From stephen at xemacs.org Sun Jun 19 23:33:25 2011 From: stephen at xemacs.org (Stephen J. Turnbull) Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2011 23:33:25 +0900 Subject: [Fs-phil] Yet another generic "free" vs. "open source" thread In-Reply-To: <8762o41no8.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> References: <010001cc29eb$fc806cb0$f5814610$@cs.ua.edu> <87vcw9ksdd.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87hb7rlmjt.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87boxxlpkf.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87wrgl3cxx.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <877h8lkmzw.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <8762o43m37.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <871uyslq3d.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <8762o41no8.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> Message-ID: <87vcw1ki16.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> This is my last post in this thread on this list. I've created a separate list on my own host, "fs-phil at turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp". It's a mailman list, subscribe as usual. It will be open post until it gets spam, then posting will be restricted to members. The only on-topic content restriction is that you're not allowed to complain that the list's name is inappropriate given the owner's philosophy. Archives are available in /pipermail/fs-phil/. GMane subscription welcome, but I'm not gonna bother myself. MFT and Reply-To set. I plan to reply to other posts in the thread; I will CC: authors and recipients who aren't lists. I considered Glenn's suggestion about moving the discussion to gnu.misc.discuss, but I'm not known there and don't feel like working out those issues on yet another list. This may very well kill this thread dead on both lists. :-) But.... David Kastrup writes: > Creating free software sucks as a business model because access to it is > by its nature not constrainable. Any non-trivial companies working in > that area are working as > > a) creating software on demand where the customer does not care about > the license. > b) creating distributions of free software and selling copies. > c) trying to make a service model around free software. You forgot to mention that you don't call it a business model unless it is the foundation of your *whole* business. In any case, while open source advocates do have their eyes on business models, for the ones I'm talking about, it's their personal lives, and quite often, their working environment, where they really care about the issues. > And so on. While the companies crash and burn, they leave behind free > software, but without a developer base and ongoing commitment. Who needs a company to crash and burn? There are plenty of projects which never got close to commercial distribution that left behind free software, but without a developer base and ongoing commitment. And then there's MIT/X which was basically a corporate venture and the world's suckiest GUI, but still going strong at 30 or so, while only a couple of the companies are left (and most of those are Japanese, where old companies never die, they just turn into social institutions). > Beyond a certain complexity, having the source code in your hand > without the brains behind it does not help. Aye, *there* indeed is the rub. Where is Ben Wing? And Gerd Moellmann? Or Chuck Thompson (the main author of XEmacs's redisplay)? Those are important questions. > FLOSS software rates awful under the metrics that the Open Source > movement is interested in. Name names, please. I really don't think you know what you're talking about. From stephen at xemacs.org Mon Jun 20 00:07:27 2011 From: stephen at xemacs.org (Stephen J. Turnbull) Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 00:07:27 +0900 Subject: [Fs-phil] Please don't refer to Emacs as "open source" In-Reply-To: <81aadg42ke.fsf@gmail.com> References: <010001cc29eb$fc806cb0$f5814610$@cs.ua.edu> <87vcw9ksdd.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87hb7rlmjt.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87boxxlpkf.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87wrgl3cxx.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <877h8lkmzw.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <8762o43m37.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <871uyslq3d.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <8762o41no8.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <81aadg42ke.fsf@gmail.com> Message-ID: <87tyblkggg.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> Per Glenn's suggestion, moving to an alternative venue. Grovel the List-* headers for how to subscribe, etc. Jambunathan K writes: > Lately we see more and more companies talking of "Corporate Social > Responsibility" and pride themselves in supporting and making a positive > impact on "Local Communities". If you're talking about companies big enough to be listed on major exchanges (NYSE, TSE, etc), this is basically good politics. At least where I live, though, "Corporate Social Responsibility" is better spelled "Corporate Social Irresponsibility with Good Opportunities for PR". The companies throw money at advertising and pet philanthropies of their executives, and trumpet the ecological advantages of their products. However, companies that do damage to the environment (Tokyo Electric Power and TOYOTA come immediately to mind) do *not* work reduce demand for their product. On the other hand, there are indeed "ethical" businesses whose owners insist on certain principles of business which are not necessarily profit-maximizing. The various genuine attempts at pure free software business are one example. Several such owners have retired early (I believe L. Peter Deutsch of Aladdin Ghostscript, who falls into a grey area -- few FSFers would consider him "genuine" -- managed the trick before he turned 40). Some ethical businesses are huge; I believe that the largest mutual fund dedicated to investing in woman-owned- and-run businesses now has over 10 billion dollars at its disposal. > I would make a reasonable assumption that a company producing a "Open > Source" component is very likely to depend on other "Open Source" > components during it's production process. Most do, not only on components, but on tools as well. > Putting all the above different items together: > > FLOSS companies has to be pressured in to act in ways that nurture the > ecosystem and prevented from acting in ways that is harmful to the > ecosystem. I disagree. A company dedicated to FLOSS has already forfeited potentially large profits due to refusing to adopt an appropriate mixed licensing scheme (Ghostscript is a well-known example of a very profitable product based on a rather permissive mixed scheme). They don't need to be pressured, they need to be shown how to survive while giving away the store. Of the cases where Richard has pressured companies that I know of, they basically decided that free software was a hostile environment (!) and went to relatively permissive non-free licenses (Aladdin Ghostscript, several minor products that used Qt). (Obviously I'm not referring to successes like GNU Objective-C, where Apple was in clear violation of the GPL.) > The companies have to adopt an ethical standard where part of > their funds for CSR program is used to fund their FLOSS peers.. Most companies involved in FLOSS as their primary software business cannot afford a marketing department, let alone a CSR department. Good luck on that one! > A common user has to be educated so that he can exert his pressure in > the right direction. Campaigns for boycott comes to my mind here. We already have one of those. It's called "the free software movement." It's a loser, as a boycott. > The citizens can also lobby with the governments and insist on their > governments allocating budgetary funds to FLOSS projects that the > governments have to come rely on. Governments have better reason to do that (avoiding lock-in), and they already do. It's sad that software paid for by a government grant is not *required* to be free software, but a very large amount of it is, anyway. (David's comment about orphaned free software is very pertinent here, but it's not obvious to me that it can be avoided in this context.) > As I put my thoughts down, it is becoming increasing clear that an > education campaign and programs like boycott or making hostile > takeovers a tabeau would considerably strengthen the FLOSS > ecosystem. Boycotts and other restraints on trade are a non-starter in the OSS part of the ecosystem. *Hostile* takeovers of FLOSS products are probably not a big problem, by the way, because it's not possible to revoke a license on existing copies even if you acquire the full copyright. From stephen at xemacs.org Mon Jun 20 01:48:18 2011 From: stephen at xemacs.org (Stephen J. Turnbull) Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 01:48:18 +0900 Subject: [Fs-phil] Defining software freedom, and a sidetrack on embedded systems In-Reply-To: <811uys69vd.fsf@gmail.com> References: <010001cc29eb$fc806cb0$f5814610$@cs.ua.edu> <87vcw9ksdd.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87hb7rlmjt.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87boxxlpkf.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87wrgl3cxx.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <877h8lkmzw.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <811uys69vd.fsf@gmail.com> Message-ID: <87sjr5kbsd.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> Per Glenn's suggestion, moving to an alternative venue. Grovel the List-* headers for how to subscribe, etc. Please trim! Jambunathan K writes: > > This is a serious philosophical problem for the movement. The > > movement's propaganda equates "software freedom" with "freedom of > > speech", but in fact they belong to different classes. > > Somehow I think that the last paragraph is incomplete. > > Could you please clarify to what class "software freedom" rightfully > belongs in the way you see it? Sure. Software freedom as espoused by the Free Software Foundation ("morally speaking, all software should be free") really is for hackers. Nobody else cares, and it really doesn't affect their lives, except economically, which is irrelevant to the issue of software freedom as such (in other words, bitching about monopoly is an open source issue). As I argued in the previous post, it *can't*, especially now that most applications come in free versions, or are embedded and unhackable by non-specialists anyway. That is very different from free speech, where the right can be exercised by any halfwit blowhard, and frequently is. And free speech *does* matter to your daily life in your relation with the government, especially if you want to translate the names of people killed in an earthquake into roman letters for the benefit of people abroad whose PCs don't speak Japanese (did that, a long time ago, and got a cease-and-desist lawyer letter from the TV company whose broadcasts were the native source of the names for my pains), or if you live downwind of a meltdown (I do, and the fact that people living near me freely published Gieger counter readings made staying in Japan thinkable -- unfortunately for those *near* the Fukushima power station, there weren't any national universities or research institutes downwind, and the power company and the bureaucracy suppressed the readings they had), or if you make enough money to interest the tax authorities (I don't, but if I did you can be sure I'd lobby the government to give me a break). This is not to say that eliminating software patent and software copyright might not be an excellent idea (I personally am in favor of the former and on the fence about the latter), just that I really don't see in so-called "intellectual property" the kind of government infringement of individual rights that are dealt with by the U.S. Bill of Rights and similar legal provisions. > GNU/Linux is becoming particularly popular to build sophisticated > embedded systems Yes. > They also provide drivers in the kernel and distribute it alongside the > vanilla kernel. The distribution of driver and their apparent upgrades > is a mere posturing by these companies to "express solidarity with the > GNU/Linux" system. I doubt they're expressing "solidarity". AFAICS they're just doing the minimum they think is needed to avoid getting trashed the way nVidia does in the community. > In truth, these drivers do not exploit the full funcitonality of > the underlying hardware and are often very poor substitutes for > their "commercial" linux offerings (Think HP and IBM here). So what? You want commercial grade drivers, buy the OS. I bet you get source then. Or write them yourself. > Does GPL lays emphasis on the right to distribute or a (mandatory > contractual) obligation to redistribute? Note the subtle difference > - the right to distribute would mean the right to not distribute as > well. It's not a question of "emphasis". The GPL imposes the obligation to distribute a reasonable form of source if you distribute any form of a GPLed program. If you have used any part of a GPLed program in your program, your *whole* program is a derivative, and you must do one of three things: 1) refrain from distributing your program at all 2) get a license permitting you to do what you want to do from the copyright holder of the GPL program, or 3) distribute the whole source of the program to those you have distributed any form of the program too. There is some legal question about definitions of "derivative" and of "distribution", but mostly they probably mean what you think they do. However, in the case of kernel drivers, Linus has explicitly stated that kernel drivers that access only "public APIs" of the kernel are "really" extensions of the firmware, not the kernel, and do not incur GPL obligations. Viz nVidia. This does not apply to private APIs or internal variables of the kernel; if you use those, the GPL bites. > Law could be lax on individual users should it also be lax on such > enterprises, which in my view, playi the devil and actually "hoard > and piggback" on community produce and accumulate humongous private > fortune. It's not the law, it's Linus who is lax. He considers it an issue of "consenting adults" if users want to use hardware accessed via proprietary drivers. He has publicly stated that he does not require adults to be sane or competent; he thinks that consenting to such drivers is stupid. The FSF's lawyers, however, say that kernel drivers are derivatives of the kernel and therefore covered by the GPL, absent this special exception. Richard Stallman is also lax on the issue of firmware etc. That is the issue that drove Ghostscript out of the free software fold. Peter wanted an interpretation of "software" that excluded firmware not upgradable by the user so that he could use the GPL for Ghostscript as software, while charging for use in embedded systems like printers and fax. Richard told him to take a hike, this is a desirable use of free software. So Peter hired a lawyer and switched to the Aladdin license from the GPL for current release, then switched each release back to GPL after one year. (Richard will tell you that there are legal complications in trying to make this distinction, I imagine, and there probably are. Cf. how complicated the discussions around the Affero clause and the anti- technical-means clauses in GPL v3 were. Nevertheless, he also told Peter that what he wanted to do violated the definition of software freedom.) > > And of course this assumes that we concede to RMS the right to define > > "software freedom". > > Some one has to define it. Sure, the common use definition needs to be done by someone, and Richard's is a good one. That's not the point. The question is "when I call myself a free software advocate, what do I mean by that?" > > Many of my friends do not, and use less stringent definitions (ie, not > > requiring redistributability). It is fair for you to complain that > > this is not "true" software freedom, but that misses the point. These > > folks are "almost there"! > > I have highlighted aspects of "requiring redistributability" in the > above para and contrasted that against "right to redistributability". Above you talked about the GPL. The GPL is only the restrictive extreme of free software licenses, but there are a wide variety of more permissive licenses. The definition of free software does not require redistributability of downstream, but it permits it. Some kinds of free software allow fully proprietary redistribution, with no obligations at all on the licensee, except those that indemnify the licensor and protect her reputation, and "author's rights" (eg, to be known as the author). The "less stringent definitions" referred to above are nonfree because they allow licenses *prohibiting* redistribution, as long as the user gets source, and permissions to make modifications and local copies for one's personal (including corporate personal) use. Everybody acknowledges that such licenses are non-free. The folks I'm referring to simply try to have it both ways: those licenses do not cause them to get their shorts in a knot (although they avoid products carrying such licenses to avoid lock-in, etc), but they want to consider themselves advocates of software freedom, too. > > It seems likely to me that they are fairly easy to persuade to accept > > the full definition. > > I don't think the embedded companies Please READ WHAT PEOPLE WRITE, and respond to that. In the sentence above, "they" refers, first, to the people I drink beer with, and second to others in that general neighborhood of the spectrum of the open source community. NOT to "the embedded companies". If you don't want to reply to what I wrote, I have no problem with that. Write what you want to write. But don't quote my words if you're just going to ignore them. > I believe Free Software makes for a stronger case in conjunction > with Free/Libre Hardware Designs. I think a "Category Killer" in > the Open Hardware is all that is needed to tilt most of the "Open > Source" camp in favor of "Free" camp. Unlikely IMO. I suspect it would rather have the opposite effect, attracting a lot of people who would otherwise say "it can only be done with proprietary systems" to the "hey, open source can be all of cheap, good, soon!" point of view. Some might move toward the position I currently hold ("there's probably a theoretical modification of the patent system that would create a better environment for software users and developers than eliminating software patents altogether, but it isn't ever going to get enacted, so let's get rid of software patents"). But all of this is about the tangible benefits of free software, not about software freedom, as David would say. So I don't see how it would attract them to the "all laws creating intellectual property are morally wrong" position. The "I created program X, I should have a say in who uses it and how" feeling seems to be instinctive, and most people seem to both feel it and sympathize with others who do.