[alvalentini]

You know, sometimes I wonder if this whole conversation really isn't just meant for developers. I ask myself what is the sentiment across the larger population and realise no one really cares. They love free beers. They'd do anything not to pay 0.99 for an app, seeing that as an incredible amount of money to pay for something they expect nowadays to be free. There's a lot to unpack here and I don't think I am in the right mind state to do it now. Good piece!!

[steveklabnik]

Thanks!

I didn't get into it, but I do think that the user/developer distinction plays a part here. That is, one way to think about the Free Software/Open Source divide is that copyleft ensures freedoms for users at the expense of restricting developers, and permissive licenses ensure freedoms for developers at the expense of restricting users. As developers gained some power, we directed it towards helping ourselves.

I don't think that's the whole story, exactly, but I think it's an interesting way to think about it.

[wrs]

Historically one of the controversies/confusions regarding the FSF’s ideology is that it ignores the distinction between developers and users. In the ur-hacker world RMS wanted to preserve, the users are developers. That’s why the right to make a derivative work is paramount (a freedom no non-developer can take advantage of), and why libre software is strongly skewed toward developer tools rather than viable “end-user” software applications.

Traditionally the FSF advocate will say something here about end users hiring developers to modify software for them, but in reality that’s economically ridiculous.

[dragonwriter]

> That’s why the right to make a derivative work is paramount (a freedom no non-developer can take advantage of)

Non-developers take advantage of it by hiring a developer; it's essentially the right to take your software to be serviced by someone other than the seller.

> Traditionally the FSF advocate will say something here about end users hiring developers to modify software for them, but in reality that’s economically ridiculous.

It's perhaps ridiculous for non-wealthy individual end-users for software that isn't integral to a profit-making business, but it's quite common for major open source projects to see most of their contributions being from institutional end-users who have hired developers to address their own needs with the software.

[wrs]

If you define “end user” as “institution with enough profit to hire a developer”, then yes, it’s a tautology that they can hire a developer. But that’s a minuscule fraction of end users. The person who buys Quickbooks off the shelf at Office Max isn’t hiring any developers.

[sanxiyn]

> Traditionally the FSF advocate will say something here about end users hiring developers to modify software for them, but in reality that’s economically ridiculous.

Why is it ridiculous?

[wrs]

As a way to judge end user software budgets, commercial software that costs more than a few hundred dollars is considered “expensive”. That would pay for less than a day of work by a software developer to make modifications to software. The only economical way to support end users is to amortize that cost over many end users, by hiring developers into a central development organization.

Sure, for the far right of the bell curve, the “end users” who are owners of medium-sized businesses, it becomes viable. But I’m talking about the end users who buy Microsoft Office Home Edition.

[olau]

FSF has always been about the users. And that has always been controversial among developers. I remember talking to my brother about it around 1999.

The basic premise is relatively simple - with no insight in something very complex, you're at the mercy of the creators of that complexity.

Doesn't that sounds nice, as a developer? It's a power struggle, really.

Regarding certification: I think you have this situation backwards. Developers will easily see through and gravitate to the project that's more friendly and open. The very examples you mention - people see through that and the companies end up getting negative PR in developer circles, despite releasing the code.

Those who have a problem in this game is again the users - they don't understand what's going on, but they might have lost a great deal of the power that the open source was supposed to give back to them, it's locked in behind the wall that the code is thrown over.

[dragonwriter]

> That is, one way to think about the Free Software/Open Source divide is that copyleft ensures freedoms for users at the expense of restricting developers, and permissive licenses ensure freedoms for developers at the expense of restricting users.

I think there are two errors there: one is conflating the Free Software / Open Source divide (which is less about licenses and more about consequentialist vs. deontological justification for desire for licenses with particular features) with the copyleft/permissive divide, and the other is conflating direct licensees with “developers” and indirect downstream licensees with “users”. (It's true that the GPLv3 contains specific protection for certain users qua users via the anti-TiVoization provisions, but that's not true of copyleft licenses generally.)

[steveklabnik]

Yes, while I think it's interesting, I don't think it's fully accurate. Thanks for the good points. I agree with you especially on consequentialism vs dentology; I've been wondering if I shouldn't write another version of this blog post that's a bit more heavy on the philosophy and jargon...