Stallman Does Slides -- and Brevity -- For TEDx 326
New submitter ciaran2014 writes Richard Stallman's long-format talks are well-known — there are videos going back to 2001 and transcripts dating back to 1986 — but he recently condensed his free software talk down to 14 minutes and set it to hand-drawn slides for TEDxGeneva (video link). He introduces with the four freedoms, as always, and then moves on to spyware, surveillance, non-free drivers, free software in schools, non-free javascript, Service as a Software Substitute and how free software is today necessary for a strong democracy. As usual, the talk is suitable for non-technical audiences.
Where to draw the line (Score:2, Interesting)
This confusion stems from his fairly regular changes as to what Linux distributions he's willing to endorse or criticize. At one point he was very happy with the Debian folks, but at some point decided that their making available non-GPL or other free-to-distribute-but-n
Re:Where to draw the line (Score:5, Interesting)
Stallman's a bit of an extremist, and wants all software to be open-source. Remember, it all goes back to when he was trying to get a printer working, and couldn't because the driver was closed-source. That's why he invented the GPL, which just requires you to make source available to anyone whom you distribute software to.
But you're right: some parts are far more important than others. The platform being open-source is much, much more important than any high-level application being open-source. When the platform is closed and proprietary, you have all kinds of problems: you're locked in by the vendor, it's harder to write and debug applications, the platform vendor can have secret APIs to give them an advantage over third-party application vendors (we saw this with MS many times), you're stuck with drivers that vendors provide you and can't upgrade your platform software if the driver providers don't want you to (we've seen this with Windows upgrades, where older but perfectly functional hardware can't be used because the HW vendors didn't feel like updating their drivers for the new OS, since they want you to buy new HW), etc. Whereas if some random application is closed-source and proprietary, that doesn't affect anything at all except that one application.
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He doesn't even just want it to be open source. He has a problem with anything that isn't GPLv3. Release everything with FreeBSD and see how happy he is.
Re:Where to draw the line (Score:5, Insightful)
He'd be fine with everything being BSD licensed forever (FreeBSD is a BSD distribution / OS not a license). But he's smart enough to know that BSD licensed software doesn't stay that way in the real world. There is a long proven track record of BSD software getting embedded in commercial software and becoming effectively or actually closed.
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There is a long proven track record of BSD software getting embedded in commercial software and becoming effectively or actually closed.
Good call on the FreeBSD, it was before my coffee.
Anyway, FreeNAS still exists because a commercial company picked it up. A lot of big companies use BSD for some things because it doesn't have the limitations of GPLv3.
"Everything is free" is a great idea but I need to pay my bills.
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Certainly. And that's not uncommon either. It happens. But at this point we have a track record. GPLed products get longer term support than BSD products. And not only that companies on average are more willing to contribute to GPLed products because their competitors or potential competitors are similarly limited.
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I think I was pretty specific in the original that this was the problem. Having an original which is available and functionally useless is not a desirable state. It might as well be closed. The versions in use have to be open not the original.
Re:Where to draw the line (Score:5, Informative)
A LOT of (embedded) appliances. VxWorks, Cisco, Juniper, McAfee, Check Point, NetApp...
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I specifically indicated it was the latter issue he was worried about. The original for BSD licensed software can be available but functionally useless.
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Then again, this may be my hate of everything Apple coming through on this.
Free not open source (Score:3)
Stallman's a bit of an extremist, and wants all software to be open-source.
No he doesn't. He wants it to be free. Had you watched the video you would have seen him negatively describe open source as a way for people to avoid the subject of free software. He doesn't care at all about open source except insofar as it gets us to free software as defined by himself.
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Stallman's a bit of an extremist, and wants all software to be open-source.
The real problem with his point is that he is so consumed by this idea that we must "get rid of proprietary software" but that is merely a side-effect of successful free software, attacking proprietary software by spreading FUD about it "controlling the user" doesn't make free software any better. We have the choice and by and large people choose proprietary software, not because they don't care about the possibility - however remote - that whatever particular software package they are using may do somethin
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What'd be better is to focus instead on taking over the platform, rather than trying to make Free alternatives to every single proprietary program out there. It's a much smaller and more manageable task, and the benefits are far greater. It really doesn't matter that much if your engineering design program is proprietary; yeah, it'd be better if it were Free or at least open-source, it'd be nice if they used open file formats, etc., but that one program only affects that one function you do on your comput
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I'm confused by your confusion. Stallman's been pretty consistent, unambiguous, and what irritates a lot of people about him, uncompromising. Since you mentioned the distros the FSF endorsed, then perhaps comparing them to the ones they don't endorse would help clear your confusion. http://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html
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drawing a line is the point...
i agree that Stallman's hyper-specific definitions are obtuse and ruin his theories...but they key here is to understand where he goes wrong and why it doesn't matter to discussions about FOSS
in Stallman, you can see the problem many anarchist/libertarian types have across disciplines...the problems they raise are good, their arguments are solid, but their conclusions about how to **move forward and fix the problem** are stilted and unworkable
it usually comes down to **language
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One of the things that I've always been confused by with Stallman is where he draws the line between what in his view must be free open-source software and what can be free non-open-source, and what can be truly paid commercial software.
From what I can tell, he draws the line quite clearly. There is no place for traditional paid commercial software. It is okay to make money writing software, but it is never okay to keep even a single line of software secret from the general public.
I don't agree with his philosophy at all, but he seems to make it pretty clear where he stands. I honestly don't know every single public statement he has ever made though, so there could be some inconsistencies I don't know about. With such a hard line stance, i
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I guess I don't see that view as being compatible with making a career out of writing software, as at some point one needs money for one's efforts, and being paid for one's software is how one makes money from the effort of writing it. It's similar to how autho
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His position on platforms is:
a) Avoid at all costs embedding not free into free (i.e. what happened with commercial X11)
b) More free is preferable to less free, do the best you can.
c) For (b) the best you can is defined not by "this would be slightly annoying".
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You must be very confused indeed if you are wondering about Stallman's view of open source.
He doesn't give a shit about "open source". He believes in Free Software.
You should check fsf.org and gnu.org for more info. This page [gnu.org] might be a good starting point.
In general, he does not endorse any distribution that includes non-free software. (This is nearly all distributions.) He also makes no distinction between platforms and applications, or system vs. user software. It should, ideally, all be Free Softwa
There are different freedoms. He speaks as if (Score:2)
Stallman can't separate free in theory (Score:3)
from free in practice, i.e. he is missing any concept of substantive freedom or constitutive practice.
Most users can make this distinction easily.
Free in theory but utterly constrained in practice is something most users don't care for. Since most users are not coders, most are much freer in practice with software that "just works." Sure, they *could in theory* be more free with free software that does less, since they could just rewrite the missing parts themselves, without IP encumbrances, but in practice
Well (Score:3)
In the end though, it's effect is mind numbing.
If we could go back to pre-PowerPoint days for a moment, there were three main methods of presentation
1. Viewgraphs. These were the old 8.5 by 11 inch Ozalid or halftone images on transparent media placed on a light table with a projection lens.
2. 35 mm slides - this was for when you wanted to have a polished presentation. You knew you were getting some attention when presenting these.
3. Back to the view graph projector - the roll of transparent material that you drew on with a sharpie or similar instrument. Whne you were finished, you rolled a fresh surface, and drew some more.
What was good about these? The first two took a little work to prepare. And despite the idea that labor costs need to be minimized, just teh preparation effort mad you whittle the information down. That whittling process made presentations better.
The third method of real time drawing was pretty crude, but incredibly efficient for brainstorming.
Contrast to today, where it appears not a thought will be left unsaid. Presentations in general have become worse with the advent of PowerPoint. The ease with which you can add "one more slide" maenas that many people will add 25 "one more slides".
In the end, it is mind numbing. Engineers will spend time telling you about some minutiae they find interesting, Bean counters will spend forever trying to justify hiring a 100 k a year person to keep track of pencil theft, which is costing the company 5 hundred dollars a year, and on and on.
I'ts not a get off my lawn issue, it's just that the process has been made so easy it is abused, and pointless points are consistently made.
how I prepare a presentation (Score:2)
I started doing presentations back in the days of 35-mm slides. I didn't have to prepare them myself—I sent the text to the corporate slide presentation department, and they sent me back the slides.
I prepared my presentation by first writing out what I wanted to say, word for word. I then distilled that document into a few topic lines, which I had made into slides, generally about three topics to a slide. At this point I discarded the original manuscript. When I gave the presentation I glanced at
Re:how I prepare a presentation (Score:5, Interesting)
I started doing presentations back in the days of 35-mm slides. I didn't have to prepare them myself—I sent the text to the corporate slide presentation department, and they sent me back the slides.
I prepared my presentation by first writing out what I wanted to say, word for word. I then distilled that document into a few topic lines, which I had made into slides, generally about three topics to a slide. At this point I discarded the original manuscript. When I gave the presentation I glanced at each slide to remind me of what I wanted to say, then spoke extemporaniously.
Today I prepare the slides myself using LibreOffice Impress, the free equivalent of Microsoft PowerPoint, but I use the same method.
I have a similar background, except we had an editor who approved all slides. She was a ruthless, heartless person who lacked a soul while wielding a red pen like calvaryman's saber as she edited. In other words, the perfect editor. To this date, I cringe at a presentation withe text less than 16 pt and more than 20 words on a slide. When I see a sentence with a period on a slide I remember her admonition "Women have periods, slides don't."
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I have a similar background, except we had an editor who approved all slides. She was a ruthless, heartless person who lacked a soul while wielding a red pen like calvaryman's saber as she edited. In other words, the perfect editor. To this date, I cringe at a presentation withe text less than 16 pt and more than 20 words on a slide. When I see a sentence with a period on a slide I remember her admonition "Women have periods, slides don't."
I would liked to have met her. As far as I know my slides never had any approval process, but I think your editor would have liked them.
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Today I prepare the slides myself using LibreOffice Impress, the free equivalent of Microsoft PowerPoint, but I use the same method.
You are exceptionally rare and should be commended. I'd say about 1 percent of people do not just pour on more and more crap into their power points.
And I still stand by my assertion that in the 30 plus years I've been involved in presentations, the quality has plummeted. And it really happened when PowerPoint took off. Too much on every slide, at least 200 percent more slides than needed. Graphs darn near unrelated to the topic. I've noted from running meetings, there is a large component of "If I can on
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....A trained communicator in the loop is a very good idea.
I would disagree with you only on this point, and only slightly. I would say that a trained or experienced communicator in the loop is a very good idea. I have never had any formal training in communication, beyond a class in public speaking in summer school.
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....A trained communicator in the loop is a very good idea.
I would disagree with you only on this point, and only slightly. I would say that a trained or experienced communicator in the loop is a very good idea. I have never had any formal training in communication, beyond a class in public speaking in summer school.
I'm still saying you are the competent exception. If you took one class in public speaking and are an expert, you are not the standard student. You are a savant. Where I worked we had technical editors, visual editors, and general content people who went to school to learn how to communicate ideas professionally and if you are performing at their level you are possibly in the wrong line of work.
Re:Well (Score:4, Interesting)
I give a lot of presentations, both internal to my company and at conferences. Writing presentations is easy, and results in the issues you raised (and many others). Writing GOOD presentations is much harder, and takes a lot more effort.
For me, I find the key to making a presentation that my audience will value is exactly that -- the audience. I try to figure out what it is my audience wants to learn and hear about. I'm not there to talk about whatever the hell it is I want to talk about -- I'm there to communicate something that's going to make a difference for the people in the audience (and, given audience focus, I also make sure I practice my presentations well enough that I know how long they'll take and I MAKE SURE to leave time for questions. Presenters who run out of time are just lazy).
I think presentations are like writing code -- in the end, it's really up to the author, most of the material out there is bad, and the editor (whether vim, emacs, Sublime Text, Atom, IntelliJ, or pick your favorite IDE) has little to do with the quality of the product. At most, and at best, the presentation software makes the mechanical effort a little easier.
Re:Well (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't believe for a moment that Stallman is reduced to hand-drawing slides because he believes hand-drawn slides are better.
Yeah, I don't presume to know his rationale. The hand drawn thing just prodded me to make an observation between projection modes. It's not trying to argue from authority, but doing this sort of thing for 30 some years, I at least have a fairly informed opinion.
And if he does believe that, his slides certainly don't demonstrate it, as pretty much every other TED talk with a presentation is better than this one.
It gives the impression that whatever free presentation apps there are (Libreoffice Impress?) are pretty bad.
Well, we're all allowed to draw our own conclusions, although that is an odd one. Impress is fully functional, and I've done many presentations in it. Perhaps you just don't like Linux?
This is one of the major reasons I don't like free software. There is little attention to quality.
I suppose it depends on the definition of quality. I used to have nightmares trying to go between Microsoft Office for PC, and Mac. It was simply not compatible with itself. For that reason, It fails my quality test.
On the other hand, LibreOffice for Mac, PC, and Linux does not have that problem. I go back and forth, and the only issue is if I'm using an obscure font that might not be on another machine. And if I can get my work actually done, instead of fussing with fonts, background colors, and other non compatible differences, well, we might just have a different definition of quality.
Link to the video (Score:2, Informative)
For those who want something more useful than webm:
http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video... [ted.com]
Democracy is NOT freedom (Score:3)
Indeed, free software projects aren't even run as democratic organizations; rather, they are emergent hierarchies formed via the spontaneous participation of individuals.
Each person involved in free software chooses how to appropriate his own resources—that is, how to appropriate his own capital, including time, intellect, money, etc. Democracy, on the other hand, is about choosing how to appropriate someone else's resources, especially against that someone else's will, especially by threat of violence as punishment for noncompliance.
Democracy is no friend of freedom, and certainly no friend of free software.
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Rape, murder, and coercion are the forcible appropriation of someone else's capital.
Protection and enforcement of capital rights are not inherently governmental.
Justice certainly isn't inherently governmental; in fact, many would argue that governmental organization is inherently unjust.
Practical problems with a hard line stance (Score:3)
Things I noticed from the video:
11:25 "Don't bring any proprietary software to this class." So which cell phone running free software should students be putting in their bags instead? Even Replicant OS [wikipedia.org], which is based on Android Open Source Project with the non-free parts cut out, uses non-free radio firmware.
12:48 "So how to help? Well you can write free software." So how would you go about feeding yourself while you write a free video game? Video games can't rely on support to the same extent as software critical to a business.
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You answered your second question already. You write the indispensable business software first, then with all the money you earn, you support yourself while you write the next video game of the year.
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And what happens to the next guy? What happens when there isn't any truly indispensable software left? You just stop making new games?
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The next guy can get a job that pays his bills.
Do you think we should be guaranteed money every month just because we want to create a game?
If you want to do something that doesn't make money, than learn to live without money.
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12:48 "So how to help? Well you can write free software." So how would you go about feeding yourself while you write a free video game? Video games can't rely on support to the same extent as software critical to a business.
Get a job? You don't have an automatic right to be paid for making video games.
If you really feel that you couldn't make a video game whilst also doing other paid work, and you can convince other people that you can make a game they'd like to play, then some of those people will pay you to write it. If you doubt that, Chris Roberts has $52M of evidence to the contrary. 3% of Kickstarter games projects get $100k or more. That's not going to fund a "AAA" development process, but it'd pay your living costs fo
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11:25 The answer is do the best you can. Support those who are the least closed.
12:48 If you are paid to write software, do what you can to have that software under GPL license. If you develop video games, do what Id Software does, and release the code as GPL when it's feasible to do so. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better than not releasing anything ever.
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11:25 "Don't bring any proprietary software to this class." So which cell phone running free software should students be putting in their bags instead?
Depends what your primary objective is. If your primary objective is to have a cell phone with you, you sacrifice freedom. If your primary objective is to give no comfort to those who are harmful to that end, you sacrifice carrying a cell phone.
Me? I'm pretty serious about Free Software, but being connected is also important to me. So I have a CyanogenMod pho
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Richard's approach towards cellphones is not to use them.
As if land line phones are somehow less problematic from a Free software point of view.
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And how much do you think you would need for engine design/development, level design, artists, animators, storywriters, voice actors, motion capture studio rental, music and sound production, etc ... ? And then how much time does it take to actually get started with hiring/contracting everybody involved?
The naive approach is just to say "well design it and put it on kickstarter and everything magically happens" but the reality is that decent games requires a lot of work and a lot of people. Yes you can crea
I, for one, and thankful for Stallman (Score:5, Insightful)
I will be snide and I will not post as AC. There are too many comments labelling Stallman as a uncompromising, communist, extremist, liberal, etc... Though it may be true, without his uncompromising stance on freedom, would we have GNU/Linux? Would the Open Source movement even exists?
Sure, there would be source code out there on the web, and the BSDs would probably exists, but he's fighting to ensure that we do not lose the very freedoms that we enjoy with (forgive the term) FLOSS software.
Yes, I run a Linux distro with non-free warts (Mint), I use proprietary software (Steam). But for the most part, I'm in control of my computer, and quite thankful of that. I may not live in the 'ideal' free world of Stallman, but without folks like Stallman and their extreme position on freedom, I suspect the world of computers would be much more closed.
Thank you Richard Stallman for your fight.
Surprisingly bad public speaker (Score:4, Interesting)
Slightly off topic but I watched the video. I've read a lot of what Stallman has written but haven't heard him speak before. He's a pretty bad public speaker judging by this TED talk. His slides looked like something a sixth grader would draw, he sounded like a robot and he clearly didn't spend enough time rehearsing. He kept looking at his slides as if it was a surprise what was coming next. If you want people to take your arguments seriously, having a good argument is not sufficient. You have to be able to present it well. He's been making these arguments long enough that he ought to be more polished by now. I respect the stance he is taking but based on this talk he's doing a pretty crap job of being an evangelist to the general public.
I really can't imagine anyone coming away from that presentation convinced that they've had their eyes opened. His argument was moralistic but he didn't really explain convincingly the consequences of not-free software or why anyone should care. He explained that we control software or it controls us as if it was axiomatic which it is not. Here on slashdot we understand what he's talking about (whether or not we agree) but a more general audience will NOT be convinced by such a superficial argument especially when presented in such an amateurish way.
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Shortest version (Score:3, Insightful)
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There's a big difference between physical things that have limits (land, food, water, etc) and 'intellectual property' which can be copied any number of times at virtually no cost. Until physical items are limitless or there is overwhelming cost to reproduce ideas, GPL and communism will be incomparable.
Actually, a fundamental core philosophy is very similar; the idea that people will contribute willingly based on their abilities independent of what they get in return.The challenge is to get people to contribute beyond that needed to meet their needs. For exam,e, someone might be quite capable of fixing many bugs but will only fix those that impact their ability to us etch software and leave the rest to others. There is nothing wrong with free software and I actually use it; the challenge is how do you get
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Its been 20 years. We've seen lots of successful open source business models by this point. Mostly people don't contribute when they get nothing in return rather:
B takes code written by A whom could care less about advancing B's purpose and as a result of the license ends up contributing to C for a purpose B could care less about.
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Its been 20 years. We've seen lots of successful open source business models by this point. Mostly people don't contribute when they get nothing in return rather:
B takes code written by A whom could care less about advancing B's purpose and as a result of the license ends up contributing to C for a purpose B could care less about.
Most of the successful open source business models have been around creating a business where selling support and ancillary services brings in the revenue and justifies ongoing development effort. OSS happened to provide a good foundation to build on but the underlying motive is profit driven; it just happens that others benefit as well. There's nothing wrong with that, in fact it helps strengthen support for OSS; it however belies the notion that if you make it free the community will create this wonderful
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Actually no. Most of the successful open source business models are not ones in which the open source product is, for the entity writing the code, just an expense not a revenue source and broad participation help reduce that expense. The assumption had been that ancillary services would be the primary, and certainly there are plenty of those but that has not been the dominant class.
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Actually no. Most of the successful open source business models are not ones in which the open source product is, for the entity writing the code, just an expense not a revenue source and broad participation help reduce that expense. The assumption had been that ancillary services would be the primary, and certainly there are plenty of those but that has not been the dominant class.
I guess we should star by getting agreement on terms. I consider red hat, for example, makes money selling ancillary services a as predominant model, where those services are everything from installations and updates to added features beyond the base GPL version. Does that agree with your definition? What do you consider the dominate class?
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We agree on the definition of the the ancillary services and I agree RedHat makes their money that way. I'd say the dominate class would be things like Rackspace which develops (with RedHat) OpenStack but is primarily selling CPU, electricity, network and renting hardware. The management system they use is just an expense. Microsoft / Azure, Amazon / AWS, Verizon's cloud... would all be in the same boat. Or another example would be HP's work which makes its money selling hardware or enterprise packages
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We agree on the definition of the the ancillary services and I agree RedHat makes their money that way. I'd say the dominate class would be things like Rackspace which develops (with RedHat) OpenStack but is primarily selling CPU, electricity, network and renting hardware. The management system they use is just an expense. Microsoft / Azure, Amazon / AWS, Verizon's cloud... would all be in the same boat. Or another example would be HP's work which makes its money selling hardware or enterprise packages to run on top of open source OSes.
It sounds like we are in agreement here. I'd consider Rackspace, Red Hat, et al similar OSS business models.
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Its been 20 years. We've seen lots of successful open source business models by this point.
For corporate software yes, not so much for end users. The most common OSS model is support contracts but end users predominantly get their support from community forums, we've seen the advertising model viewed with disdain (and mostly people use adblockers or would patch the software to remove them anyway) then there is paying for enhancements which is another thing end users don't do due to it being prohibitively expensive. Ultimately the changes and improvements to most free software is driven by corpora
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That's one of the things about open source producers and contributors not end users drive the software not purchasers. But that's not necessarily terrible. Android is the most successful OS on the planet, its open. Webkit: Firefox and Chrome. Libre / Open Office (about 18% of the office market). I'd say we are seeing success for end users. Certainly changes are driven by corporate needs but corporate needs and end users align sometimes.
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Android is the most successful OS on the planet, its open.
Well only somewhat, most Android distributions use a proprietary GUI layer, or proprietary Google Play Services and pretty much every single one in use has non-free software for driving the hardware. It's open out of convenience rather than ideology.
Webkit: Firefox and Chrome.
Chrome and Firefox are supported by Google's Ad revenues so yes the end user needs are met in order to drive advertising profit.
Certainly changes are driven by corporate needs but corporate needs and end users align sometimes.
Agreed, sometimes they do though often they do not so that is why I don't think free software will ever fully supplant proprietary sof
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There's a big difference between physical things that have limits (land, food, water, etc) and 'intellectual property' which can be copied any number of times at virtually no cost.
You are comparing the wrong things. Both physical things and intellectual property have two costs: Cost To Produce and Cost To Distribute. While the cost to distribute is near nothing for intellectual property, the cost to produce is not.
Physical things have limits like land, water, etc, and intellectual property has limits such as the number of smart educated people in the world. Nothing that requires human labor is free. Nothing.
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not communism (Score:5, Insightful)
Stallman is not a "communist"...it's 2014, and we've progressed as a society beyond pointless politically charged words like 'communism' because it means 'totalitarian state' in some contexts and 'socialist utopia' in others...one has freedom one does not...it has cause **litterally** millions of unecessary arguments for decades in the 20th century
slapping a dumb label like "communist" on theories like Stallman's only serves to cause confusion and pointless arguments
Re:not communism (Score:5, Insightful)
Against the backdrop of the current U.S. political climate it seems particularly absurd to label RMS of all people totalitarian.
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freedom is slavery
war is peace
ignorance is strength.
I mean mass survialence, nah, thats some communist fantasy. Companies restricting your access to media, nah, doesn't happen. I mean we can totally trust big brother, its your next door neighbor you need to worry about.
words are not pointless (Score:2)
"labelling is pointless"
ugh
using words is "labelling"...if what you say is true then speech itself is pointless
the problem isn't "labelling"...it's people who consciously affect the meanings of words for strategic ends over decades...like the word "feminism"...
with "communism" it's common knowledge that the word isn't helpful for discussion...
"labelling" a thing is necessary...every idea we can think of can be "labelled" by representing it with words
what is pointless?
**arguing over definitions instead of id
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Truth is:
1. Stallman is well spoken, well written, and articulate.
2.
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for sure...i agree with your 1 & 2
IMHO, i think Stallman gets tripped up with execution...which is guided by those uber-specific obtuse definitions he uses for concepts like what 'free and open source' mean
if anything, he's an uncomprimising idealist...
your point #2 rings especially true with my experience here on /. I've been reading since 2001 (didn't make an account until 2006 because **i didnt think i had earned it**) and back in the day i learned alot about how the industry really works from readin
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Does he endorse the workers owning the means of production? If not, then he is not a communist. End of discussion.
Free software is flexible (Score:5, Interesting)
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Free SaaSS can exist (Score:2)
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That's what the FSF recommends. Use the AGPL on SaaS applications.
Incidentally though just to prove the services model their are successful commercial companies using free software SaaS models and selling services like hardware management and monitoring.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought it was possible to deploy "service as a software substitute" in a manner consistent with free software philosophy. Make the server software's source code available to the service's subscribers and let the subscriber download backups of his account. AGPL was designed for applications intended for use in free SaaSS, and though Google isn't free, it does offer Takeout for the second point.
Actually, since you are not distributing the software there would be no need, under the GPL, to share the underlying code; which is why there is AGPL. However, if software was licensed under the GPL at some point there is nothing to prevent someone from using the last GPL only version and ignoring the AGPL.
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If you're not distributing the software then the AGPL isn't going to help you.
Licenses only grant permission to distribute software; they're irrelevant if you're not distributing the software to begin with.
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If you're not distributing the software then the AGPL isn't going to help you.
Licenses only grant permission to distribute software; they're irrelevant if you're not distributing the software to begin with.
The AGPL is designed for network software so that if you modify the source and run it on a network you are required to make the source available to your users. It gets around the distribution requirements of the GPL by specifically adding the requirement to "offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network" a copy of the modified source code.
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Except copyright law defines what distribution is, not the license. And the output of a software program is not copyrightable (by itself).
The AGPL may as well offer everyone a pony; if it's not being distributed (as defined by copyright law), the AGPL doesn't apply. Period.
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Except copyright law defines what distribution is, not the license. And the output of a software program is not copyrightable (by itself).
The AGPL may as well offer everyone a pony; if it's not being distributed (as defined by copyright law), the AGPL doesn't apply. Period.
You are confusing copyright with licensing. A copyright allows control over who may use the work and the terms under which they use it. If I own the copyright I can license the works under the condition if you modify it and run it on network you need to make the source available, which the AGPL does. Distribution, as defined by copyright law, has no relevance to this licensing requirement.
The output of the software is irrelevant to this discussion beyond invoking the AGPL if you have users other than you.
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If I own the copyright I can license the works under the condition if you modify it and run it on network you need to make the source available, which the AGPL does
Once I have a copy, you can't control what I do with that copy until I want to make another copy. This is defined by copyright law, and includes (among other things):
* Performing a stage play or audiovisual work
* A public performance of a song
* Remixing or arranging a song (a compulsory license can be acquired if the song is commercially released)
* Sending a copy of a novel, software program, or other literary work to another person
What's not on this list: Merely using a software program over the network, a
Re: (Score:2)
I don't need to accept the AGPL to legally download an AGPL'd program, put it on my server, and let the general public use it.
Not correct. You use it under the terms of a license and must comply with the license as a term of use; which in this case requires making source available; just as the venue has to pay a fee when someone plays a copyrighted song.
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which in this case requires making source available; just as the venue has to pay a fee when someone plays a copyrighted song.
This is incorrect. Songs are described differently than literary works in the copyright statute, software programs being literary works.
A performance of a song, as I listed, requires a license (and copyright law specifically singles out songs). However, the output of a software program is not copyrightable, and therefore no license is necessary.
Copyright law makes no distinction between using over the network and on your local monitor, and such usage is explicitly defined in US statute as non-infringing. Ho
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which in this case requires making source available; just as the venue has to pay a fee when someone plays a copyrighted song.
This is incorrect. Songs are described differently than literary works in the copyright statute, software programs being literary works.
A performance of a song, as I listed, requires a license (and copyright law specifically singles out songs). However, the output of a software program is not copyrightable, and therefore no license is necessary.
Copyright law makes no distinction between using over the network and on your local monitor, and such usage is explicitly defined in US statute as non-infringing. How would you like it, or the FSF for that matter, if copyright law could be used to dictate that you sitting at your computer could be a copyright infringer by merely opening up the wrong application sitting at your desk? I suspect not very much.
Again, the AGPL is a license that you must accept to use the software. You focus on the output which is not the issue; the issue is how you may use the software under the license and your obligation as a result of using the software.
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Again, the AGPL is a license that you must accept to use the software. You focus on the output which is not the issue; the issue is how you may use the software under the license and your obligation as a result of using the software.
Please name the legal requirement that I accept the AGPL in order to use the software. In the US, there is:
* Copyright law
* Patent law
Patents aren't the issue here, and copyright law is not being invoked by merely making the software available on the network (and in fact, this use is explicitly defined as non-infringing).
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Again, the AGPL is a license that you must accept to use the software. You focus on the output which is not the issue; the issue is how you may use the software under the license and your obligation as a result of using the software.
Please name the legal requirement that I accept the AGPL in order to use the software. In the US, there is:
* Copyright law * Patent law
Patents aren't the issue here, and copyright law is not being invoked by merely making the software available on the network (and in fact, this use is explicitly defined as non-infringing).
Contract law
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Contract law
But the source is free to the public, there's no terms and conditions I have to agree to. Indeed, it would no longer be Free Software, or at least it wouldn't be Open Source Software according to the Open Source Definition [opensource.org].
Re:No thanks (Score:4, Interesting)
Have you noticed that Stallman only has power to the extent that people agree with him? That he has no means of enforcing anything other than by making a convincing argument? His highway has less tolls than any alternative.
Re:No thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No thanks (Score:4, Interesting)
Stallman is the crazy outlier. Where he stands, at the very edge, is exactly where we need him to be. You dont have to follow all of it, but there would be less of his ideas if he was more concerned with being central and accessible.
Just for the edification of the other readers here, which parts specifically do you feel you don't have to follow?
For the record, I know exactly which ones I would choose, but I'm interested to know what exactly you think makes Stallmann a 'crazy outlier'. Because, in my estimation, it would take a lot for someone to qualify for that kind of labeling.
I disagree with his statement that Linux distro maintainers allow non-free components because they're not sufficiently committed to freedom, but I don't think him 'crazy' for having said it. I think his blanket characterisation of profit motive as evil is too much of a generalisation, but tragically, I don't think he's entirely wrong in stating that the effects of profit motive on a lot of commercial organisations has been detrimental to our freedom - dangerously so. So yeah: same conclusion, more temperate language. That's not nearly crazy or even an outlying opinion, to my mind.
There is a point to Stallman being far out there, its so the rest of us dont have to. Let him do his thing.
I take your point, but I remind you that the same could have been said about Ghandi, or even Martin Luther King, when people were blaming him for the violence in Selma and the bombing in Birmingham.
See, the problem I have with this kind of rhetoric is that you seem willing to stand to the side at a witch-burning and say, 'Well, I would never cast a spell, but I can see why people bought magic services from her.' It's a little disingenuous, isn't it, that you would be willing to profit from someone's courage, when you're not willing to defend it?
Again, this isn't a case of 'My Free Software, Right or Wrong.' On the contrary, I'm arguing that you can quibble all you like with the arguments Stallmann makes, and the rhetoric he makes them with. But I have to ask: With an attitude like yours, how much have you actually done to promote freedom?
(Real question: I'm open to correction.)
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Just for the edification of the other readers here, which parts specifically do you feel you don't have to follow?
For the record, I know exactly which ones I would choose, but I'm interested to know what exactly you think makes Stallmann a 'crazy outlier'. Because, in my estimation, it would take a lot for someone to qualify for that kind of labeling.
On a number of occasions RMS has been asked how professional software developers can make enough money to earn a normal middle class income using only Free software licensing, and his response has been that earning money should not be a priority, to the extent that if a developer cannot earn enough money to support a family, that's ok. Software developers shouldn't have children. (example link [lunduke.com])
If he had said that most software developers shouldn't expect to have as much money as Gates/Ballmer/Zuckerberg/J
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Ad hominem attacks are all the rage on Slashdot lately.
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FSF says permissive licenses appropriate sometimes (Score:3)
Give Stallman some software with a BSD license and see how he responds.
The FSF recognizes that a non-copyleft free software license is better in some cases, such as when trying to replace entrenched patented MP3 with newcomer free Vorbis (source [gnu.org]; more reliable ones would be appreciated). It's also better for programs shorter than the GPL itself, as mentioned in the page about the suggested license for build scripts [gnu.org] and the GPL FAQ's recommendation of the Apache License 2.0 [gnu.org].
Free for the community (Score:2, Informative)
Give Stallman some software with a BSD license and see how he responds.
BSD software has a strong tendency to turn into proprietary products - i.e. not free. That doesn't really bother someone like Stallman who is a programmer but it causes a huge problem for the majority of people who are not programmers like myself. My skills lie elsewhere and for the majority of us out there functionally there is little difference to me between a BSD license and a proprietary license.
He's of the "It's only free as long as I say it's as free as I want it to be" people.
Doesn't mean he's wrong. A BSD license may as well be proprietary because eventually it will become propri
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A BSD license may as well be proprietary because eventually it will become proprietary if it is of any use at all.
Is a horrendous POS. It is factually wrong. If you can't see or accept that then you really do need to grow up a little, both politically and intellectually.
Ok, so please explain this one.
Take OpenBSD, there's a reason why much of Apple Mac OS X is based upon OpenBSD. Apple needed a new OS, they looked about and saw an already written base operating system with a nice licensing agreement that states that if you make any modifications to the source code you are under no legal requirement release said changes back to the community from which the original code came from. That is essentially what the BSD license states.
However, the GPL states that if you make c
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What are we being asked to explain? Has Apple somehow robbed the world of the original BSD-licensed software they based their OS on?
Or have they simply said "We'll use this as a starting point, but we decline to release our own code to the rest of the world?"
The worst you can argue is that they're being poor citizens - using a "public" good for themselves without contributing back. If the OpenBSD community cared about "preventing that from happening," well... they probably w
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
What a load of Redmond Propaganda. If I have your binary, I will find lots of vulnerabilities because I am an x86 assembly expert with a CS degree. And I have some serious debugging tools. Of course, I also need plenty of time to do that. So if my financiers are the U.S. military or the Chinese military or the Russian mafia, I will get all your "hidden" bugs. Google did this for a demonstration and found dozens of exploitable bugs in Adobe products.
So you are "secure" against the badly funded criminals, but
Re:gonna enjoy it on my non-free computer + os (Score:5, Insightful)
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
-- George Bernard Shaw