantic, so best be correct.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by arcz on Thursday September 14 2017, @09:17PM
The only license that would be appropriate for publicly funded software is public domain. Any other license, including GPL, BSD, etc. is just catering to special interests. The injustice of proprietary software being publically funded does not make open source somehow better than proprietary software. Either the software is owned by the public, or it is not. There's no moral benefit to open source licensing over commercial licensing.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Friday September 15 2017, @01:46AM
Many businesses make their obscene profits on "monetizing" public knowledge. It's an euphemism for locking up and monopolizing the research produced by publicly funded universities, and other public knowledge.
Be nice if there was a shift in expectations so that no business would dare lock up public knowledge. There used to be doubt that Freedom of Speech was a good idea. Now censorship still exists but it has to be done on the sly, or in very limited circumstances, because they know if they're too blatant about it, they'll face a backlash. So, progress.
We're a long way from Freedom of Public Software, and widespread acceptance that it's a good idea. For instance, companies are still able to fuddle people with ownership propaganda, and whine about piracy costing them trillions in revenue. I have the impression such complaints are gradually losing their impact, as the younger generations comes to understand more and more how full of it they are.
Good also if people were more sophisticated about spotting propaganda and calling it out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @08:57PM
This is an incredibly naive attitude.
Bespoke software intended for internal use only is often too tightly integrated into one environment to be of any use elsewhere.
I was once a founding member of a startup where I wrote a lot of code. The vast majority of the code would be utterly useless outside of the company. However there were some tools which were of potential interest to outside users, and when the company went out of business, I documented the tools and released the source code publicly. Since then I often wonder why I bothered, because absolutely no one uses those tools, not even me. Polishing the code for release was a waste of effort. Writing the documentation for a user base of zero was a complete waste of my time.
On the contrary. It would be a waste of money to spend the extra time needed to write documentation and to make every little piece of special purpose software suitably configurable for general purpose use. Within the organization the code is already as open as it needs to be. Redistribution is of no public benefit if the code will never be used outside of a single organization.