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Richard Stallman founded the GNU Project in 1984, and the Free Software Foundation in 1985. He also originally authored a number of well known and highly used development tools, including the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), the GNU symbolic debugger (GDB) and GNU Emacs.
To better understand Richard Stallman and the GNU project, I recommend you begin by reviewing their philosophy page. On it you will find a wealth of information.
We began this interview via email, but later had to finish by telephone after Richard Stallman fell and broke his arm. He was kind enough to speak with me at length, discussing his first contact with computers, his time in the AI lab, the current state of the GNU Hurd, his current role in the Free Software Foundation, the problems with non-free software, and much more. The following words offer much insight into how we got here, and what challenges we still face.
Background:
Jeremy Andrews: When did you first start working with computers?
Richard Stallman: I first read manuals and wrote programs on paper in 1962 or so. 1969 was when I first saw and used a real computer.
JA: What types of programs were you writing prior to actually seeing and using a real computer?
Richard Stallman: They were pretty trivial, like things to add up a vector of numbers. About the time I first started with a real computer I designed a computer language based on string substitution. In some ways like SNOBOL, although I'd never used SNOBOL.
And then, the first thing I started writing when I had a real computer to use--I'd seen the language PL/I and I was thrilled by how many features it had. But there was a feature it didn't have: it didn't have the summation convention used in tensor analysis. So I started to write a pre-processor for PL/I that would implement the summation convention. I didn't ever finish it, but I actually got some parts of it to work. I wrote it first in PL/I, and then we discovered that even one pass of it wouldn't fit in the machine that was available. (I had actually written a lot of parts of this in PL/I on paper by that point.) Then I started rewriting it in assembler language, but I only rewrote a few passes of it in assembler language. And then I learned about things like lists and about Lisp, and lost interest in languages like PL/I.
JA: When you graduated from Harvard in 1974 with a BA in physics, how did you intend to use your degree?
Richard Stallman: I thought I would become a theoretical physicist; however, the pleasure of programming, where I could make real progress and see results, gradually grew and overtook the pleasure of learning physics.
Life In The AI Lab:
JA: What tasks occupied your time at the AI Lab through the 1970s?
Richard Stallman: Mostly operating system development, but I did one AI research project with Professor Sussman; we developed dependency-directed backtracking.
JA: What is dependency-directed backtracking?
Richard Stallman: You make some assumptions, and with those together with some given facts you draw a conclusion. You may reach a contradiction; if so, at least one of your assumptions that led to that contradiction must be wrong. You also record which combination of assumptions actually related to the contradiction, so you can deduce that that combination of assumptions cannot all be true. Then you backtrack by changing assumptions, but you never try a set of assumptions that includes the combination that you know are contradictory. Now, this is a technique that people had used for a long time in thinking. It's also known as proof analysis. But it hadn't been used in computerized reasoning.
JA: What was the result of this research project?
Richard Stallman: We published a paper. The technique got used by other people later, so apparently it became part of AI.
Also, I learned how to understand electrical circuits better. The program that we wrote, which used this technique, was a program for understanding electrical circuits. By imitating the program, I could understand circuits better than I could before.
The GNU Project And The Free Software Foundation:
JA: The story of your encounter with non-free printer software in the early 80's is very well known. This incident ultimately resulted in your founding the GNU Project in 1984, and the Free Software Foundation in 1985. You have remained quite active in this movement ever since, as a public speaker and a prolific author of free software. Of which of your many achievements in the past two decades are you the most proud?
Richard Stallman: What I am proud of is that we have built a community where people can use computers and work together in freedom.
JA: What are the largest challenges you're facing today?
Richard Stallman: Software patents. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The broadcast flag. Cards with secret specifications. Non-free Java platforms.
In other words, organized efforts by people with power to put an end to our freedom.
JA: Is there a plan for addressing these issues?
Richard Stallman: Regarding the laws, not much of one, in the US. In other countries that do not yet have these laws, we can try to prevent them.
JA: That's a bit scary.
Richard Stallman: It is.
"Free Software" vs. "Open Source":
JA: You regularly have to explain the differences between "free software" and "open source software", and yet the media continues to confuse these terms. For our readers that may therefor be confused themselves, can you explain the differences, and why it is important to get it right?
Richard Stallman: Free software and open source are the slogans of two different movements with different philosophies. In the free software movement, our goal is to be free to share and cooperate. We say that non-free software is antisocial because it tramples the users' freedom, and we develop free software to escape from that.
The open source movement promotes what they consider a technically superior development model that usually gives technically superior results. The values they cite are the same ones Microsoft appeals to: narrowly practical values.
Free software and open source are also both criteria for software licenses. These criteria are written in very different ways but the licenses accepted are almost the same. The main difference is the difference in philosophy.
Why does the philosophy matter? Because people who don't value their freedom will lose it. If you give people freedom but don't teach them to value it, they won't hold on to it for long. So it is not enough to spread free software. We have to teach people to demand freedom, to fight for freedom. Then we may be able to overcome the problems that today I see no way to solve.
"GNU/Linux":
JA: Another frequent area of confusion is the name 'GNU/Linux'. Why is the GNU project's contribution significant enough that it should be in the name of the operating system, especially compared to other large pieces of any Linux-kernel based operating system, such as XFree86?
Richard Stallman: It's no coincidence that the code we wrote for the GNU system is the largest single contribution to the GNU/Linux system today. Many other people and projects have developed free software programs now used in the system; TeX, BSD code, X11, Linux, and Apache are noteworthy examples. But it was the GNU Project that set out to develop a complete free operating system. The combined system we use today is founded on GNU.
JA: In talking about GNU Linux...
Richard Stallman: I prefer to pronounce it GNU-slash-Linux, or GNU-plus-Linux. The reason is that when you say GNU-Linux it is very much prone to suggest a misleading interpretation. After all, we have GNU Emacs which is the version of Emacs which was developed for GNU. If you say "GNU Linux", people will think it means a version of Linux that was developed for GNU. Which is not the fact.
JA: You're trying to point out instead that it's a combination of the two.
Richard Stallman: Exactly. It's GNU plus Linux together.
JA: Which makes up the GNU+Linux operating system that everyone uses.
Richard Stallman: Exactly.
JA: What is gained by people using the term GNU/Linux?
Richard Stallman: People know that Linus Torvalds wrote his program Linux to have fun. And people know that Linus Torvalds did not say that it's wrong to stop users for sharing and changing the software they use. If they think that our system was started by him and primarily owes existence to him, they will tend to follow his philosophy, and that weakens our community.
It's an interesting anecdote to think that the whole operating system exists because an undergraduate thought that it was a fun project. But the real story is that this system exists because of people who were determined to fight for freedom and willing to work for years if that's what it took. That's a story that teaches people something worth learning.
When people forget that, they start drifting toward the practical but superficial values shared by the open source movement and Microsoft: the idea that the only thing that matters about your software is whether it gets your jobs done and what it costs.
JA: Which begins to answer my next question, what is lost when people refuse to use the term GNU/Linux?
Richard Stallman: What's lost is an opportunity to teach people. The software is equally free regardless of whatever name you call it--if, that is, the distro you're using really is free. But the only free GNU/Linux distro I know of is UTUTO. Most versions of the GNU/Linux system are not entirely free software. All the commercial distributors put in non-free software. And then there's Debian which keeps all the non-free software clearly separated, but does distribute it. And those who sell Debian GNU/Linux often add a few non-free programs as a "bonus"... They invite you to think it's a bonus you're getting that your freedom is no longer complete.
If you happen to be running a version of GNU/Linux which doesn't have the non-free software, then the situation is not materially changed by the name you use. But the situation we're likely to find ourselves in five years from now depends on what we teach each other today.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but if you called it an onion you'd get cooks very confused.
GNU/Hurd:
JA: The GNU Hurd has been under development for over a decade. There was talk of a 1.0 release over a year ago, but this was delayed due to a couple of lacking features. What is the current status of this project?
Richard Stallman: The Hurd runs, and missing features are gradually being added. However, for practical use today, you would use a Linux-based version of GNU.
JA: Do you have any predictions as to when we're going to see a 1.0 release?
Richard Stallman: No, I'm afraid I don't, I'm sad to say. A lot of the Hurd developers seem to have decided that they should re-write it to work with a different micro-kernel (L4). I was disappointed to hear this, but now it looks like it will be some more years before the Hurd is usable.
At least we do have a free kernel that works with GNU.
JA: Will the GNU Project focus solely on a GNU system built around the GNU Hurd when it is released, or will it continue to support a widening range of free-software kernels?
Richard Stallman: We will keep supporting Linux-based versions of the GNU system for as long as they remain popular.
JA: How will we refer to a Hurd-based operating system? Is it GNU Hurd, or GNU slash Hurd?
Richard Stallman: It's the GNU operating system, and the Hurd is its kernel. But because it's so common for people to use version of GNU that are based on Linux as the kernel, it's useful to contrast the two, and talk about GNU/Linux and GNU/Hurd, which are two different versions of the GNU system with different kernels.
JA: What would the advantages of using a GNU/Hurd system be over say a GNU/Linux system?
Richard Stallman: There's probably no gigantic advantage that jumps out at the user's face if you're not writing interesting programs. The Hurd offers interesting, powerful capabilities. For instance, you can write your own filesystem, so you could implement any sort of behavior you want and package it as a file. It offers the possibility of implementing sandboxes, where you can run a program but have another program monitoring all its I/O to make sure it doesn't start writing in files it wasn't expected to.
These things may be doable with a kernel that doesn't have the Hurd's architecture, but with the Hurd it's trivial and the most natural thing in the world.
Writing Code vs. Management:
JA: How much source code do you write these days?
Richard Stallman: I myself? Only a little, on Emacs. I was involuntarily self-promoted into management.
JA: That's an interesting description. How did this happen?
Richard Stallman: The amount of management and activism that had to be done got more and more, and so I had to find other people to take over more and more of my programming responsibilities.
JA: Do you miss the programming?
Richard Stallman: Yes. It's fun.
JA: Is the management/activist role something you desire to remain in?
Richard Stallman: I wouldn't say I desire to, but it's necessary that I do so. At the moment we don't have anyone to replace me. We're actually thinking about how we we could try and develop people who could do this, so that I will not be indispensable.
JA: What is your role these days?
Richard Stallman: Partly it is being a very firm and determined leader. Partly it is being an orator. Partly it is advising other people on how to be activists or how to contribute to free software. I've learned something that a lot of people could usefully know: how to be extremely persistent and whenever one avenue was blocked find another.
I've also learned the spirit of what you do when you're fighting for freedom. When it's a fight that you can't ever give up as lost.
JA: Many of the programs you were the original author for are key components of much software development today (free and non-free alike), such as the GNU Compiler Collection (gcc), the GNU symbolic debugger (gdb), and GNU Emacs. All of these projects have remained under constant development over the years. How closely have you followed the many projects you've started, and how do you feel about the directions they've taken?
Richard Stallman: I don't follow GCC and GDB in technical detail nowadays--other people now have that responsibility. I still supervise Emacs development.
GNU Emacs:
JA: Then you are still working on Emacs at a code level?
Richard Stallman: Yes, although now with my broken arm I really have no time to program anything. I will when my arm is better and I can type for myself again.
JA: May I ask what happened to your arm?
Richard Stallman: I fell and broke my arm, and I needed surgery. It hurts, and I think it will never be normal again. But I think it will work for typing. (Later: it works fine for typing, but it tingles all the time.)
JA: I'm sorry to hear about your arm, and I wish you a speedy recovery.
I recently reread Cliff Stoll's "The Cuckoo's Egg". Are you familiar with the book?
Richard Stallman: I have a vague memory of it.
JA: A quick summary, he talks about a spy that breaks into a university computer system, initially using a security hole in GNU Emacs...
Richard Stallman: Well, whether it's really a security hole, or whether he had made a mistake by installing a certain program setuid is subject to argument.
JA: That's exactly what I was curious about, just what your reaction would have been to the book when it came out.
Richard Stallman: His book made it sound like Emacs, or actually movemail I think it was... His book made it sound like it was normal to install movemail setuid. I think some people sometimes did that, as there was a certain problem you could get around by doing that, but that wasn't the normal way to install it. So in fact, people installing Emacs the usual way would not have had that problem.
On the other hand, it certainly was useful to make Emacs more bulletproof, so that that problem couldn't happen even if you installed movemail as setuid.
That was ages ago.
Non-Free Software:
JA: What is your reaction to tools such as gcc, gdb and GNU Emacs being used for the development of non-free software?
Richard Stallman: Any development of non-free software is harmful and unfortunate, whether it uses GNU tools or other tools. Whether it is good or bad, in the long term, for the future of computer users' freedom that one can use these tools to develop non-free software is a question whose answer I could only guess at.
JA: How do you react to the opinion that non-free software is justified as a means for raising dollars that can then be put into the development of completely new software, money that otherwise may not have been available, and thus creating software that may have never been developed?
Richard Stallman: This is no justification at all. A non-free program systematically denies the users the freedom to cooperate; it is the basis of an antisocial scheme to dominate people. The program is available lawfully only to those who will surrender their freedom. That's not a contribution to society, it's a social problem. It is better to develop no software than to develop non-free software.
So if you find yourself in that situation, please don't follow that path. Please don't write the non-free program--please do something else instead. We can wait till someone else has the chance to develop a free program to do the same job.
JA: What about the programmers...
Richard Stallman: What about them? The programmers writing non-free software? They are doing something antisocial. They should get some other job.
JA: Such as?
Richard Stallman: There are thousands of different jobs people can have in society without developing non-free software. You can even be a programmer. Most paid programmers are developing custom software--only a small fraction are developing non-free software. The small fraction of proprietary software jobs are not hard to avoid.
JA: What is the distinction there?
Richard Stallman: Non-free software is meant to be distributed to the public. Custom software is meant to be used by one client. There's no ethical problem with custom software as long as you're respecting your client's freedom.
The next point is that programmers are a tiny fraction of employment in the computer field. Suppose somebody developed an AI and no programmers were needed anymore. Would this be a disaster? Would all the people who are now programmers be doomed to unemployment for the rest of their lives? Obviously not, but this doesn't stop people from exaggerating the issue.
And what if there aren't any programming jobs in the US anymore?
JA: You mean what if all the programming jobs were outsourced to foreign countries?
Richard Stallman: Yes, what if they all go? This may actually happen. When you start thinking about things like total levels of employment, you've got think about all the factors that affect it, not blame it all on one factor. The cause of unemployment is not someone or society deciding that software should be free. The cause of the problem is largely economic policies designed to benefit only the rich. Such as driving wages down.
You know, it's no coincidence that we're having all this outsourcing. That was carefully planned. International treaties were designed to make this happen so that people's wages would be reduced.
JA: Can you cite specific examples?
Richard Stallman: FTAA. The World Trade Organization. NAFTA. These treaties are designed to reduce wages by making it easy for a company to say to various countries, "which of you will let us pay people the least? That's were we're headed." And if any country starts having a somewhat increased standard of living, companies say "oh, this is a bad labor climate here. You're not making a good climate for business. All the business is going to go away. You better make sure that people get paid less. You're following a foolish policy arranging for workers of your country to be paid more. You've got to make sure that your workers are the lowest paid anywhere in the world, then we'll come back. Otherwise we're all going to run away and punish you."
Businesses very often do it, they move operations out of a country to punish that country. And I've recently come to the conclusion that frictionless international trade is inherently a harmful thing, because it makes it too easy for companies to move from one country to another. We have to make that difficult enough that each company can be stuck in some country that can regulate it.
The book No Logo explains that the Philippines have laws that protect labor standards, but these laws count for nothing any more. They decided to set up "enterprise zones" - that's the euphemism they used for "sweat shop zones" - where companies are exempt from these rules for the first two years. And as a result, no company lasts for more than two years. When their exemption runs out, the owners shut it down and they start another.
JA: How does free software address this?
Richard Stallman: Free software doesn't address this. Free software addresses the issue of how computer users can have freedom to cooperate and to control their own computers. This is the larger issue that becomes relevant when you start talking about "How are people going to have jobs that pay them decently?" The answer is: in the world of the low wage treaties, they're not going to.
It's inconsistent and future to subject millions of people to the loss of freedom that non-free software imposes, just so that a tiny segment of society will have better paying jobs, when we're ignoring all the rest of society with their lousy jobs.
If you want to start doing something about that problem, do it at the right level, which is the level of the power balance between corporations and countries. Corporations are too powerful now. We have to knock them down. I don't believe in abolishing business or even in abolishing corporations, but we've got to make sure that no corporation is powerful enough that it can say to all the countries in the world, "I'll punish any country that doesn't obey."
That is the way it works now. And it was deliberately set up by people such as Reagan, and Clinton, and Bush and Bush.
New Technologies:
JA: I have read that the free software model tends to imitate existing software, rather than blaze new trails and developing completely new technologies.
Richard Stallman: To speak of a free software "model" is somewhat misleading. The open source movement speaks of a "development model", but our concern is for the user's freedom, not how the program is developed.
Free software doesn't always imitate, but often it does. There's a good reason for this: freedom is the main goal, and innovation is secondary.
Our goal is to develop free software so that we can use computers exclusively with free software. In 1984, we started with nearly zero (we had TeX, nothing else). We had a lot of catching up to do, so we have done it. Even if GNU/Linux had no technical innovations compared with Unix, it would be completely superior because it respects your freedom as Unix does not.
JA: Do you believe that free software has caught up with non-free software?
Richard Stallman: To a large extent, but not totally.
JA: Would you say that we're going to start seeing a lot of technical innovations originating from free software as things are catching up?
Richard Stallman: We already have. We already have seen a technical innovations in free software. A lot of them help make up the world wide web.
The Internet:
JA: Does the importance of using only free software apply to the Internet?
Richard Stallman: I don't understand the question.
JA: Software not only runs on personal computers, but also the computers that comprise the Internet...
Richard Stallman: That may mean your computer. If your computer is on the Internet, then that's one of the computers you're talking about.
JA: You're correct. At this very moment my computer is part of the Internet. And my computer is comprised entirely of free software. However there are plenty of computers on the Internet that are not comprised of free software.
Richard Stallman: I think you meant to say, "not running entirely free software." There are many computers on the net that are not running free software, and that means the people who use and own those computers have lost this aspect of their freedom. That's a problem.
JA: Do you consider it proper for people who are trying to only use free software to utilize...
Richard Stallman: To connect to a server that's running non-free software?
I don't feel I need to refuse to connect to a server that is running non-free software. For that matter, I won't refuse to type on a computer that's running non-free software. If I were visiting your house for a little and you had a Windows machine, I would use it if it were important for me to use it. I wouldn't be willing to have Windows on my computer, and you shouldn't have it on yours, but I can't change that by refusing to touch the machine.
If you connect to a server that runs non-free software, you're not the one whose freedom is harmed. It's the server operator who has lost freedom to the restrictions on the software he runs. This is unfortunate, and I hope that he switches to free software; we're working to bring that about. But I don't feel you have to boycott his site until he switches. He isn't making you use the non-free software.
JA: Back to my earlier question, as a specific example do you use tools such as Google when attempting to locate online content?
Richard Stallman: I have nothing against communicating with Google's network server, but for Google's sake I hope they have the freedom to study, change and redistribute the software used on their server. Having the freedom to do so does not imply the obligation to do so; Google doesn't have to change or redistribute the software they run. But they ought to be free to do this, just as you and I should be free to do this with the software on our machines.
The Workplace:
JA: What if your job requires you to use non-free software?
Richard Stallman: I would quit that job. Would you participate in something anti-social just because somebody pays you to? What if the job involves hitting people on the head in the street and taking their wallets? What if it involves spreading the word that Democrats should vote on Wednesday instead of Tuesday? Some people seriously claim that you can't criticize what someone does if it is part of their job. From my point of view, the fact that somebody is being paid to do something wrong is not an excuse.
Embedded Applications:
JA: Embedded applications have become more and more prevalent in society. Is it possible to completely avoid non-free software and still remain in-touch with current technologies?
Richard Stallman: I don't know if it is possible, but if it is not, that is something we need to change. Once an embedded system can talk to a network, or users normally load software into it, its software needs to be free. For instance, if it uses non-free software to talk to the network, you can't trust it not to spy on you.
SCO:
JA: How do you react to SCO's recent accusations about the Linux kernel?
Richard Stallman: The vague and cagey nature of their statements, coupled with having seen that the only specific facts they produced proved to be false, suggests they have no real case.
JA: What impact do you expect this to have on free software?
Richard Stallman: I don't expect it to have a big impact because I don't think they have a case. They're trying to create FUD and they may scare some timid people off.
JA: Do you expect this to bring the GPL into the courtroom?
Richard Stallman: I don't know.
JA: Is that a concern for you?
Richard Stallman: We think the GPL will stand up in court, but no wise person is eager to get into a battle, even if he thinks he's well enough armed that he'd probably win.
The arguments that SCO have been making are so laughably absurd that they lend support to the idea that SCO has no real case, that they're only interested in creating FUD.
JA: To what end?
Richard Stallman: They hope some companies will pay them money, and Microsoft already did.
To people who know almost nothing about copyright law, anything sounds as plausible as anything else. When they hear what SCO says, they don't know how ridiculous it is. So they think, "SCO says this, IBM says that, how do I know who's right?"
JA: What's in store for the GNU General Public License (GPL)? Are there plans for a version 3?
Richard Stallman: Yes, but we are not really sure what will change. What we can say is that the changes will be details.
Getting Involved:
JA: Is there any other current event that you'd like to address?
Richard Stallman: The FCC last year decided to require digital restrictions management in all receivers of digital TV. And not only that, to require that they be made not modifiable by the user. I think they have not yet decided whether this device is software controlled. If they make it software controlled then for the first time there will be a government policy explicitly banning free software for a job that millions of people are going to want to
do.
JA: Are you optimistic about this?
Richard Stallman: I don't know. I am a pessimist by nature. Many people can only keep on fighting when they expect to win. I'm not like that, I always expect to lose. I fight anyway, and sometimes I win.
I'm not the main leader in this particular battle. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is fighting. Public Knowledge is fighting. People need to get involved politically. At this point people should go to the EFF website and the Public Knowledge website, and continue doing so over the coming weeks to see how they can get involved in this coming campaign. It's going to take a lot of people spending probably at least twenty minutes. If you care enough about your freedom to spend twenty minutes on it, if you can tear yourself away from whatever little job it is you're doing this week, and next week, and so on. Spend a little time fighting for your freedom, and we can win.
JA: Thank you.
Richard Stallman: Happy hacking!
Interview translations:
plenty of accusations from the OSI side
Most of us respect both sides: Stallman's correct that freedom is important; the "open source" people are correct about the technical advantages of free/open source software. However, OSI people have thrown around plenty of accusations as well, trying to bar people like RMS from conferences, talking about dangerous fanaticism, even resorting to Red-baiting.
I don't think that all software needs to be free, but it must be possible for software to be free, and the OSI hasn't fought hard enough for that.
ESR for example...
ESR for example, in the Java and SCO discussions. He lost some credibility there, to me at least...
You shouldn't consider Stallm
You shouldn't consider Stallman dangerous if you don't agree that non-free software is immoral; you disagree with him, fine, he doesn't advocate not respecting copyrights that allow non-free software to exist.
However the top-level post seemed to imply that free software (made voluntarily free by its authors) is in some way inherently dangerous and/or immoral. Do you think it is? What justification do you have?
No. "Immoral" is a term used
No. "Immoral" is a term used by Stallman and his ilk. I labeled OSS as dangerous, simply because of the reasons outlined in the paper.
The use of the word "immoral" to describe the use or production of "non-free" software should be very telling to the readers. Do you really want to follow a movement where someone with a definite agenda is dictating what is moral and what is not?
Do you really want to follow
Otherwise there wouldn't be much of a movement then, would there? -- this is an idealogical movement concerned with ethical action. One exception -- with the exception that there is no "dictating" going on, simply speech, and writing, reading and thinking.
Open source/free software
Books are not free, but an author who needs to refer to or quote an earlier book is free to do so within certain limits, while a programmer who needs a chunk of code from an earlier (non-free) program is not free to use it at all.
So in reality, books ARE free for authors (they can always get them from the library, anyway).
The stated legal purpose of copyright for books and music, and of patents, is to encourage innovation -- and only for this purpose, to reward authors and inventors.
My experience as a developer of Csound, which is now open source, is that open source benefits innovation. When I was trying to develop a proprietary software synthesizer, I found that could not afford to pay various vendors of third-party libraries that I needed (LZW compression, Numerical Recipes), and this really slowed me down. When I switched to Csound, I found that there were many open source libraries that I could use for nothing (boost::ublas and FFTW instead of Numerical Recipes, libsndfile, PortAudio, FLTK, Python, etc., etc., etc.), and now the cost barrier for software development is simply gone.
It IS immoral to discourage innovation in a society, by the way.
What free software is trying to do is move more intellectual capital into the same model used for centuries by scholars and scientists, who share papers and books freely. It should be obvious that this model has benefited society enormously by making it possible to base a vast number of inventions and new processes on freely available scientific knowledge.
I think I may have an answer for you
This opinion may turn out to be only half baked but here goes....
In general (as I understand it), RMS cares about the rights of people.
In the case of software, he cares about the rights of people who use
software. RMS believes that a person should have the right to use
anything which they have legally aquired (eg. anything they have
bought) in any way, so long as it does not adversly affect the rights
of others. In particular, the case of a computer I should have the
right to create and use software on that computer, since doing so in
the privacy of my own home does not affect the rights of anybody else.
I believe that RMS attaches the "immoral" tag to any action which
restricts the excercising of peoples rights.
If I am unable to excercise my right to create my own software and run
it on my own computer, then whatever action prevented me from doing
this was an immoral act.
So if there was only one operating system available for my computer
and that OS did not allow me to remove it or replace it with my own,
then I believe RMS would describe the act of placing the OS onto the
computer as being "immoral".
Your analogy involving books is different (in my opinion). When I buy
a book, I am buying two things 1) The paper and ink that physicaly
constitutes the book and 2) the story or information that the book
contains. I am entirely free to use the paper and ink in anyway I
like (I could use it as toilet paper, or to light a fire, or as a very
uncomfortable pillow).
I am also free to modify the information contained in the book. If I
don't like the ending of the latest Harry Potter book that I have on
my shelf, I am free to cross it out and write my own. Furthermore I
should be free to read this modified form of the story to my children.
I could even cross out all the original words and replace them with my
own, therefor creating a new book with new content which I would be
free to distribute.
The restrictions that make books "not free" in your original post, I
believe relate to re-distribution of the content of the book (modified
or not).
As I understand RMS's position, it is not immoral to charge me for the
materials and labour that went into the production of the book. Nor
is it immoral to pay the author of the book for his time and creative
energy in writing the book. It IS WRONG though to attempt to restrict
my re-distribution rights. I should have the right to read the
modified story to my children. They in turn should have the right to
write down this modified story, so that they can tell it to their
children. In the transcription, my children should also have the
right to change any parts of the story that they do not like.
Currently laws exist to restrict my right to redistribute this story
and therefor these laws would be deemed immoral. Furthermore any
activities which were performed in support of such immoral laws would
themselves be considered immoral. Hence the existence of project like
the GNU Public Documentation Project and the GNU Public Documentation
License which fight to address this issue for the "written word"
(ie. books). Similar projects exist for artistic works.
So software has NOT been singled out as being somehow different. And
RMS is not saying you are immoral for charging somebody for the time
and energy that you spend in the creation of a piece of software, or
even for the costs involved in transporting and packaging the
software. What he IS saying (as I understand it) is that if you
knowingly write software for a company that will sell the software AND
attempt to restrict the rights of people who buy that software, then
you are contributing to an immoral action, and therefore are immoral.
If you wrote the software for a company and the company were to sell
the software but NOT attempt to restrict what the users did, then the
company could still make money and your actions would not be
considered immoral. For example the company could sell pre-compiled
binaries of the software in a big fancy box with a nice, easy to use
installer and lots of manuals and they would factor in the cost of you
time and labour into the cost of the package as sold.
The argument against such a business model is that nobody will pay for
something that they can get for free and this peaks to the very core
of the problem.
Before it has been written, a piece of software is inherently
worthless because it is an idea and ideas can be transfered and
changed without cost.
Only the act of expressing the idea in a language has any associated
cost. It is the dream of every business to make one single fixed size
investments and reap an unlimited profit. The only way that such a
profit can be achieved is by artificially restricting the way in which
customers can use that idea. It is greed that drives the immoral
actions of the non-free software industry. Not your greed (I hasten
to add), nor mine because I too make my living and feed my children by
writing software, but the greed of corporations.
I personaly write software because I enjoy the challenge of problem
solving and because it is something that I have an aptitude for. I am
not immoral for having this aptitude any more than a skilled chef is
immoral for being able to cook great food. But if the chef were to
work for some Columbian drug smuggling cartel, who need him to bake
their drugs into delicious and appitising sweat so that they could
sell them to children, this chef would be immoral.
There's lots of money to be made by selling our services to non-free
software companies, just as there is for working for drug pushers, but
that doesnt make it right. Assuming of course that you think people
who buy computers should have the right to create and use there own
software.
Mostly baked I would say! I
Mostly baked I would say! I agree with you, except for this:
Is is not wrong that you cannot redistribute your modified Harry Potter. Copyright prevents you from doing this -- the frontpiece of the book says "All Rights Reserved" -- you must respect the rights reserved by the publisher.
The better choice would have been for the publisher to allow you the rights of modification and redistribution, rather than reserving that for himself. This is what the Creative Commons licenses are designed to let you do, and this is what you do when you use the GPL for software.
Creative Commons aint so hot
There's a lot of talk about the Creative Commons license. Unfortunately it contains something which is designed to make artists feel better about putting their work under it but is otherwise not well thought through. I'm talking about the non-commercial aspect of the license. Say I need some icons for my new free software application. I'd naturally go and see if there are some freely available icons which suit my project. Having found such an icon licensed under the Creative Commons license I am free to distribute it with my free software application. Suppose my application is so damn good that those lovely folks over at RedHat decide to put it on their CDs. Oops. They can't include my icon because their distribution is commercial. Well maybe that's not so bad, RedHat is a big company, they can make me a new icon. But what if my software fills some business need in and of itself? Maybe it's a piece customer management software. Would including this icon in my distribution be a violation of the Creative Commons license if the user of my software were to use it for some commercial purpose?
Not a problem afaict (IANAL)
"I'm talking about the non-commercial aspect of the license."
Oh, well.
First of all thats not by definition true. Its not always 'NC'. The author of the work has the freedom to chose for that option.
If you encounter a CC-NC licensed work in the situation you propose and your assertion regarding NC/Red Hat is right (which i really doubt; see hereunder) and you decide to include it then you have to discuss with the author. He may or may not want to relicense for a small fee, for something else, for nothing, make a special version for you or 'Red Hat'. Its not as if the world falls down in such situation. Some people are actually reasonable and would be proud if you'd include their icon in your project.
Last, i don't really think your argument holds water. The software itself from Red Hat is *not* commercial. The software is not sold and even if it is (which i doubt) then not every piece of software is on the CD since there is no specific fee for the software you wrote (with NC icon). To make it clear: what you buy from Red Hat is a *support contract*. You can perfectly acquire 1 RHEL and put that on 5 machines but you won't get support for that.
Consult a lawyer for a better answer. Lawrence Lessig for example (writer of CC), Paul Arne from http://www.oslawblog.com or Pamela Jones from Groklaw...
about the immorality of non-free art and closedsource technology
Some thoughts about immoral non-free books, music and art.
Do I think that the current music industry is immoral ?
Yes, I do. I don't think it is reasonable that some "stars" made by casting shows earn millions within some months.
Why (ideally) should somebody write a book ? Because he likes writing books, or he has the feeling that he has something to say which others should read. If he doesn't feel the need to write a book he shouldn't do it. Same for music, paintings etc.
I can imagine that writing a book is a similar feeling to writing software, you write because it is fun, and you feel good if people read and like it. Money is secondary in this case (if at all). The same should apply to music. If somebody feels he should write music he will do it. Is it a problem if he doesn't earn millions within months ? I don't think so, at least not for the creator. I'm quite sure lowering the price for CDs from 15 to 17 euro down to maybe 5 to 10 euro would boost the sales numbers. It would still be enough money for the musician/book writer/etc. to live. If it doesn't suffice there's the nice tradition of touring and giving concerts. If not enough people come, then he's not good enough and he should look for another way to get money.
Main point: books and music are probably only non-free because there's an industry behind it. With books or music being free (freely distributable) the creators would still feel satisfied if the consumers like their creation, but they wouldn't become rich. Is this a problem ? No, many inventors of great technology aren't rich (TCP/IP, Internet, http, html, perl, php, ruby, tex, ...). It's good enough if they can make a good living of their money. And there are the various free documentation licenses which take care of the issues if the original authors consider their work as art and therefor don't want it to be changed or only with clear indications which parts are left original and which parts have been changed.
Why are original paintings so expensive ? Because there is only exactly one exemplar of it, and it has the value in itself. If you use a copier to reproduce an original painting, the copy doesn't have any value. If you repaint the original and sell it as a clone, it doesn't have the same value. If you sell it as the original it is fraud (correct word ?).
Now, the computer becomes more and more a central part of our lives. Business, administration, personal communication, vital data, everything. "In former times" we used paper for most of these things. We had the power to use paper from any producer, and we had the power to use pencils, pens, ball points, brushes, or whatever to write. We could use the paper from any producer together with the pen from any other producer. They were compatible. The system was completely "open source". Everybody knows the technology, can reproduce the technology and can produce and read documents in this format.
Now we use computers. We manage all kinds of vital information with it. So, is it acceptable that in order to create, read and store this new style of documents we need to rely on closed source technology ?
A technology we can't reproduce in the case that the vendor goes out of business ?
Alex
*>The point is that it is not
*>The point is that it is not immoral that software isn't "free".
I think you're missing one of the points in the article. RMS makes a distinction between commodity software (databases, word processors etc.) and bespoke software. Commodity software resembles the roads and is merely there to get a more interesting job done.
*>Books aren't "free",
They are, once the copyright has lapsed. Hence the Guetenburg project.
*>Art is not "free" either.
See above.
*>Why is software singled out as something that is "immoral" to keep closed?
It's not, see previous points. The only reason that software was the first of the art forms to become widely distributed for free is because the distribution mechanism is technical in nature and hence the most useful thing to distribute initially was code. So that more interesting things could be done.
*>HAS NEVER BEEN ANSWERED BY ANY OF THE FREE/OSS PEOPLE
HTH.
Regards,
Bad Hedgehog
Books, art
Art is free -- I can freely create my own art inspired by someone else's art (there can be some random legal limitation for `too much inspiration' -- they are random, since no one really knows where and whether the border should be, although almost everyone has a strong opinion). It happens all the time. In fact, it makes art possible.
The ideas expressed in books are free, independently of the paper books consist of. The actual book texts can be free too, again independently of the paper (I'm leaving aside whether they should, as the point of this post is to show the absurdity of your claims).
Very good point. With a book,
Very good point. With a book, you can't copy 1 on 1 (except a cerpt/quote) and then relicense or redistribute. You can use it as inspiration. But the book is a result of work.
This work was the writing itself, but also thoughts, research, imagination, experiences, and what not. This falls in the same as the source code. We are not allowed to see this. Its secret.
What's not secret, and in most cases buyable, is the result. The binary (software) or book.
But in sourcecode thoughts, research, imagination, experiences, and what not were also required to build it and the sourcecode is permanent whereas all of the earlier was a one time effort which doesn't exist anymore after the work was finished.
Binary?
Did you ever buy a binary book? I hope you know the difference, source = human readable, binary = machine readable. Source code don't equal a book authors thought processes, they should be compared to the programmers thought processes.
Correction
"OSS devalues the software market"
Correction: OSS devalues the software SALES market.
That is a gigantic distinction.
Furthermore, even if OSS had the negative economic impact you suggest, that would not be itself a sufficient argument for avoiding it. Abolishing slavery also had an immediate economic impact.
"These vendors will also need to increase the rate at which new features are added to the software, in order to stay ahead of the OSS offerings. This will ultimately reduce the variety and quality of software in general, and will likely drive many pure software development vendors out of the industry. In the long term, end users will feel the effects of the resulting stagnation of the software industry, as the variety and quality of software products will decrease."
Some people call this "competition", and the typical free market mantra is usually that competition is good, produces better and a greater variety of products, and a more fertile economy, not that it reduces quality or heaven forbid, puts some companies out of business (which is inevitably true nevertheless).
Devaluation
Yes, the paper is written from the perspective of the traditional software SALES market. I even point out that it increases value for the end user in the short term. However, in the long term the end user will suffer because OSS "competition" eliminates any profit potential from most of these markets, which will cause R&D funding to dry up in many of these areas. You will see in the coming years that companies like Oracle will stop or significantly reduce R&D funding in databases since there is simply not a good revenue stream anymore from those markets. This will slow innovation in that area.
Why is going to do the R&D? The OSS software labs? Doubtful, they do not have the revenue streams to do anything significant - and you do need money to do R&D.
Don't feed the TROLL!
Your argument is flawed because you don't see that you yourself are redundant. No software sales is no salesdroids like you. I will be happy to see that dinosaur go extinct.
You copy and paste work without attribution shows how much you really care about copyrights.
You are just a lowly troll, not even worth the bullet (RPG's that can penetrate and kill a granite animal are pretty expensive ;-)
'Paper' is a generous euphemi
'Paper' is a generous euphemism for what is really little more than a poorly expressed opinion.
You are factually quite wide of the mark; Apache is a great example of a product that does innovate and price is not the reason it dominates at all.
The internet would not have happened without the free and open principles that Stallman is championing. Let's not forget that.
One of the most exciting innovations that Free software has brought is that African and far-Eastern countries are now able to take the software and localise it so that it can serve their prupose perfectly. That is what Free is all about.
"Apache is a great example of
"Apache is a great example of a product that does innovate and price is not the reason it dominates at all."
I never mentioned price on the paper. Where did you see this?
But speaking of price: if Apache was closed source and had a similar cost to comparable offerings (like Netscape when it was still alive), would it have the market share it has? Of course not. But that is not the point of the paper. It focuses on OSS ("free as in freedom", not "free as in beer"). Please do not confuse the concepts.
R&D funding
It's funny that you mention R&D funding. It's also funny that you mention Oracle. I'd be that Oracle will decrease R&D funding in the coming years. Why? Competition. If GNU/Linux wasn't busy competing against Windows right now, I'm pretty sure Windows would have a much more massive market share over the server market place. And with the server market place would be MS SQL everywhere. Oracle would be running on lower profits and hence cut R&D.
But to an even more generic point, databases have reached a plateau to a great extent and that's primarily why MS SQL is able to "compete" against Oracle regardless of whether their product is an order of magnitude worse (this I've no idea of; I'm simply stating the general behavior I've seen in the past with MS products that end up winning against independent software companies). It wouldn't make a lot of economic sense to throw tons of money into R&D praying to be rescued anyways. And if there was such a case, then they'd already be throwing in gobs of R&D money to combat the LAMP problem.
Of course Microsoft is prime example of where R&D money doesn't matter. Very little of the R&D research that comes out of Microsoft actually turns into anything. Microsoft doesn't have at all a tendency on being a leader in things because for the most part they're always late to the game but they have the revenue streams to catch up whatever the market. So, I'd say this believe that R&D funding has any realistic corelation with innovation is laughable at best. The free market and capitalist market is based on the idea not of large companies dumping tons of money into R&D to stay afloat with new innovations. It is based on the idea of startups with an original idea being the leader and then one of many commodity companies selling a product. With Microsoft around, though, ready to pluck up any sheep/innovation that new startup creates, it's little surprise that the only place left to look for innovation is in the insane R&D budgets which have little direction and little push to do risky things to get that one in a hundred idea to market that'll make millions.
By the way, please don't take this rant to be only about Microsoft. Microsoft is just the obvious target in the software industry. In many other industries it's through government regulation/subsidies that companies (pharmaceuticals being a big obvious one of late) are able to maintain their revenue stream to pluck out the sheep. Microsoft was just smart enough to setup exclusionary contracts early enough on its own to create a desktop monopoly. But now that the anti-trust case has occured, I'm sure MS legal will be pushing towards "regulating" the software industry to their advantage.
"But to an even more generic
"But to an even more generic point, databases have reached a plateau to a great extent and that's primarily why MS SQL is able to "compete" against Oracle regardless of whether their product is an order of magnitude worse.."
Good points, but I am arguing that databases have not reached a natural plateau. There is a lot of R&D that can be done to make the potential for database technology reach the peak potential. That R&D will not be done now (or will only be done by those with very deep pockets - like Microsoft). OSS will devalue that market so much that there will be no incentive to make investments in it. Oracle certainly wont. The database industry may never leave that plateau now.
You can argue that OSS will provide the R&D nescessary - but I don't see that happening. The revenue isn't there.
You don't see it because you are blind? (or because of the FUD?)
"You can argue that OSS will provide the R&D nescessary - but I don't see that happening. The revenue isn't there."
Because you think there is no revenue (there is, but the game is different) you assume that there is no R&D, therfore you see no R&D. All releases on Freshmeat, sourceforge or Savannah contradict you in that respect. Who cares how the developers are paid? All I am interested in is software that works and gives me the freedom to tinker with the sourcecode if I want to.
If the company does not need to employ market&salesdroids all that money can be spend on making that sofware that customers are willing to pay for. Paying for actual work being done is a lot fairer than paying a salesdroid for selling you something with very low marginal costs.
Choose between fair pay or buying a lottery ticket where the vendor might win instead of you. I know what I'd do, do you?
"All releases on Freshmeat, s
"All releases on Freshmeat, sourceforge or Savannah contradict you in that respect."
If the vast majority of software released on those sites represents the "OSS communities" idea of R&D we are in much horrible shape then I thought previously.
That is not R&D. There is very little research going on there, if any.
Research and Product Development
There's two types of research, basic and development. Of the two, basic research is by huge margins carried out in universities and other publicly funded institutes.. The sort of research that occurs in companies is things like market research, which is market-lingo for product development. Very little research can actually be done inside a laboratory as far as what will and will not sell. It's the people who develop products and let competition attack the products that do the research for you and choose the best product. Badly designed products will hopefully fail (not always if there's enough external revenue behind it) and most of the actual work will be done. That's the real beauty of the free market. You design a product, you release it, and if your idea works well, you succeed.
The only real complaint that can be made is that with Free Software no product will ever truly die because there's nothing to kill it off. But that's a very short sighted statement to make. Free Software that works well will gain the support of others who will for their own reasons work on the software. Some, if not many, of those changes will be incorporated into the project and growth will occur. At the same time, a project that is otherwise dead except for a very, very small following of developers (I'm talking 1-2 people) will only progress as fast as those two are capable of financially supporting such development. As a result, the indirect money of time pays for the further development and reputation of one product over another without the capital needing to be money. The net result is that not all software is kept alive, even if it's always available. And that which is only useful for a very restrictive niche can still develop while other more prestigious projects abound.
Most importantly, if development ever does stop on a project that you rely on, you can choose to pay others to further the development of it if no other software fills nearly as many need as you have and a much reduced cost of development. Of course, you still have the option of paying any group to modify any Free Software you finding fitting to minimize price or any closed software whose company is willing to take on a customization job. But the pool of workers and range of source material to work with looks so much better for the Free Software solution.
It sounds to me like you have
It sounds to me like you have never creatively pursued any end of any kind.
Usefulness is more important than attaining 'peak potential'
The question whether databases (or any other technology) will reach their peak potential (assuming there is such a peak) is less important than a different question: whether such software will continue to do what its users want.
It may or may not be the case that large R&D expenditures by private interests are all that can push large complex systems such as databases further up the slope of diminishing returns. But this smacks too much of the 'build it and they will come' atitude.
It certainly is the case that if someone really needs a certain feature in such a system which is currently missing that feature, then they will pay for that feature to be added.
I believe (not certain) some MySQL development is done this way - people pay MySQL AB to add features to the database, which is still released as free software.
My employer on occasion funds development of their proprietary, closed-source, non-free software in this way - customers part-fund development of new features for the product which they need.
In both cases, market forces generally ensure that people get what they want. R&D and innovation do not require pure cathedral development models. And if there were ever really 'no incentive to make investments in [R&D]' then in what sense is such R&D worthwhile?
Purely reaching some hypothetical 'peak potential' doesn't cut it as far as I'm concerned. If they're not prepared to pay then they probably don't really need the feature(s). Market forces will ensure continued R&D funding for useful features. If R&D capital isn't forthcoming, then it was probably because that R&D just wasn't needed by anyone in the real world with appreciable money and real needs.
You are wrong, OSS is the bas
You are wrong, OSS is the basis for many other relevant industries and trading.
Money is just one of the ingredients of Economy, Often the availability of technique enables more posibilities for more people.
This availability will bring more econimic growth than short term greed visions of 19th century liberal market scolars.
In the vision of the last group, in which most economics are still schooled you should create scarcity to enable large wealth for extremely small groups of people in power.
But technique is very much trampling and cornering these old fashioned philosophies.
My guess is that either you belong to that small previliged group of people in power, or you are as stupid as a junkie whore's ass and only say these things to please your master.
Please keep the discussion to
Please keep the discussion to a civil tone. This is not a locker room.
He is being paid to spread FUD
He is being paid to do this. Or at least I hope, otherwise he really is that whore ass junkie. pretty pathetic both ways.
research ?
Do you mean that public research (that cost nothing to the industry) force to lower the research in the compagny ?
Little or no basis in fact
The 'paper' describing why OSS (not free software by the way) hurts 'us' is factually wrong in almost everything it says however I haven't got time to pick up every broken thread so consider the following a represenative sample.
Oh come on - it's obvious tha
Oh come on - it's obvious that non-free software encourages innovation in software and hardware development in a way that free or open-source software does not.
Just look at the huge volume of innovative viruses, exploits and hacks inspired by Internet Explorer. These drive the anti-virus and PC-security companies to innovate in response.
The processing power required to run these innovative security programs without slowing your system to a snails-pace drives the hardware manufacturers to improve performance.
This results in some extra performance which in turn allows Microsoft to add innovative new bugs, security holes and 'undocumented features' to Internet Explorer which in turn encourages innovative virus writers to..
:->
"Picking a web server as an e
"Picking a web server as an example of proprietary software leading the way only to have all that work de-valued by Apache is particularly ironic since the early web development by TBL wasn't proprietory."
This is true that early development work was supported via academic funds, however the web server market has been hurt (but not completely destroyed) since then by Apache. There will be less innovation in that area then there would be if the market has been allowed to grow and mature. Netscape and numerous other new companies would be competing to provide web service technologies and doing real investment in R&D. Apache isn't doing real R&D, they cannot afford to financially.
There is no significant client development because there is no revenue stream there either (closed or open source). That is caused by a different issue: "free as in beer" (which is a bad idea as well)
You are wrong. You spread FUD, TROLL
There is very significant development in the apache project (look at all apache spin-off projects like ant etc.) There is very significant development on the client side too. Did you see that ad in the NYT for the firefox browser? probably not because you seem to favour putting your head in your arse over admitting you are wrong.
now go wash your head, the shit is clouding your thinking.
ejit TROLL
I am glad that an ad in the N
I am glad that an ad in the New York Times makes a product innovative to you. We have a great and glorious future ahead of us!
Adjust your thinking.
Why people like Stallman are the 'best' option.
The current economic system is one built on waste in all industries but I'm going to look at the software one.
I have worked producing software for a number of companies over the past 10 years or so, everything from embedded systems for hardware companies to insurance software.
Every project that I have worked on could have benefited greatly from using OSS instead of paying for the shrink-wrapped equivalent, i would estimate that Bugs, work-around for features and the lack of documentation cost each project on average 10%. If the company had have been using OSS and given this 10% towards the OSS project then they could have produced a far better system.
Some of the 10% that they spent on the OSS project may also have helped out other companies using OSS reducing product overheads industry wide, making a leaner more efficient economy with less waste.
If companies paid for bugs in OSS to get fixed instead of paying for shrink-wrap and working around bugs then they would end up with a far superior OSS product that is more tailored to their needs.
Conclusion.
Traditional software houses may have to switch from producing proprietary software to 'embracing and extending' OSS software.
The support and knowledge base gained from writing OSS would easily outstrip any small proprietary software house due to the efficiency and waste reduction in OSS.
some truths, and some false conclusions
It is true that OSS affects the existing software industry. Congratulations on recognizing that obvious fact. However, the assumption that OSS is the reason for reduced staffing is very substantially flawed.
First of all, many lost jobs are due to off-shoring them to India, China, Russia, and other countries. When a job goes overseas, it doesn't matter whether the software is proprietary or free. Lost jobs are also attributable to an over-supply of programmers, many of which have very poor skills in the first place (learning in 24 hours from an orange colored book at Barnes and Noble, trying to become a software professional to catch a ride on the .com bubble.) When the bubble burst, a lot of silly jobs did disappear.
Programmers will be in demand as long as software is used. It seems the real worry is if existing monopolies can be maintained by the monopolists.
Wild Allegations
Let me start by saying that I agree with what you say, to a degree. In fact, I myself am extremely disturbed by Stallman's persona and his utter disregard of people's "right" to sell the software that they themselves have written or were hired to write (seems very hypocritical to me).
However, you have one comment that is made directly out of opinion and unverified fact. You state that the Apache Web Server has done little to innovate the market and drives away other competitors. In fact, Apache was the original innovator of the Web Server and continues to add features that allow it to easily integrate with other products out there on the market.
I agree that sometimes "Good Enough" does not drive innovation. But there are some OSS offerings out there that are more than "Good Enough." Some of them are even "The Best." As Apache has proven to be time and time again.
The reason Apache has held the market for Web Servers for so long is not necessarily because it is free, but because, until recently it was the only viable product out there, as Microsoft's Web Server (until the 2003 offering) was insecure and lacked many of the features and benefits that Apache users had grown to love.
Don't take this the wrong way, whomever Anonymous is, but at least pick on a product that deserves to be picked on and at least do some research before making wild allegations.
Oh and on an unrelated note. I think that RMS is an absolutely ridicules human being. The idea the you must call Linux the GNU/Linux or GNU+Linux Operating System is absolutely absurd. No, I'm going to call it Debian Linux or SUSE Linux or Gentoo Linux.
GNU may have made contributions to the OS itself, but it is an absolute publicity stunt to assume that they deserve to be part of the OS name. No the OS is whatever distribution that is used. Linux is the kernel and some GNU software has been included by the authors of the distribution.
Even Linus himself thinks that RMS is being a bit of a glory digger.
Heh...you won't call Debian G
Heh...you won't call Debian GNU/Linux by the name that they themselves use?
You are incorrect. The origin
You are incorrect. The original web server was developed by NCSA. Apache was established after that, but based on the NCSA code. The main point of bringing up Apache as an example is that it has prevented innovation in that market by reducing the amount of revenue opportunities and this the means for R&D reinvestment.
You will see very little innovation in that area I am afraid as it will be increasingly dominated by Apache, mostly due to its zero upfront cost, but partially because it offers source code access.
OSS is simply a "race to the bottom".
mere speculation, aka: FUD
'Because of apache a lot of R&D didn't happen'
There is no direct relation between a big wad of cash and investment of that money in R&D. Most people will start by fattening their own chequebooks first, next pay the sales and marketdroids and all the other non-coding staff. Only a sliver of the revenue goes to R&D.
If FOSS gets rid of some sales and marketing idiots then I will find that a very beneficial outcome, but you probably not.
Now is the time to start looking for a new career or Darwin will take care of you ;)
Even if that was true, would
Even if that was true, would you rather have a sliver for R&D - or none at all. With OSS you will have none at all - or very little.
I have no need to look for a new career - I have already made my money in the software industry fortunately as a software developer. It is you young people who are now just entering the industry that should be concerned.
No you have not
Hinting on your 'ritches' that you gained while raping the freedom of your users does not give you any credibility. I still think you are being paid and work for a company that has a lot to lose.
Or you are one of those idiots that thinks you can convince anybody on the internet, or `shrudder` that your opinion matters.
It does not.
And I would not work for a company that spends more on sales and marketing than on the actual product they are selling. I work as an FOSS consultant and get paid for applying my knowledge. I care about FOSS, my clients mostly care about getting the best price and a computer that works.
"Or you are one of those idio
"Or you are one of those idiots that thinks you can convince anybody on the internet, or `shrudder` that your opinion matters. It does not"
It is interesting that some opinions matter, and some do not. Perhaps only the ones you agree with matter?
As a "FOSS consultant" you are benefiting from the free work of the OSS development community. I can see why you would like to see it continue. However, you are not a software developer so I believe that your agenda differs from mine.
Actually, I said that Apache
Actually, I said that Apache was the original innovator of the Web Server, not the originator though. They were the first company to bring about features like plug-ins and such. The NCSA was obviously the originiators of the Web as they designed the original web server and browser (Mosiac), though both were very basic ideas at the time.
In fact, the OSS nature of the Apache project actually drives innovation, as people are free to add features as they will. Some one has an idea and they are free to incorporate it. If Apache won't accept it, they can take Apache code, make the changes they want and create their own product.
Oh and OSS does not mean Free. OSS just means the source is available. Companies can still charge for compiled versions of the products and the service of installing it. Red Hat does it with their software.
And you are right, there will remain to be very little innovation in the area of web servers, as the innovation to be done is on the browser side. Microsoft is growing in terms of their web server market, but you don't see them adding functionality.
All I meant to say was that I think you used a bad example, as Apache is the original example of Open Source success. Just not monitarily.
...Stallman's persona and his
Drew,
Based on what he has written, it is clearly not true at all that Stallman disregards your right to sell software. It is mostly coincidental that the famous Free Software is distributed for no price. Many companies sell software which is also Free, though they are lesser known. Many companies have also found that giving away software for no price, but providing related products or services for sale or hire is an effective business model as well. This says nothing about one's right to sell software though.
I agree with you entirely about Apache.
I agree to some extent about the naming, it's a bit trivial to worry too much about it, though I challenge you to remove all the GNU components from Debian GNU/Linux (or RedHat, or Suse, etc.) and use it -- that is the reasoning behind the name issue even if it's not very important in the scheme of things.
Don´t mess up with Apache
Sounds good, but you have chosen a really bad example. Apache is THE web server, the others in the market appeared after Apache.
Why free software is the way to go
Capitalism is about competition, right? And as you outlined above open source software development (as well as free software development) is quite good at creating competitive software. So it should contribute to our current system.
No, vendors need to develope high quality features in order to stay competitive. And as the bar of quality raises this benefits us all. Whether we use free software or not.
But the real problem, to my understanding, is Capitalism. Why should only a small part of rich elitists be able to research and invent? Why should only some elected corporate workers be able to develop existing software further, reusing the existing codebase? Why should software be hid from society?
With free software we, the mass, will be able to improve upon Improvement. We will ultimatively create better software and shared knowledge will help us to invent further than anybody alone has invented before.
--
Lion Vollnhals
Why people like Stallman is a chance for everybody
Stupid...
The description of the process seems true but your conclusion is pure alarmist science fiction.
Closed Sources Programming Industry will continu to make profit but will need to spend more money for R&D and Programming than commercial.
Richard has a too strict vision for me, but the danger is the Trust.
Since the Antitrust Law is a fake, we need to go this way to give choice to users, and remember this, to the programmers too.
OSS will be the most important revolution for the computing industry. Look at the inovations and employment it already generate and keep in mind that it's the VERY begining of an exponential evolution of human knowlege share.
Happy new year :D