[ja30278]

I found the counter-argument made in the first reply to be more compelling. http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2014-01/msg00178.html

Whether you agree with the FSF or not, their whole existence stems from their beliefs about software freedom. If they compromise their principles in exchange for 'market share', then they quite literally have no purpose.

[chimeracoder]

Agreed. It's very rare these days to find people who are willing to stick to their principles; we should respect those who do, rather than criticize them for not compromising on their principles[0].

From your linked post:

> You are crossposting to two public project lists of the GNU project with inflammatory language and mischaracterizations. You have been involved with the GNU project long enough to be well aware that this kind of crowbar approach does not lead to much more than headlines about Free Software infighting.

ESR is doing little more than trolling here. He knows exactly where the FSF stands, and he knows exactly why that's not going to change (asking the FSF to do something that they believe hinders free software is like asking MADD to open a drive-through liquor store).

The FSF has always been very clear that they see the "open source" movement as complementary to (though not the same as) the free software movement, fighting for similar goals but for different reasons[1]. It's sad to see ESR, an "open source" advocate, actively try to fan the flames.

Nobody wins from this. Except advocates of closed, proprietary software.

[0] Of course, ESR knows exactly what he's doing here - the issue is that he disagrees with their principles, but instead of debating those, he'd rather attack them for executing on their principles rather than executing on his principles. It's a cheap rhetorical trick and a rather low move.

[1] "We don't think of the Open Source movement as an enemy. The enemy is proprietary software.", from https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.en..... (Don't be fooled by the title - the content of the article is very even-keeled).

[dragonwriter]

> It's very rare these days to find people who are willing to stick to their principles; we should respect those who do, rather than criticize them for not compromising on their principles

Why should I respect someone for sticking with principles that are misguided? The whole idea that "sticking to principles" is a virtue independent of the merits of the principles involved is perverse.

Its even more perverse when the "principles" being stuck too are tactical judgments about how to best acheive strategic aims, and they are being stuck too even when they are operating against the strategic aims -- which is, precisely, the charge ESR is levelling against the anti-plugin policy vis-a-vis the stated goals of the FSF with regard to GCC.

> asking the FSF to do something that they believe hinders free software is like asking MADD to open a drive-through liquor store

ESR's argument is that FSF is wrong that this hinders free software, and in fact that FSF's status quo approach inhibits the FSF's stated goals for GCC.

[mcguire]

"the 'principles' being stuck too are tactical judgments about how to best acheive strategic aims, and they are being stuck too even when they are operating against the strategic aims -- which is, precisely, the charge ESR is levelling against the anti-plugin policy vis-a-vis the stated goals of the FSF with regard to GCC."

I believe ESR is wrong.

In years past, there was BSD unix, a modified version of the unix shipped from Bell Labs. The BSD changes were theoretically "free", in that if you had a license from AT&T (which were easy to get, since at the time AT&T couldn't sell software), you could do anything you wanted with them.

What people did was to fork BSD, take their modifications proprietary, and create Solaris (well, SunOS), HP-UX, AIX, Irix, and a fair-sized stack of others that did even worse in the marketplace. The end result of that was fragmentation in the Unix ecosystem, which was bad on many levels. (One example: Don't like autoconf/automake/libtool? Guess where the necessity of those came from?)

Or, how about Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso's response to ESR:

"The FSF sure can prevent it, and proprietary compilers still thrive. Here is one that particularly bugs me as an Octave developer: we routinely see people being lured to use Nvidia's non-free nvcc for GPU computing, which they gleefully admit is based on clang and LLVM. And there is Xcode, of course, completely non-free and completely based on clang and LLVM.

"The fact that these non-free tools are not based on gcc are a testament to how proprietary software developers cannot plug into gcc, and how clang is fostering non-free software.

"The nvidia situation is particularly dire becuase today, free GPU computing is almost nonexistent. It's almost all based on CUDA and nvidia's massive pro-CUDA marketing campaign. Even most OpenCL implementations are non-free, and the scant few free implementations of OpenCL that exist are not fully functional."

So we have several examples of ESR's approaches failing. On the other hand, the GPL does a pretty successful job of preventing the kind of fragmentation that damages ESR's "hacker community". And part of the reason it does is the FSF's dogmatic stance.

[dragonwriter]

I think there is a conflict of goals here, but it's one that often goes unstated; ESR is about fostering free software, even if that incidentally also foster's non-free software.

Many on the FSF are about preventing code from being used in non-Free software, even if that incidentally is less than optimal for fostering Free software.

The thing is, many of those who act based on the latter priority present themselves as if there concern was for promoting Free software.

[calroc]

Can we be sure these principles are misguided if no one sticks to them?

[dragonwriter]

Whether principles are misguided or not is a subjective, not an objective, question. Its not something you can "be sure of".

OTOH, if no one sticks to them, that would be evidence against them being widely viewed as important principles.

[oso2k]

For one, ESR isn't asking that the FSF change (directly). He's asking that FSF change with respect to GCC and the audience it serves. There's many developers, and especially young developers, that feel the GPL & FSF are "over-principled". I think we can all agree that "Open Source" has largely won.

But if you ask about "Free Software," and take github as data point, I'd say "Free Software" is losing, and is losing because, like proprietary software, it's "over-principled". Young people everywhere, "feel" like content, many forms of "public" data, and the tools to use, create, play, view, and store such content & data ought to be "free as in beer" (or close to it) based on the principle that the effort to copy & transfer data, content, binary, and source is "almost free". Whether there is a restriction in creating plug-ins, linking or modifying code (as in the GPL/Free Software), or copying binaries and/or content as in proprietary software, these are still restrictions.

This is the reason why I prefer the more permissive licenses for my works like the BSD and MIT licenses. Essentially, my work is a gift, in the purist sense, to the entire universe. To place restrictions on my gift is to have given the world a poison and not a gift.

The reason why is easier to understand when you consider the quote by Jim Warren from a 1976 ACM Programming Language newsletter [1], referencing Bill Gates' famous letter to the Homebrew Computing Club, "There is a viable alternative to the problems raised by Bill Gates in his irate letter to computer hobbyists concerning 'ripping off' software. When software is free, or so inexpensive that it's easier to pay for it than to duplicate it, then it won't be 'stolen'."

Said another way, people will continue to do the "wrong" thing so long as it takes less effort than to do the "right" thing. In my mind, we should be incentivizing the "right" things, like openness, sharing, technical merit, and capability.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_BASIC#An_early_free_softwa...

[belorn]

The data made over repositories like Google code, debian and similar places where entries has some form of minimum standard, GPL licenses are a strong majority, and is increasingly used.

So young people are either not serious enough to warrant inclusion in the 40 000 list of programs in Debian (doubtful), or your assumptions are incorrect.

> To place restrictions on my gift is to have given the world a poison and not a gift.

Next time you gift a beer to a friend, I hope you will allow them to hit you with it. Adding restriction on hitting you with the beer is the same as putting poison in the beer which would kill your friend.

[oso2k]

I'm a Google Code user myself. I prefer it (and inDefero) over the likes of bitbucket, github, savannah, berlios, etc. But that doesn't make github any less popular. I don't understand the analogy you're trying to make by bringing in the debian repositories into the discussion. It seems to me like you're saying making friends on Friendster are more legitimate than friends made on Facebook because it was an initial innovator in the social network. Here's a 2013 that states github has 50% more projects then the next repository (sourceforge)[1]. Here's a 2011 that discusses when github turned 1 million accounts [2].

My argument is that many young developers don't care where they get their code, what license it has, etc. They just want to build, create, collaborate [3]. A secondary argument is that many people feel the GPL is a barrier to collaboration.

When it comes to gifts and beer, I would hope my friend wouldn't hit me with it nor would I put poison in his beer. They're (implicitly) allowed to hit me with it, but I don't expect such a thing to occur. Nor should they expect me to put poison in it. That's all a matter of trust. And the GPL, proprietary licenses, DRM are instruments of distrust.

In the end, you always have choice. I choose to live by the philosophies that "Givers Gain" and people do want to be good people. I understand not everyone has as altruistic intentions, heck, I work for those people. But I also understand that if I want to see the world change, I need to start by changing myself.

[1] http://software.ac.uk/resources/guides/choosing-repository-y...

[2] http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2076108/github-domi...

[3] http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/07/16/0220240/github...

[belorn]

Debian repositories are not gateless, in that you can't just create a repository with a text file in it and call it a project. You have to be sponsored, which mean you got to have some working code that is useful for someone.

Or to take a statitic look, 2 out of 3 forks on github are empty[1]. The quality per "project" on github is order of magnitude less than on debian.

You can test this out by randomly picking github repositories and read code. It takes several tries on the randomizer to even get code, and then even more to get code that actually do something.

Using statistics from more mature projects will provide different results than code just thrown at the wall.

As for the beer, it is a bit of a fringe view to allow others assault oneself with beer bottles. Most people will expect physical assault to have legal repercussions. The GPL in the same way trust that most people will not go out to hurt others, but in the case they will, repercussion will happen.

I now really hope you never end up in a court, complaining about assault, and having your comment above used as evidence against you. You basically gave everyone a license to hit you with beer bottles.

[1] http://blog.ram.rachum.com/post/4472104984/2-out-of-3-github...

[oso2k]

You're just being silly and overly literal. Having gates does not legitimize a project. Being "mature" does not legitimize a project. Only users can legitimize a project, a license, or a philosophy. In that sense, the GPL is losing legitimacy and relevance in the mindshare of young people, IMO. In the same respect, Debian is meeting a similar fate. Does anybody use Debian anymore? Yes, maybe. The new generation of new distributions seem to be built on Ubuntu, not Debian. I know I've never used Debian, and it took Ubuntu to teach me the "Debian-way" when I had grown up on using Red Hat/Fedora.

Implicitly, everyone has a license to do harm to you. Which is why some people feel governments exist to protect you from others, and others from you. But, laws & rules all have two fatal flaws. "It's only illegal if you get caught" and "Rules aren't made to keep the bad guys out; they're made to keep the good guys in." Meditate on that.

[frezik]

Seems like ESR is still fighting the Open Source vs Free Software battle of the late 90s. It hasn't dawned on him yet that everyone else thinks that there's little purpose in cannibalizing the movement over minor philosophical differences.

[cwyers]

By "everybody else" I think you're excluding the people who run the Free Software Foundation, in other words the very people ESR was addressing.

[frezik]

Not really. Even RMS only mentions the distinction in passing. The fight has simply gone out of this one for everyone who isn't ESR, probably because the late 90s was the last time he was relevant.

[jjindev]

This is a digression, but it is slightly more complicated. The top US software companies, by market cap, all use FSF tools, but then in turn decide their own separate levels of openness. Entrepreneurs here will use FSF tools, and then decide how far to open their own kimonos. The original FSF intent, that copyleft would provide contagion to a truly open world seems actually stalled. Apologies for the digression.

[anon1385]

It largely stalled because of the web. Lots of SV startups for example are using GPL'd code, but because they only provide web apps they don't have to release their code. Worse still those startups often think they are on the 'good' side of the free software debate because they use some open source code in their products and maybe even contribute a bit back.

In my opinion the FSF screwed up majorly by concentrating on local software and the GPL while ignoring the much greater danger of software as a service. The AGPL is too weak and the FSF never really pushed it. The GNU project have tried to create some online services/protocols themselves but they are a total joke (e.g. GNU Free Call).

[jjindev]

But don't most people here, at HN, want that right to decide their own openness? I mean, does everyone here plan to do a web startup and then produce a tarball of [their] full work? A full DB API?

I understand that we all, or most of us, have contributed to free or open projects, but I thought the pure-souls, without a little "IP" one way or another, were very rare.

[belorn]

A common business model today is to threaten customers with lawsuit after the exchange of money for software has happened.

As a author, I want to decide if I can accept having my work used in the above mode. I think such threats can cause quite a bit of harm, and there are many notable cases where ordinary people has had their whole life physically hurt by it.

I can see how many developers want to decide for themselves if they are going to use the "threaten customers with lawsuit" model to earn a living. But it is no ones right to decide for me if they can use my work for it.

[bad_user]

IMHO, the fact that the GPL covers only distribution and not usage (i.e. the GPL is NOT an EULA), is the reason for why I consider it a free software license.

AGPL never took off because AGPL is not really free and should have never happened. Unfortunately the FSF is blinded by these so called "dangers" in their fight against proprietary stuff, totally ignoring that AGPL in practice is only used purely for marketing reasons in dual-licensing schemes, there are no communities around AGPL projects and OSI doesn't really give a shit. As a consequence, AGPL is now posturing as a free software / open source license.

> Worse still those startups often think they are on the 'good' side of the free software debate because they use some open source code in their products and maybe even contribute a bit back.

You're making it sound as if that's a bad thing.

The web is the most open distribution platform. The alternative to the web is not FSF's GNU, but rather the iTunes App Store, Google Play, Amazon's Appstore and the Windows Store. And compared to 15 years ago, the barrier to entry for kids wanting to experiment with building and distributing software is very low and the web in combination with open-source tools, libraries and platforms have made it possible. I also hate this holier-than-thou attitude.

[nickbauman]

Correct. Don't forget one of the most striking differences between free software vs open source software is the promotion of a community of people who add to the public knowledge of software engineering, not merely to make better software artifacts. If you had to choose, which would you foster? An individual truth or a community of truth seekers? FSF is clearly about the latter.

[protomyth]

I guess I see it a bit different and GCC is a pretty good example.

LLVM and clang can be used in pretty much any project. They have provided every developer tools to use in anyway we wish. GCC's parts cannot be included in other projects because they are licensed in such a way that tells us that the GCC code is more important than the code we are using. Why does a 1,000 line GPL count for more than 100,000 lines of some other license?

I think the best community is a voluntary one, and with security the way it is, I would rather developers who don't want to be part of the community benefit from the code just as I like the idea of everyone (who can) being vaccinated.

GPL generates a self-selected community that has barriers to participation with other communities because the GPL code is held as more important than the rest.

[fafner]

> GCC's parts cannot be included in other projects because they are licensed in such a way that tells us that the GCC code is more important than the code we are using.

That's simply not true.

[protomyth]

So, if Apple had incorporated GCC's parser into Xcode like they have included clang's, what would have been the effect?

[fafner]

They would have to honour GCC's license, like they have to do with clang's license or any other piece of software.

[protomyth]

And would honoring that license require them to release the source for the non-GPL licensed parts of Xcode and perhaps require some action on any patents implemented in that non-GPL code?

[dragonwriter]

> Don't forget one of the most striking differences between free software vs open source software is the promotion of a community of people who add to the public knowledge of software engineering, not merely to make better software artifacts.

Even if that is a real ideological division between the two, pragmatically I think that the permissive licenses that the FSF argues are less than ideal have done more after the initial demonstration of the value of F/OSS to promote a community of people who add to the public knowledge of software engineering than have copyleft licenses.

I think the divide over licensing approaches is as much over differing views of effective tactics and the real conditions in the environment as it is about differing views of values and strategic goals, and that permissive vs. copyleft is the real current divide more than free software vs. open source, and that, over time, the permissive side is gaining ground for reasons that have nothing to do with the main cited ideological differences between the open source and free software camps.

[taybin]

But but but ESR is a social hacker! http://esr.1accesshost.com/

[unmole]

Hear, hear!