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.
Because I see A LOT of “open source” advocates these days, and more and more “source available”.
But the old school Free Software hippies(that started with BSD, NOT GNU, IMNHO) are slowly dying out and being replaced with?
Yes, it's unfair that someone can be 100% correct but people won't listen to them because of their appearance or mannerisms. But whining about that unfairness is unproductive. People will never listen to someone who can't stop themselves from eating stuff from their foot in public.
I think his take on what compromises are valid and what aren't makes this clear: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/compromise.en.html
In fact, this particular incident, re Android, a seemingly "open" system, is a perfect example of the importance of his PoV in particular, as it illustrates that Open Source ideology would not have been enough to ensure the user is in control.
It's also a damn shame that the majority of the people who are skilled at communicating messages effectively are working for these corporations; because without them, the unfiltered message of people like Stallman is all we've got.
Ask yourself how come free software is everywhere, with licenses for various stuff neatly tucked away out of sight unless you're trying to find it, not to mention all the giant clusters of Linux machines in data centers running Samba, PostgreSQL, and all sorts of free software, and at the same time the FSF still has just a small appartment on the 5th floor of a building in Boston?
Here, take a look: https://www.fsf.org/about/contact/tour-2010
So much time and effort wasted on a fruitless effort to redefine words that already have well established meanings.
That's how revolutions succeed, historically.
Problem is that many people today do still mistake Free software as no cost and for good reason. Funnily enough, "open sourcesource" turns out to have great SEO. Free software doesn't.
https://www.fsf.org/about/contact/
>As of September 1, 2024, we have gone remote and no longer have an office for people to visit.
IIRC they moved somewhere else in the interim.
I'm not especially good at this, and obviously 'free software' has the benefit of a few decades history among the people who actually know it. But almost anything seems better than a phrase which has a very obvious meaning that's not the one you meant, and the consequent need for fussy little explanations. Especially when most Free Software is also free software.
No revolutions turn out good for everyone, and there is no solution that fits all. Sometimes the rich and powerful needs to be dragged into the streets and executed, so they are reminded to be scared of the people under them. If they don't fear the population, then they see that there are no consequences for their actions.
His point of view and his goals are completely besides the point that he is unfit as a spokesperson for them.
Sadly. Because I agree with him quite a lot, and he does have good arguments.
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.
We don't need more polished people.
People arguing this should realize that actors fighting oh the other side of the war might act kind and use politically correct wording, but they're still eroding our freedom little by little.
Arguments like this ("his behaviour") really mean that people care about policing other people's behaviour more than they care about the actual topic being discussed.
Downvote me if you want, I don't care:
- Stallman, singlehandedly, did more than anybody else for freedom in the computing industry.
- People pushing those arguments a huge part of the problem.
- People like Stallman are a huge part of the solution.
He's not an open source advocate as such, but his work on consumer rights and enshittification promotes solutions like using open source software, right to repair and strong consumer protection regulations.
You sound exactly like the people who condemned Socrates to death 24 centuries ago.
Which ideas? I've read ideas from him that were borderline scandalous. I wouldn't say that 100% of what he ever said was "completely spot on".
Now if we are talking about the subset of his ideas that were completely spot on, then yeah, they are completely spot on :-).
I guess my point is that one can agree with a subset of his ideas and still dislike the guy. And I don't see why those ideas couldn't live without him. Especially if they are completely spot on. I don't get the cult of personality, not only for Stallman.
AOSP is as open source as Chromium is, and both are controlled by Google. To those who criticise Android devs... are you running Firefox?
> The problem includes the actual control of how services are provided.
FSF has opinions about SaaS which they call SaaSS (Service as a Software Substitute).
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...
That is severe understatement. Plenty of people and political activists are not polished and not diplomatic ... while still not reaching Stallmans levels. Majority of them, actually.
> eating something off of his foot
Yeah, that episode is unforgettable.
If Android was AGPL without source assignment, this wouldn't be an issue.
Thanks to the anti-tivoization clause manufacturers are required to provide you with the ability to run your own code on the device, without any restrictions, so you'd have a guaranteed right to root the device and sideload your own apps, without something like SafetyNet being able to figure it out.
You see this phenomenon in every movement for societal change. The more dogmatic they are, the larger their effect on public opinion.
The fact that the modern programming world defaults to releasing their code using corporate-friendly OSS licences like MIT is thanks to Stallman's and GNU's campaigns.
Not at all, that's why there are separate terms! GNU has an article that's worth reading: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
I'll point out a very practical case. I was once-upon-a-time interested in Nostr, because I liked the relay idea. I looked for a client, and found one called Amethyst. When I installed it, I saw the author had inserted a pop-up on load that had me agreeing to his "Terms and Conditions" for using "the service". But the author had no service...he was worried about his liability if I posted something. Stallman saw this coming! From the article above:
> Third, the criteria for open source are concerned solely with the use of the source code. Indeed, almost all the items in the Open Source Definition are formulated as conditions on the software's source license rather than on what users are free to do. However, people often describe an executable as “open source,” because its source code is available that way. That causes confusion in paradoxical situations where the source code is open source (and free) but the executable itself is nonfree.
> The trivial case of this paradox is when a program's source code carries a weak free license, one without copyleft, but its executables carry additional nonfree conditions. Supposing the executables correspond exactly to the released sources—which may or may not be so—users can compile the source code to make and distribute free executables. That's why this case is trivial; it is no grave problem.
And this is _exactly_ the argument the author of Amethyst makes, check out how he reasons through the additional restrictions: https://github.com/vitorpamplona/amethyst/issues/378
His reasoning is squarely in this weird zone the Stallman wrote about:
> I am confused. Why are we mixing the license with the terms of use? These two files are separate legal matters. The Privacy is used by the Play Store to manage the distribution of the executables. The MIT license relates to the source code only.
> In other words, the MIT license removes any author liability from the misuse of the code. But when the author is also providing the system as binaries (which is an additional service in every jurisdiction I know of), there are many other legal issues that the source code license won't cover.
> And I don't know about you, but I am not comfortable allowing people to use the Play Store version or the FDroid version for these activities written in the Privacy statement. Most of them are local crimes that should not happen anyway.
> This has nothing to do with the source code license, which people can still download, compile and use in nefarious ways.
Anyway, my point is, in practice, there's a million ways to water down "open source" to remove user freedoms, and the value of Free Software is that it keeps the focus in the right place to avoid falling victim to those tricks.
What happened to GenX, Millenials and GenZ ? Why aren't there any more vocal activists doing something? The internet fuked us up. We're full of armchair experts "fighting" the cause laying in our coach.
As you may be aware, the open source initiative started much after free software movement by people who disagreed with Stallman and the free software philosophy. The core idea of OSI is that by keeping the source code open, more people from a wider background can work on it to improve its quality in terms of features, design, correctness, bug reporting and fixing, security, documentation, etc. The idea is to make software more of a shared resource, thus achieving what is difficult for a single company to achieve. With that in mind, OSI borrows one more requirement from the FSF - there can't be any limitation on the user as to how they use it.
Now coming to the Free Software philosophy as defined by FSF, opening the source is just a secondary concern - a means to an end. That end, the primary concern, being computing freedom. What it means is that any computing device must do only and exactly what its owner wishes it to do. This means that the device owner must be able to verify the functionality of the software and modify it to suit them, if necessary (with 3rd party help, if needed). This is possible only if the device owner also has the source code of the software. But that's where the requirement for open source code ends for free software. If the author of the software and the device owner wishes, they can keep the source all to themselves. There are plenty of cases where this actually makes sense. Anyway, the people who possess the software are also allowed to distribute the software as they see fit.
As you can see, the computing freedom part is the centerpiece of the free software philosophy. But it isn't a concern at all for open source. I will explain why later. In practice, most licenses that satisfy one philosophy automatically meets the requirements of the other. Thus free software license list and open source license list overlap for the most part (with a few exceptions). But the philosophical differences extend well beyond the licenses and deep into the software design itself. If the device owner/software user is supposed to have any freedom, the software must be small, easy to read and understand, easily hackable and modifiable, well documented, highly modular with very good glue layer and highly configurable. This concept pervades the GNU software design. Emacs is the best example of this. Others include GNU Shepherd, Guile, Guix, Poke, GDB and a lot of others.
Now coming to open source, we have this notion that if the source code is open, it is pro-user and pro-freedom. This is true for most FOSS code, because their authors have more or less the same idea. But it's entirely possible to create an open source project that actively denies or even degrades the control of the device owner over their device, and thus their freedom. Take these examples - Android, Chrome browser (and its derivatives), SystemD and VSCode. How many of these projects listen to the public about their design choices? Which among them can you realistically fork and maintain as an individual or even as a company? (Not even MNCs try that with Chrome). How deeply and freely configurable are any of them? Are you able to remove or disable their user-hostile features? Are you able to use their submodules? Have your ever seen their code while troubleshooting or debugging? Have you been able to stop them from corrupting open standards and ecosystems? These are the open source non-free software .
Now, how did open source become popular in place of free software? Its proponents would have you believe that FSF is heavy on 'ideology'. Except, those ideologies were actually very stark warnings about the future. Open source became popular because the corporations used their enormous wealth to downplay, malign and suppress the idea of computing freedom. This is just like how they made permissive licenses popular over copyleft licenses. Both were driven by greed. If the suppression of copyleft licenses was about obtaining unpaid labor, suppression of computing freedom was about usurping the device owners' control over their own devices.
Now that we have problems like Google mandating developer verification on Android, or unilaterally deprecating XSLT from the web standards, know that they are all the result of everyone contemptuously dismissing Stallman as an attention seeking lone rebel when he was trying to draw attention to the oppression that he clearly foresaw. Heck! Even I could see this from a mile away! But this world is driven by hype and ill advised blind faith.
There was a time getting bought up by a large company seems like a great success and exit strategy. Now days the only things that I want spend my time making are things that are useful for people around me, not things that are useful for industrial military and surveillance state.
If he were normal he’d probably have ended up working at MS, IBM, Oracle.
Of course if his behavior bothers you then fork it and rewrite his work and maintain it then you have a laundered version of the same thing but you probably don’t care that much about his behavior to do that so it’s pointless to bring up.
There's genuine need for application developers to gain access to extremely secure end-to-end attestation of the environment their apps are running in. Its a rare need, but it does exist. There's also genuine need for some consumers to opt-in to a strict security regime.
Google's change forces this draconian, dishonorable regime on all application developers and on all users. Its a change that serves no one except their shareholders.
I don't think Stallman is abrasive out of a sense of respect and duty to the system of public debate.
Even today on HN most use chrome instead of firefox and mac instead of linux and. If you can't even convince the biggest nerds that supporting alternatives is important, what chances do you have?
That's news to me! But no. Open source philosophy isn't free software stripped of its ethics question. I have written an essay/article/novel/epic here: >>45027202
I mean - Western world is a bit tougher place for protesting than it used to be, due to capital accumulation. Free SW is admirable but a pretty first world problem, unfortunately, low on the list of priorities.
Diplomacy does matter whether you like it or not. Especially before the person or people you're trying to persuade have heard your argument.
People are prejudiced, plain and simple.
The world would be a much, much worse place without Free Software. We own the obligation to keep the fight up. So many of us profit from it, and so many people depend on it.
No, just about everyone critiquing RMS's behavior is saying that it negatively affects his own movement. That it makes it more difficult to advocate for Free Software, that it diminishes the FSF.
> Well, it is absolutely true, for their cause, not his.
You have it backwards. Open Source is so much bigger than Free Software, that it's not even funny. The Open Source people are not scared of RMS affecting a movement widely accepted in almost every major tech company.
Can you cite me a source for this? Specifically to show that there are a "lot" of them being deported, and that the cause is definitely "for defending Palestinians" and nothing else?
The people writing the software need to eat and if they can't do that it doesn't matter what the license is, the software won't get written and no one will be able to use it. Moves like this thing by Google are about economics rather than licenses or abstract ideas like "freedom". A world with ten gazillion closed-source programs competing would likely be more free than one with tons of open source software but only one company that can pay a living wage so that people can work on that software.
You continuing with culture that fundamentally dismisses/devalues humans is the main issue here. Culture change starts from within. He works as a spokesperson for me becahse I'm much more inclined to someone showing basic humanity, like eating off a foot, than someone showing basic inhumanity, like catering to preferences born inside a country (like the US) that was founded on genocide & enslavement.
A simple google search away.
How the hell is chrome significantly more secure than firefox?
The AOSP version of Android is both open source and free software. Open source and free software are both exactly the same thing.
I imagine a future where users will be able to tell a local AI to modify their software or make the comptuer do what they want. At first it seems like the final conclusion of extending device freedom to all users, but I suppose even LLMs would count as non-free software since they're basically blobs of unintelligible parameters...
Anyway, thanks for writing this.
Thank you! I'm glad you liked it.
> I imagine a future where users will be able to tell a local AI to modify their software or make the comptuer do what they want. ..., but I suppose even LLMs would count as non-free software since they're basically blobs of unintelligible parameters...
Hmm! That's something I haven't considered before. A very good point!
No single app has access to any data thanks to hardware-assisted virtualization. Last time a VM escape in the modern Qubes implementation was discovered in 2006 by the Qubes founder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Pill_(software).
First of all, from a public image point of view, it really doesn't matter at all whether he ate something off his foot or whether he says "Amazon swindle", because Stallman isn't the gateway into free softward anymore.
To an order of magnitude, no one in the last 15 years has heard of Stallman then free software.
The real role of Stallman is to avoid the movement being co-opted by soulless and/or corporate interests. As long as Stallman is here, you can't make free software corporate and well-mannered, which essentially means you can't absorb it into a marketing strategy for your next brand of phones unless you actually plan to deliver.
These simple repeated ideas slowly absorb into people's subconscious.