GNU philosophy

[phrostbyte]

Has anyone here read any of Richard Stallman's essays: "GNU Manfiesto", or "Why Software Should Be Free". They are on the GNU website under philosophy. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/

I find the "GNU Manifesto" area where it talks about post-scarcity the most interesting. Mostly I agree with Richard Stallman's philosophies, maybe with a different perspective.

But I know how it is being a proprietary software developer and you have 20 competitors doing the same thing you are doing and you can't share advice or work together, or anything like that because you are fundamentally against each other. And really field itself progresses slowly because of it, too much competition especially in something that is a purely capital expense like software I think is counter-intuitive. Also in proprietary software houses a lot of time tends to be spent on "licensing issues", customers also tend to not get the kind of flexibility they want because they aren't provided with the source or a easy way to modify it.

The fundamental problem with free software is not so much an engineering issue it's an economic issue. The law favours proprietary software by the mere existence of copyright, as well as poor public funding of free software. I think something has to be changed with this. I was interested to see that the "GNU manifesto" actually said something I was parroting quite a few times regarding public funding. I didn't realize RMS had the same opinion. Perhaps I read it a long time ago and forgot it or something. :p

[Mateo]

The "open sourced everything" movement is dead. It died with Sun. It's not economically viable, let's all move on.

The realistic point of view is that open sourced vs. closed source software doesn't matter that much any more. Software doesn't matter that much any more. Software was the 1990s, the 2000s is the internet. And open source has flourished on the internet in the form of open standards and open protocols.

[DeadSuperHero]

Mateo, I will kindly disagree with you on the matter that "Software is not important" and the "Everything free died with Sun" bits.

I think Free Software is largely important. In a society encumbered by proprietary technologies that charge the end user ridiculous amounts of money even for support, it's a breath of fresh air that the GNU project lives on to protect user freedoms. Likewise, the BSD license caters more to developer freedoms.

On the contrary, Free Software still continues to live and thrive. GNOME and KDE are still here, the Linux-libre kernel is still in production, and every day thousands of hobbyists from around the world contribute to FOSS projects that help us advance. So on the contrary, Free Software makes all the difference in my book.

[Wiebelhaus]

Mateo, I will kindly disagree with you on the matter that "Software is not important" and the "Everything free died with Sun" bits.

I think Free Software is largely important. In a society encumbered by proprietary technologies that charge the end user ridiculous amounts of money even for support, it's a breath of fresh air that the GNU project lives on to protect user freedoms. Likewise, the BSD license caters more to developer freedoms.

On the contrary, Free Software still continues to live and thrive. GNOME and KDE are still here, the Linux-libre kernel is still in production, and every day thousands of hobbyists from around the world contribute to FOSS projects that help us advance. So on the contrary, Free Software makes all the difference in my book.

Well said!

[Sublime Porte]

The "open sourced everything" movement is dead. It died with Sun.Was it alive with Sun? As far as I was aware Sun was, for most of it's history a company largely based on close sourced software, we even have thee GJC to prove it!!

They did open up in the end, but even that was not really full open source. It was a developers open source license (not GPL). This is not to say Sun didn't do great things by opening up Java and Solaris, they did, but I wouldn't exactly label them the epitome of open source. Also I don't think they opened up the entire SunOS, just the kernel. The userland on OpenSolaris seems to be mostly made up of the literary works of Stallman & MacKenzie.


And open source has flourished on the internet in the form of open standards and open protocols.Actually this is what I always associated Sun more with. They were instrumental in many of the open standards and protocols that came about, rather than "open source everything".

[Mateo]

Mateo, I will kindly disagree with you on the matter that "Software is not important" and the "Everything free died with Sun" bits.

I think Free Software is largely important. In a society encumbered by proprietary technologies that charge the end user ridiculous amounts of money even for support, it's a breath of fresh air that the GNU project lives on to protect user freedoms. Likewise, the BSD license caters more to developer freedoms.

On the contrary, Free Software still continues to live and thrive. GNOME and KDE are still here, the Linux-libre kernel is still in production, and every day thousands of hobbyists from around the world contribute to FOSS projects that help us advance. So on the contrary, Free Software makes all the difference in my book.

I think we only differ on our adjectives. When I say "important" I really mean "mainstream". Sun was the last chance of open source being mainstream. But as I said before, software doesn't mean as much. And that's actually an advantage to open source, by the way. With the emphasis in technology today being on "get me to the internet", companies are looking for the cheapest solution to achieve that. Then they're going to do their selling on the internet.

But the idea of companies adopting a complete open source strategy is dead. It's not even being thought about among companies that matter.

[phrostbyte]

The "open sourced everything" movement is dead. It died with Sun. It's not economically viable, let's all move on.

The realistic point of view is that open sourced vs. closed source software doesn't matter that much any more. Software doesn't matter that much any more. Software was the 1990s, the 2000s is the internet. And open source has flourished on the internet in the form of open standards and open protocols.

It's actually because the law favors proprietary software. Man's law, not natural law. What I mean by "favors" is stuff like strong copyright law, and extensions to copyright law often put proprietary software at the advantage. You can likewise modify the law to make proprietary software fundamentally unprofitable. The extreme of this would be revoking copyright law.

Open source can be helped economically with public funding. IMO, software gets very poor public funding, especially compared with other fields like physics or medicine.

If you weaken copyright law, and greatly increase public funding to computer science, you will see free software flourish.

[Sinkingships7]

The "open sourced everything" movement is dead. It died with Sun. It's not economically viable, let's all move on.

The realistic point of view is that open sourced vs. closed source software doesn't matter that much any more. Software doesn't matter that much any more. Software was the 1990s, the 2000s is the internet. And open source has flourished on the internet in the form of open standards and open protocols.

Software on the internet is still software. The only difference, in most cases, is that the software is ran on a server and displayed through your web browser, taking the burden from your CPU and laying it on your bandwidth.

Software on the desktop today is still as important and prominent as it was in the 90s. Only, now it's not the only way. It's still necessary though.

[Mateo]

Software on the internet is still software. The only difference, in most cases, is that the software is ran on a server and displayed through your web browser, taking the burden from your CPU and laying it on your bandwidth.

Software on the desktop today is still as important and prominent as it was in the 90s. Only, now it's not the only way. It's still necessary though.

I disagree that desktop software is still as important. I think the only importance there is with business, where I will agree that it is the same as the 90s. But from a home consumer perspective, they must spend 90+% of their time in the browser.

[bryonak]

Sun was the last chance of open source being mainstream.

You know that RedHat has faced an unprecedented growth during the current economic crisis?
And wouldn't you agree that Canonical is heading faster towards the mainstream than Sun did in the whole last decade?
Those two Open Source companies are thriving.

Besides, Oracle is a very strong supporter of Linux... it's the main platform for their software.
I don't think that they'll kill Sun's FOSS projects.

Could you please explain how where do you see the decline of FOSS in business?
True, Sun isn't sovereign anymore, but they were far from the most influential or powerful FOSS corp anyway (IBM, Oracle, RedHat, Novell). And there's a lot of smaller enterprises (Canonical, Mozilla, ...) that keep growing.



On topic:

Stallman is, despite his shortcomings and "stubbornness", a highly intelligent and anticipatory man.
There is that prevailing image of him being a fanatic idealist, but everyone who takes the time to actually hear what he has to say will find himself agreeing on many things.
I think that it's mainly the rigidness/puritanism with which he pursues his goals which puts people off and makes him many enemies.

At the same time I think we need such a persona that anchors one "end of the scale".

[forrestcupp]

Software doesn't matter that much any more. Software was the 1990s, the 2000s is the internet. And open source has flourished on the internet in the form of open standards and open protocols.First of all, it takes software to even run things from the internet; so that's a flawed perception from the beginning.

Secondly, at this point in time, the internet isn't sufficient to do all of the things we can possibly do with software. Have you ever tried to play an internet based episodic 3D game based on the Source engine? It sucks. They can't put as much into it, and it takes forever to download each level to play. Then if you want to play a level again, you have to redownload it. Also, it actually installs some software to your hard drive.

It's not just games; that's just one evident example. You can't say that resident software is obsolete until we get to the point that everyone has internet services at speeds that rival hard drive speeds. I don't think we'll be anywhere near that for a long, long time.



Open source can be helped economically with public funding. IMO, software gets very poor public funding, especially compared with other fields like physics or medicine.

That's open source's main flaw. If it needs funding, it either relies on people's good will, or paid support, which is annoying. You can't rely on people's good will, because we live in a world that is primarily self-seeking. You can't really rely on paid support because there is a million forums out there full of dupes like us who jump at the chance to give free support to rack up our bean count.

I guarantee that there aren't very many Free Software users who donate to every software project they use an equivalent amount of what they would have paid if they would have bought a commercial program.

[Sinkingships7]

I disagree that desktop software is still as important. I think the only importance there is with business, where I will agree that it is the same as the 90s. But from a home consumer perspective, they must spend 90+% of their time in the browser.

Aye. Most people do spend the majority of time in their browser. The point I'm trying to make is that while people may use software less of the time, it's still equally as important. i.e., there's no replacement.

[Simian Man]

I hate reading through a thread, thinking of the points I want to make, only to find the thread is dead and was necromanced by a spammer :(.

[dniMretsaM]

i hate reading through a thread, thinking of the points i want to make, only to find the thread is dead and was necromanced by a spammer :(.

+1

[KiwiNZ]

The spammer is burnt, now hush little thread, sleep well.