What should be free

[burntfuse]

My biggest beef with the Free Software Foundation and RM Stallman isn't that they advocate "freedom", but that they advocate their version of freedom, with which I do not entirely agree.

Agreed. I personally prefer open-source, but there's nothing inherently evil about proprietary software, which has its place too.

[drkdick]

...Can you point us to some documentation on that?

I was thinking about the 50-70's when hardware and engineers was what cost money wheras software in general was shared and "open" within the community. The operating system (of sorts) and utilities for a mainframe being provided as a service and part of the deal. (This is what I've gathered and concluded from "computer history", I'm a bit too young to have been there myself)

At some point I believe that license fees for certain branches of the UNIX operating systems started to go sky-high (Sun might have had something to do with this) and then the whole home computer revolution happened (early 80s) inevitably changing the rules of who got involved with computing to begin with and also what could be charged for services and software and under what terms these were delivered.

As you said yourself, it should be up to the developer to decide in which way he or she licenses a product and there certainly are cases for proprietary software. Choosing between shelling out for a (large scale) turn-key proprietary solution or hiring someone who can achieve the same thing using open source I'd prefer to go for the second option though since I think it's got more potential.

Personally I'm in this for the love of technology (I certainly don't mind the monetary rewards, but that's not my primary reason for being in this field) and I'm always a bit paranoid about the industry changing into something I won't enjoy anymore.

[bidi]

Just to further play devil's advocate here, the only truly *free* market for software is to allow developers to choose how to release their software, whether that be open-source or proprietary. Mandating "freedom" as one group sees it can be seen as just limiting "freedom" for others.

My biggest beef with the Free Software Foundation and RM Stallman isn't that they advocate "freedom", but that they advocate their version of freedom, with which I do not entirely agree.

OK, I'll bite! Even though this is like talking about politics, it never really goes anywhere.

The way you describe free in this case is like political anarchy/communism (they're very similar in principle)... everyone does what they want. In theory it's very effective, but does not work in practice. On one hand there's the fact that more people looking at a certain piece of information will yield better results toward perfection. On the other hand it's not hard to find information that is just plain wrong because incompetent people had a shot at it.

A great example of this, not in the software world, would be to compare Wikipedia with Britannica Encyclopedia (any other one you want). Wikipedia is full of errors (mostly spelling mistakes and typos, very little factual mistakes), but since there's so many eyes on it, errors are fixed quickly, but at the same time these corrections introduce spelling mistakes and other types of errors. Britannica doesn't suffer of the same amount of mistakes as Wikipedia, and new editions fix previous errors. Logically, you would think eventually Britannica would have no errors, but this is not true, every edition is published with new/different errors and it's also never fixed. In this analogy, how can someone say which encyclopedia is better? Both of them have mistakes (again, very rarely do you see factual mistakes on either), so Britannica can't be the best choice due to it's accuracy, any teacher will tell say can't use neither as your only reference... if it really is the best there's another reason.

Just throwing it out there to create even more confusion!

[techieMoe]

The way you describe free in this case is like political anarchy/communism (they're very similar in principle)... everyone does what they want. In theory it's very effective, but does not work in practice.

I agree that there are similarities in closed-source and open-source software to systems of government, but I see the roles as being reversed from your perspective.

One software philosophy relies on the will of the people to choose what product stays and what product goes depending on their vote (think wallets). If a product or company become too onerous or tries to take too much control (think UNIX vendors) the people take their money elsewhere.

One software philosophy relies on the will of a handful of "visionaries" or a single "benevolent dictator" who define what "freedoms" users can and cannot have, and if things do not agree with their ideas, they cast them out. (Think the GNUSense distro and the general philosophy of RM Stallman.)

Which of these sounds more like communism to you? I'd comment on your Wikipedia/Brittanica point but I don't see it as really relevant to the topic at hand.

Please note I don't mean to debate communism or capitalism here. I'm just trying to explain my stance on the whole "software should ALWAYS be free" idea.

[Lakshmipathi]

My biggest beef with the Free Software Foundation and RM Stallman isn't that they advocate "freedom", but that they advocate their version of freedom, with which I do not entirely agree.

I believe best Quote for the people in open source/Free Software would be...

"I might disagree with what you have to say, but I'll defend
your right to say it to the death. "-Voltaire

Everybody has their own view on what Free software really mean..and how it should be promoted....

[fingal]

There's a qualitative aspect to this too. What does the software feel like to use, and how does it perform over an extended period of time?

Proprietary software is often beyond the pocket of the average user and a lot of it ends up as unofficial 'freeware' when people pirate it .... That's more of an economic / monetary angle.

From a personal point of view, I'm now running a machine which is 3 years old and still going strong. My previous box - by the time it had reached a similar age - was all but finished. The OS started to fall apart (spyware etc.) ... It became incapable of supporting upgrades.

My 'older system' seems to have actually improved over time. It rarely crashes (if it does then that's usually my own fault!) There are few bugs ...

There's a feeling that the overall quality of the entire system has improved over time. I haven't experienced that before as an end user ...

As people we tend to want to avoid things which are unpleasant ... Using a more open development model may be one way to do this. I know this neatly side-steps any discussion about money v. freedom, but I wanted to suggest another side to things.

I'm interested in the encyclopedia analogy. After all, language is free and open source. Anyone can contribute to it, and a printed work is just a pale shadow of the real thing.

[techieMoe]

There's a qualitative aspect to this too. What does the software feel like to use, and how does it perform over an extended period of time?

There are a lot of great open-source apps out there, but some of their proprietary cousins just *feel* better to me. Example: Photoshop. The GIMP is functionally comparable, but nowhere near as elegant to use in my opinion. Photoshop is definitely one of those that tends to become "unofficial freeware" more often than not.

[bidi]

One software philosophy relies on the will of a handful of "visionaries" or a single "benevolent dictator" who define what "freedoms" users can and cannot have, and if things do not agree with their ideas, they cast them out. (Think the GNUSense distro and the general philosophy of RM Stallman.)

Which of these sounds more like communism to you?

I was talking about theoretical communism, not what we see as communism (the dictatorship portion). Like I said on the previous post, neither anarchy nor communism ever works in the real world. Either way, communism wasn't a good example, since in my opinion, it actually looks great on paper, but has proven to such in practice. Enough about that (against forum rules)!

To address the previous point, in my opinion, RMS didn't force his view on anyone. He just said "In my opinion, this is what software freedom is." Other people just agreed. I also don't think he tries to force his form of freedom on anyone, a good example is that the official GNU distribution comes with lots of BSD, MIT, etc licensed software. I think most of us can agree that the freedoms laid out by FSF/RMS make quite a bit of sense. As a non-developer, the ones that attract me the most are the freedom to use the software how I see fit and distribute it to who I see fit. Non-free software usually doesn't give me these rights (legally, as you can always have these freedoms illegally), and I agree with FSF/RMS that these point do make sense to be described as software freedom. If you actually go to the FSF, or GNU forgot which one, website they have a list of free licenses and licenses that are compatible with the GPL. They obviously encourage you to use the GPL/LGPL but they definately don't force it on anyone.

The gNewSense distro is out there. The fact that the FSF blessed it and not, let say, SUSE is of no suprise to me. The FSF has always made it very clear where it stands on this issue.

[Vergil83]

I think all software should be free for the user.

I made the statement using the particular words for a reason. Not all software needs to be under a free software license. There is plenty of free software is not under such a license. I think this addresses techieMoe's point about firmware for nuclear devices. That fireware is written by the military or some part of the military industrial complex. The only user is the military and for them it is free. The military has the four freedoms of RMS. Just because the military doesn't give it to anyone else doesn't mean it isn't free. Freedom is for the user of the software.