[hank777]

what a whacko. I should allow you to access my servers and services for free? I should allow you to control how you use my resources in a way that guarantees I loose money? Stallman is a digital socialist. The idea of services (or anything other than direct labor) that people charge for offends him. That offends me.

[mahmud]

> what a whacko.

ad hominem.

> I should allow you to access my servers and services for > free?

You can charge for Free software. If you're using any Free software in your web application stack, if you're using any Free documentation, and Free data sources, then isn't it a little hypocritical of you to lock-down what basically amounts to a component assembly of Free software?

> I should allow you to control how you use my resources in > a way that guarantees I loose money?

Make all the money you want, companies are making billions out of Free software. And nobody wants to use your server, bandwidth or material resources. However, the _software_ should be given to the people who USE it. Giving the public a freebie web service for now, until you figure out how to sell their information and useage stats to advertisers, does not make your service free.

People are typing their twitter logins to little apps that are poping up everywhere. Wouldn't you rather have these web apps open, somewhere in github, with a transparent database backend that you can see is not hoarding any personal infromation about you?

> Stallman is a digital socialist.

And that's a label many would self-attribute, with pride.

> The idea of services (or anything other than direct > labor) that people charge for offends him. That offends me.

Fine. Don't use Free software then :-)

[inklesspen]

I don't see anywhere where he demands free-of-charge access. Stallman supports "free software" where the "free" means that the user's liberty to manipulate the program is preserved.

In Stallman's dream world, you would be free to charge for your service, or put ads up, or whatever you like. But your service would use standardized file formats, and the user would be able to modify the application (both server-side and client-side) to suit his needs.

[jskopek]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the two ideals (being able to charge for your work VS. being able to modify others' work) contradictory?

I have zero experience with Firefox extension development, but everything I _have_ seen about it points at it being very difficult to mirror in a closed source environment.

[viraptor]

These are not contradictory. People still buy services. Also, you don't have to charge users directly. Three simple examples:

- firefox - open, free, gets money from google

- openmoko - open mobile, you can even download their pcb design and CAD files, but they do sell the product

- specialised apps - company I work for releases some code as open-source, but that doesn't mean that our users have resources to provide the same service themselves, so we don't lose anything

[hank777]

if you can "modify" the server side and the client side, you can "modify" the need to pay.

[jrockway]

Of course, but we already do this. I block all ads, which means I'm modifying your app to not make any money off of me. Such is the reality of the Internet and general purpose computers.

[axod]

No, you just think you block ads. It's extremely naive to think you actually block all ads. I'm sure a lot of people have made money out of you online from advertising you don't recognize as advertising.

edit: Sure, downvote me if you like. If you like to think adblock etc actually block all adverts I guess it's up to you. It blocks a small class of 'obvious adverts'. Several websites will pass outgoing links through a jump script which may or may not then go through affiliate links. Adblock is useless against such things. There are several such examples.

[jodrellblank]

That's fine. I use flashblock and adblock to block annoying flashing animated noisy colourful page disrupting ads, to block ads and ad servers tracking me and giving them power and commercial gain with no gain to me, and to stop FireFox playing noise from background tabs I can't find quickly.

I don't do it to stop site owners 'making' money from me. If you can get non-annoying ads to me, and make money from me, that's brilliant. If that's all anyone did, I'd get rid of *block altogether.

[dave_au]

If you can arbitrarily modify the server side of any instance of the application then you can also just pay using someone elses credit card details.

Although I think what Stallman would probably prefer is the source to the site / web application being available so that people can run their own instances.

HN and reddit have their source available. I don't see anyone using the reddit code in a way that's any threat to reddit, mainly since the size of the community is an asset that's hard to compete with.

Potentially off-topic, since I'm not familiar with the prevalent licensing, but the various django applications look pretty nice for this kind of thing.

[sketerpot]

Paying is usually more convenient. Convenience is worth money.

[patio11]

The idea of services (or anything other than direct labor) that people charge for offends him.

Actually, no. He is for totally abrogating copyright on works which have "practical use" and for maintaining certain forms of exclusive economic control on entertainment and advocacy.

Essentially, he thinks he should be able to redistribute my software for free, for any purpose whatsoever, but that I should not be able to commercially exploit his speeches or modify them, because that "misrepresents" him.

See:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Free_Software_and_Beyond:_Huma...

But let's turn to the next category, works that state the views of certain parties. Now here my answer is different, I don't think modified versions of these works contribute to society, all they do is misrepresent the authors. So I propose a compromised copyright system which says that everybody is free non-commercially to redistribute exact copies. But modifications require permission and commercial use require permission. So this compromised copyright system would provide revenues more or less as the current system does.

[critic]

"communist"

[jodrellblank]

"label"