[simonh]

I don’t really understand how that is so. The main FSF Libre software benefits they tout ‘for users’ are only actually accessible by developers. Specifically freedoms 1 and 3, to study and modify and improve the code and share those improvements.

The other two freedoms, to run it for any purpose and redistribute it aren’t in any way unique to Libre software. They’re important sure, but are really just free beer benefits.

Users can benefit from access to better software, but only as an incidental or indirect benefit if developers happen to release it or if they pay developers to do so. In the latter case now you’re in a commercial relationship and arguably a closed model can give users more rights and control they might want, for example exclusivity.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software

[skybrian]

Part of it is that Free Software dates back to a time when most users were also programmers.

If you look beyond licensing issues, Unix scripting, Emacs, Smalltalk, BASIC interpreters, and HyperCard were other early attempts at helping users become programmers, though spreadsheets turned out to be far more successful.

But if you want to help everybody, even the most nontechnical, even spreadsheets are sort of beside the point and not really what they want. Instead, making things easier to use (as Apple does) is closer to the mark.

[scroot]

> But if you want to help everybody, even the most nontechnical, even spreadsheets are sort of beside the point and not really what they want. Instead, making things easier to use (as Apple does) is closer to the mark.

A counter to this is that in the process of "making things easier to use," companies like Apple have in fact taken the "computing" out of the medium. Today Apple provides tools that allow very snappy and intuitive imitations of things that already existed: music, movies, etc., along with some basic tools to organize these things.

Spreadsheets and Hypercard are examples of media that are unique to computing -- they allow users to do things they literally cannot without having a computing device. This is not true for many of the things consumers use personal computers for today: as a phone, as a messaging system, as a radio, etc, etc. Computing today is almost myopically focused on making more convenient and efficient copies of things that already exist.

It might be true that Hypercard and spreadsheets are "not really what people want." But what if tools like those are exactly what people need?

I have come across innumerable situations where regular office people need to go just one step further than their shrinkwrapped desktop applications allow them to. At that point they have two options: either find some software that also does the very specific thing you need to do, or learn an entire general programming language and all the low level (and immediately irrelevant) information that goes with it. There is no longer anything viable in between those two extremes. As technologists we have really failed these people.

[skybrian]

Yes, this seems more likely to happen in a business setting, or maybe in support of a nonprofit or community organization. But I don't see retirees (for example) having much of a need for end-user programming. Even as a semi-retired computer programmer, I see little practical reason for programming. Pre-existing software does pretty much everything I want to do. So it's a hobby at best. Or maybe art.

It seems like "imitations of things that already existed" is a flexible category that includes practically everything if you squint hard enough? Spreadsheets existed before computers. People did calculations by hand. You can do a lot of business things on paper.

"Things that already existed" also tend to be serving universal human needs that already existed. If you really needed it done and had the money, you could hire a human to do it. If the history of some human desire or need starts after computers, it's probably not all that essential, or maybe was caused by computers (like anti-virus software).

[TeMPOraL]

Two aspects: 'skybrian touched the first one - back in the days RMS formed FSF, there wasn't as sharp distinction between users and programmers. Things have changed, but in some aspect not for the better. Users are now a completely separate class and treated as children/monkeys by our industry; from "bicycles for the mind", computers turned into glorified mail-order catalogs. That's tangential, but I would only say that where skybrian's Apple-like companies are failing users is by making everything easier except being a proficient computer user.

Second aspect: while freedoms 1 and 3 are developer-specific, they assume and secure an open marketplace. They're about the same thing that "Right to Repair" movement fights for in the hardware space - the ability for me, as a lay user, to ask a professional friend/neighbour, or a local shop, to pretty please fix/modify my software/hardware. The ability for that friend/local professional to perform that work legally. Where Open Source only allows this to happen, FSF-style Free Software tries to force it to happen, by legally ensuring the benefits I ordered and someone made for me could be used by the entire community.

It's a hard sell for businesses earning money by making software, but from the user's perspective it's important on a longer-term - particularly if said user believes in competitive markets, as competition in a market doesn't really work unless it happens over a commodity.

[zeveb]

> The main FSF Libre software benefits they tout ‘for users’ are only actually accessible by developers.

You're assuming that users cannot themselves be developers. Why can't they? Writing software is a skill and can be taught.

[simonh]

No I'm not at all, I'm simply observing that in the real world most users of software are not developers and therefore do not have access to those benefits. In fact all but a small fraction of developers don't either, for any given project, because they happen to not know the language and dev tools used for it.

The fact that they could theoretically in principle access those benefits and therefore everything is in reality ok, is the sort of magical thinking that has put the Libre Software movement out on the fringes of relevance.

[zeveb]

They have access; they choose not to avail themselves of it.

If I refuse to exercise a capability, that doesn't mean that I don't have it.

Refusing to tell a computer what to to is an odd choice, because what else is a computer for?