zlacker

>>kotaKa+(OP)
The funny thing is Stallman started his fight like half a century ago and on regular days Hacker News shits on him eating something off of his foot and not being polished and diplomatic, and loves practical aspects of Corporate Open Source and gratis goodies and doesn't particularly care about Free Software.

On this day suddenly folks come out of the woodwork advocating for half baked measures to achieve what Stallman portrayed but they still hardly recognize this was EXACTLY his concern when he started the Free Software movement.

>>tgma+Rs1
It's possible to believe both that Stallman is over the top and that stuff like this Google action is bad, and even to be right on both. It's even easier to believe that Stallman has had some good ideas but is still a deeply flawed human being, and has also incidentally not been the most effective advocate for his own ideals.

>>BrenBa+zt1
It is possible, sure, but I have a feeling it goes unrecognized how prophetic and precise his concerns were, and that this is very similar to his original issue with the closed-source printer software he was not allowed to fix, and he does not get credit for his predictions, as people simply pass by, and not connect it to the Free Software issue, when issues like this happen; meanwhile he takes all the downsides of being brash and anti-corporate, which is taken advantage of by the Corporate Open Source crowd.

>>tgma+bu1
But Android is open source. In a way the situation here shows the limits of what is possible just by imposing license requirements that require distribution of source code. The problem is the concentration of power in the provision of services. Even licenses like the AGPL don't really solve the problem here, which is that there is a coalition of businesses including, say, Google and banks, that via their provision of essential services hold worrisome sway over the practical ability of many individuals to live their lives.

Stallman's statements about how the person controlling nonfree software "is your master" are important, but they don't go far enough. The problem is not just the controlling of abstract intellectual property like intellectual property rights to particular software. The problem includes the actual control of how services are provided. When the provision of important services --- be they auth, email, banking, groceries, whatever --- is concentrated in a few hands, those hands become masters of many, regardless of the software licenses involved.