We need more of Richard Stallman, not less
ploum.net
We need more of Richard Stallman, not less écrit par Ploum, Lionel Dricot, ingénieur, écrivain de science-fiction, développeur de logiciels libres.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1366698

Richard Stallman was right since the very beginning. Every warning, every prophecy realised. And, worst of all, he had the solution since the start. The problem is not Richard Stallman or the Free Software Foundation. The problem is us. The problem is that we didn’t listen.

  • moon_matter@kbin.social
    1·
    1 year ago

    The problem with copyleft is that it makes it inherently difficult to make a living off of developing software. It prevents people from using the most straight forward way of selling their product. To be fair, some people do make it work but it’s either because they sell enterprise support or SaaS. This model doesn’t work for desktop applications and regular users. All you’re left with is donations. Go look at some of the average salaries for incredibly popular software like VLC. You won’t like what you’ll find.

    • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
      1·
      1 year ago

      It’s really a problem with the way copyright, or copyleft advocacy is done, written or proposed … there will be an endless debate about it forever.

      One of the things that should change is our collective culture of paying for things we value and are actually important in our society and civilization. Everyone should be made aware of the work that developers, admins, hobbyists and programmers do for free. We should normalize donations, contributions and subscriptions to these things and these people.

      If it became normal that thousands or millions of users everywhere contributed dollars or even cents for the work that is done for the benefit of everyone … there would be more than enough money to protect the copyright of software and even pay for the work these people do.

    • buckykat@lemmy.fmhy.ml
      0·
      1 year ago

      One of the few things Stallman is wrong about is his view that Free Software is compatible with capitalism

          • NathanUp@lemmy.ml
            0·
            1 year ago

            This article doesn’t necessarily make a statement on whether FOSS is compatible with capitalism. It could be that RMS encourages developers to charge for free software because it keeps FOSS projects sustainable while devs are forced to operate in a capitalist framework. It seems to me that the FSF has always refrained from directly making any kind of statement on capitalism, focusing (as the article says) solely on software freedom.

            • buckykat@lemmy.fmhy.ml
              0·
              1 year ago

              By failing to make a statement on capitalism, it necessarily assumes the two are not in conflict. This is a bad assumption.

              The business model suggested in the article does not exist. Companies which distribute Free Software make their money by selling secondary products and services, like Canonical or Red Hat’s support services, Firefox’s Google search integration, or System 76’s hardware, not by selling the Free Software itself.

              The ultimate goal of the FSF is that all software should be Free. With that in mind, the question we must ask is this:

              Why is there nonFree software?

              The answer is the profit motive. Without the profit motive, there would be no incentive to make software nonFree.

              Consider the examples Stallman cites as the inciting incedents of his entire Free Software advocacy career: Xerox’s printer drivers and Scribe’s paywall. Why did Xerox refuse to share its driver source code? To protect its profits. Why did Unilogic ask Brian Reid to put time bombs in his code? To profit from their investment in buying that code from him.

              To ignore this is fundamentally a failure, or a refusal, to understand the conflict the Free Software movement finds itself in.

              • NathanUp@lemmy.ml
                1·
                1 year ago

                By failing to make a statement on capitalism, it necessarily assumes the two are not in conflict.

                No it doesn’t. Either there’s no logic in that statement at all, or you’re playing 5D chess with time travel and I’m playing checkers. While the article says:

                Selling a copy of a free program is legitimate, and we encourage it

                it makes no statement on whether this activity represents a sustainable business model, nor does it explore how selling FOSS may or may not affect other businesses. I said:

                It seems to me that the FSF has always refrained from directly making any kind of statement on capitalism, focusing (as the article says) solely on software freedom.

                because the article itself ended with:

                When we defend users’ freedom, we are not distracted by side issues such as how much of a distribution fee is charged. Freedom is the issue, the whole issue, and the only issue.

                I don’t (and can’t) know whether the absence of discussion on FOSS’ relation to capitalism represents a touch of myopia (as you suggest) on the part of RMS & the FSF, whether RMS intends to be the Gary Yourofsky of free software and it’s a deliberate choice for the sake of optics, or whether it betrays a pro-capitalism stance, but my feeling is that RMS is more concerned about FOSS as a vehicle for the creation and preservation of a digital commons, and a safeguard against privacy violation, and likely doesn’t have terribly many well informed thoughts and opinions on economic systems.

                • buckykat@lemmy.fmhy.ml
                  0·
                  1 year ago

                  Since you’ve completely ignored my main point, I’ll just repeat it:

                  Why is there nonFree software?

                  The answer is the profit motive.

                  Capitalism is not a side issue. It is the central issue.

  • dlarge6510@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    The man is my life lol.

    I discovered GNU/Linux in school in the 90’s, then as I got better access to the internet at home and Linux magazines I learned everything about RMS and GNU and the FSF.

    I latched on to it all. Apart from retro systems with their various proprietary operating systems I have no time for any proprietary software if I can help it.

    The Retro systems get a pass because I’m interested in old computers.

  • Ministar@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Interesting read, although a bit too preachy at times.

    In my opinion, this is a utopian point of view that does not work in real life and glances over a lot of good things of GPL.

    Linux and a lot of open source would not be here today, in this shape, without big companies using it for their commercialized software. You really think Microsoft would contribute to Linux source code if it can not use it commercially? You really think ANY company would contribute to ANYTHING if they can not commercialize it?

    Linux is what it is today because not only volunteers, but companies depend on it being stable and feature-full. If companies did not care to contribute to it, it would be dead and only a pet project of few volunteers.

    Who would pay all these people to work on it? Sure, some of them would work for free as a hobby, some of them coud get paid from donations. But its nowhere near enough to make Linux or any other FOSS project big and popular.

    Until people need money to survive, AGPL will never be the most popular license and it should not if you want to have FOSS.

    And what is so bad about it? You still have base open source code that they use to make their software, make your own. You are mad because companies take open source code, and charge for it. Then, you take it and make the software free.

    You want everybody to use FOSS, sure. Who will be customer support? Who will fix and be responsible for stuff when they dont work? How will you pay these people?

    Free as in, free to do whatever the fuck you want with it. Not free as in free to do whatever you want, except make money to survive.

    • version_unsorted@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      The problems you describe are due to capitalism: profit motivated commerce. The open source business model has a focus that monetizes the human actions that are a value-add, such as continued development of targeted features, tech support and other things it makes sense to pay for specialized knowledge, but the tangibles are still open for all to modify, audit or use as they want.