SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the the-solution-has-always-been-copyleft dept.
Educator Lionel Dricot explores the historical prescience of Richard Stallman's (RMS) warnings and prophecies which have been spot on since the beginning, including his proposed solutions. Dricot points out that the problem with acceptance of the solutions is not with RMS or the Free Software Foundation (FSF), instead the problem is us and that we didn't listen. In addition to the Four Freedoms, he points out one obligation which has been taken for granted and left unspoken until now: the obligation to prevent privatization of the Commons.
There was one weakness in RMS theory: copyleft was not part of the four freedoms he theorised. Business-compatible licenses like BSD/MIT or even public domain are "Free Software" because they respect the four freedoms.
But they can be privatised.
And that's the whole point. For the last 30 years, businesses and proponents of Open Source, including Linus Torvalds, have been decrying the GPL because of the essential right of "doing business" aka "privatising the common".
They succeeded so much that the essential mission of the FSF to guarantee the common was seen as "useless" or, worse, "reactionary". What was the work of the FSF? The most important thing is that they proof-bombed the GPL against weaknesses found later. They literally patched vulnerabilities. First the GPLv3, to fight "Tivoisation" and then AGPL, to counteract proprietary online services running on free software but taking away freedom of users.
But all this work was ridiculed. Microsoft, through Github, Google and Apple pushed for MIT/BSD licensed software as the open source standard. This allowed them to use open source components within their proprietary closed products. They managed to make thousands of free software developers work freely for them. And they even received praise because, sometimes, they would hire one of those developers (like it was a "favour" to the community while it is simply business-wise to hire smart people working on critical components of your infrastructure instead of letting them work for free). The whole Google Summer of Code, for which I was a mentor multiple years, is just a cheap way to get unpaid volunteers mentor their future free or cheap workforce.
Our freedoms were taken away by proprietary software which is mostly coded by ourselves. For free. We spent our free time developing, debugging, testing software before handing them to corporations that we rever, hoping to maybe get a job offer or a small sponsorship from them. Without Non-copyleft Open Source, there would be no proprietary MacOS, OSX nor Android. There would be no Facebook, no Amazon. We created all the components of Frankenstein's creature and handed them to the evil professor.
Previously:
(2018) Happy 35th Birthday GNU!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2023, @11:13PM (7 children)
"Copying isn't stealing" because you still have the source. "I lose nothing if somebody lights their candle from my flame", or something like that allegedly quoted by Thomas Jefferson. TFS is hypocrisy. Most people in the FS movement would agree with the previous, but if you refuse to play within their Public Software feifdom, suddenly copying has magically become theft!
Note, I'm not calling it Free Software. I'm calling it Public Software, because that's what it is--just like a public park or a public school. You can't take those private, but they get trashed and poorly maintained all the time and then when people take their kids to private or charter schools, the same people who are likely to whine about BSD are probably whining about that.
Truly free licenses like BSD, MIT, etc. are IMHO superior because when the Public Software model doesn't produce, that proprietary option they're lamenting gives people the incentive to pick it up and improve it in ways that the volunteers either can't or don't want.
MacOS didn't take anything from you. Darwin is still there. Have at it.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday June 20 2023, @11:35PM (6 children)
I do like that metaphor.
It's worth noting that doing a poor job of maintaining the commons doesn't just happen, it's a deliberate decision on the part of those charged with cleaning and maintaining the public good to not give a damn if it's trashed. Usually, that's because the decision to maintain or not maintain it is being made by people who aren't using it. Which creates a reason this won't happen to major bits of what you're terming Public Software, because major players who are in a position to maintain it also use it and thus have reason to maintain it.
But even without that, there's another factor at play: Public parks and schools often get help from volunteers, people helping out of the goodness of their hearts and for no other reason. Even informally: If I'm in a park and I see litter, there's a greater-than-zero chance I'm going to grab it and put it in a trash can, because it's a decent use of a couple of minutes and helps me enjoy the place too.
Which means odds are pretty good the users don't want the "improvement" either, but instead it's being driven by a marketdroid or a project manager who needs to meet their quota of completed changes.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2023, @12:30AM (4 children)
Which means odds are pretty good the users don't want the "improvement" either, but instead it's being driven by a marketdroid or a project manager who needs to meet their quota of completed changes.
And once again, if they use OSS to build junk you don't have to use the junk. OTOH, they used the BSD stack and the JPEG handling in Windows for years and how on Earth did that hurt anybody? If anything it was a bunch less security holes in Windows if they rolled their own. I have a hard time empathizing with anybody who would complain about that, especially since the developers knew all along it could go proprietary, and *they* also had the freedom to make a proprietary product with it, or an Open Source project so everybody wins whereas GPL/CopyLeft locks you in to business models that work that way. Show me a business model where "support" or "clicks" is the revenue generator, and I'll show you software that needs those things. If anything is a slave to marketroids and especially data-miners, it's Public Software. Good ol' proprietary Windows didn't pull that shit until 8.x to 10 transition when they installed the infamous GWX update because they knew that the only way to make money in a market dominated by Public Software was to mine the hell out of your data.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by GloomMower on Wednesday June 21 2023, @01:25AM
> Good ol' proprietary Windows didn't pull that shit until 8.x to 10 transition when they installed the infamous GWX update because they knew that the only way to make money in a market dominated by Public Software was to mine the hell out of your data.
Seems dominated by proprietary software:
"As of February 2023, Windows holds 57.37% of the desktop OS market in the US, macOS holds 29.62% and Chrome OS holds 7.47%. Linux holds 2.55%, whereas other miscellaneous desktop operating systems hold 2.97%"
Office 365 with 54% market share, google docs the rest.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday June 21 2023, @02:38AM (2 children)
Ah, I see your mistake: You think of everything in terms of business models and profitability. But that doesn't explain long-running successful non-profit projects like, say, the Postgres database.
There are lots of reasons why people write software. Selling it, selling support for it, or using it to spy on people is only some of the reasons someone might create code. For example, a large percentage of code is for large corporations to use internally.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2023, @03:29AM (1 child)
> a large percentage of code is for large corporations to use internally.
That's what we do, specialty/niche math models for large companies. Years ago our tiny company licensed our own code and held onto our source as trade secret. The niche is small enough that we never really took off as a "software company". Eventually our customers realized that they would do better long term with their own source for code that was integral to their internal process.
It became obvious that they had the resources to hire their own engineers and roll their own...eventually (there's a steep learning curve in our specialty). Thus we concluded that we should change our business model over to "engineers for hire" where the customer gets the source code. Now we contract to write specific code for the customers. It's so customized to work with their business (and their legacy code) that it's unlikely anyone else could use it anyway.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GloomMower on Wednesday June 21 2023, @08:23AM
I don't think this is because of open source software, or what parent calls "public software".
All software even proprietary software can be copied at no cost. It just has to be written once and can be copied infinite amount of times. You have to have real good leverage in order to get people to pay, otherwise a competitor (either open source, proprietary, or internal) can drive the cost to zero. It is similar to goods with mass production, cost often creeps down to close to materials cost. It is why in the US it is mostly a service economy. You buy/sell peoples time to do something if it is important to you/a company.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday June 21 2023, @03:18PM
I would much rather they went with Public Domain Software. It ties in nicely with how Public Domain books work. Once a book is in the Public Domain, it's freely available for anyone to use how they see fit. You want to print toilet paper with the constitution of the united states printed on it, go for it. That might irk some people, but so long as they aren't in your home using your toilet paper. You shouldn't need to worry too much about that.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"