He associates evil with charging money for software but not letting the buyer having his basic owner rights. Being that the right to modify, use and redistribute.
When asked that question he usually replies "if you can't make money by doing free software, maybe you can look for another job". One cannot blame him for putting his ethical principles in front of his professional interests. I, for one, think that's the way it should be.
In 2011 in hacker news we still have to clarify this... oh well...
In general, the idea of not expecting other people to act ethically, and doing nothing when others are acting unethically, seems morally suspect. We regularly decry Facebook and Google for practices that compromise privacy--is this wrong? Privacy is not some magic right which everybody acknowledges is important; in fact, Zuckerburg believes he is helping the world by limit it.
Stallman is just doing the same thing as the people commenting on Facebook's practices, just against proprietary software rather than privacy abuses. I think that not only should we not blame him, but we should also commend him for maintaining and arguing for his principles.
Wait a minute now. Are those really a user's basic rights? Who is Stallmam to decide for both users and developers what our rights are? If users get those rights then developers have theirs taken from them.
This is unique to software and it isn't right. There's an underlying sense of entitlement to this that I don't agree with. No one is entitled to the right to modify my work and redistribute it. That completely undermines the developer and there's no incentive for people to innovate. It's a free for all where everyone rips everyone else off. This only works if everyone holds firm to Stallmam's beliefs.
If we want to talk about rights and freedom, how about the right for everyone to choose. As it stands now we all can choose to make or use software that allows us to modify, extend, or distribute or we can choose to go proprietary. Both have their merits for both users and developers. These aren't really rights at all. Anything that takes freedom from one group and shifts it to another isn't freedom at all.
Stallman's entire ideology is built around a false choice. This shouldn't be free or proprietary, it should be free and proprietary.
Stallman's ideology is actually fundamentally libertarian. The core principle of libertarianism is, "Your rights end where mine begin." It doesn't matter if you're a state, a corporation or another individual. Your rights end where mine begin.
Amongst the rights granted to each individual is the right to modify the tools that they use. You restricting my freedom to modify is as wrong (according to Stallman) as you restricting my freedom to move about.
I think "libertarian" is close but not quite right (unless you are coming from Chomsky's viewpoint, which is a niche within a niche, at least as far as US libertarian thinking is concerned).
If you take libertarianism to mean "allow anything that is consensual and does not involve externalities", then proprietary software as implemented today is totally fine. The user consents to an agreement that amounts to "I'll give you the output of my compiler, but I'm not going to give you the input. Also, you have to promise not to redistribute it."
Of course, setting up the details of that arrangement for every creative work would be a huge hassle, and copyright is an attempt (in my opinion a failed one) to streamline it. One way to envision copyright in a libertarian framework is a legal presupposition that when I tell you a "creative secret" (copyrighted work), you'll keep it secret (won't redistribute) unless I give you explicit permission (a license).
*Edit: to elaborate on why I think copyright is a failed streamlining of the above framework, I'll just give one example. If I broadcast my "creative secret" out loud (or over the EM spectrum) then I can't reasonably expect it to be secret. The people who listen to it and hear my "secret" have never formed a consensual agreement with me. Thus, copyright as it stands gets twisted into "you can't participate in public communications without promising to pretend that various things you hear are owned secrets"
A human's birthright is to learn from and improve their tools. Making software proprietary demotes a tool to an appliance we can only interact with in prescribed ways as mere consumers, a role which is beneath us. It severely limits the benefits society derives from your work, and I believe it also harms the customers through learned helplessness. Our incentive should be getting paid for writing the code as a work for hire, not coding on spec and then rent-seeking against people for finding it useful.
Before software, this was much less feasible and generally nobody bothered (e.g., this is why they still sell cars without the hood welded shut, and why simpler computers used to come with schematics).
_Wait a minute now. Are those really a user's basic rights? Who is Stallmam to decide for both users and developers what our rights are? If users get those rights then developers have theirs taken from them._
He didn't decide anything, he simply presents his view on such matters and backs it up with solid logic.
Anyone is free to disagree with him and to make oneself heard.
"Being that the right to modify, use and redistribute."
....except using it in a proprietary application and not redistributing your changes. Just ask the Thesis theme owner about this.
"He associates evil with charging money for software but not letting the buyer having his basic owner rights. Being that the right to modify, use and redistribute."
The problem with what you said here is that he things its evil to not allow someone to be able to share an application with all of their friends after they bought it once. I suppose he's not directly saying money is evil, but since you pretty much can't make money on an app this way (eventually it will be shared and you will lose any hope of making a profit), he's indirectly saying it.
Sure, you can make money on support, but this rules out most small companies because most simply don't have the support staff.
Eventually, this will catch up with the development community. We've all seen bookstores, newspapers, and many other traditional businesses go under in the past couple of years due to the Internet.
Business owners are getting more tech savvy as the older generation dies off. Why should I hire a college-educated software engineer that can write complex apps when I can get all of those difficult parts for free in an OSS app and hire a less-educated software mechanic for less money?
We aren't there yet, but as more and more things are released for free, we will be. My prediction is that the prevalence of open source software it will devalue developer wages over time.
I've already seen it happening. Not necessarily devaluing, but hiring one developer instead of three because an open source app can be used.
I've already seen it happening. Not necessarily devaluing, but hiring one developer instead of three because an open source app can be used.
How does that devalue developers? Heck, why would you consider this a problem at all? Do you consider it a problem as well that you can use free libraries as well instead of having to write your own implementation of everything? Or think it is problematic that people can use an operating system that works out of the box instead of having to program their own kernel and abstractions?
Avoiding redundant efforts and duplication is good. Whether that means not having to re-write the same code or not having to hire more developers to solve a problem that's been solved before does not matter.
The jobs argument is funny: I bet many of the same people who argue against open source software because it takes developer's jobs are the same who are completely happy with automation taking away menial factory jobs.
Maybe they only hired one developer instead of three. But this is a good thing--they were able to create the same value for a third the cost; this is a benefit to everybody.
"Maybe they only hired one developer instead of three. But this is a good thing--they were able to create the same value for a third the cost; this is a benefit to everybody."
I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I'm just warning developers that choose to give all their best code away for free. When they find themselves out of a job in 5 years, they shouldn't complain.
"How does that devalue developers? Heck, why would you consider this a problem at all? Do you consider it a problem as well that you can use free libraries as well instead of having to write your own implementation of everything?"
It's not a problem for me. I own a business and I'm a developer. It just means cheaper labor for me in the future.
He associates evil with charging money for software but not letting the buyer having his basic owner rights. Being that the right to modify, use and redistribute.
Read this on the gnu website and understand how wrong you are: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
When asked that question he usually replies "if you can't make money by doing free software, maybe you can look for another job". One cannot blame him for putting his ethical principles in front of his professional interests. I, for one, think that's the way it should be.
In 2011 in hacker news we still have to clarify this... oh well...