Copyleft / Free software

[edo494]

Why are so many people butthurt about proprietary software? Why cant free software and/or copyleft extremists accept proprietary software(e.g. GNU project members and every second GNU/Linux user?)?

I am asking because apparently GNU is bashing proprietary software pretty hard on their website, and also with the "Gitorious being merged into GitLab" case, a lot of people hated the fact that their repos would be forced to move from GPL(I think what Gitorious uses) into MIT lincenses.

This is in no way a war start or anything, I just wanted to discuss this

 

[PurgeandFire]

I don't understand it very much either. Honestly, I encourage people to have open source projects, but that was always on an indie-scale. Big businesses and GNU's "free software" concepts don't mix well. From a business standpoint, there is simple justification for keeping your software as proprietary: you need da moniez and want to reduce competition.

From a philosophical standpoint, yeah it would be nice if all software was open-source/GNU free so that everyone may bless each other with their outstanding wisdom by constantly improving upon what is built... but that is an ideal (most would just inject porn into the files and redistribute it as soon as they have the chance). Moreover, it comes in conflict with development as a profession.

But I'm speaking as someone who has hardly even read about the subject. I'm sure GNU supporters have convincing reasons for being "extremist". Personally, I'll just stick to using the current licensing system, and for all of my own works, I'll just slap on a wtfpl license.

 

[GhostWolf]

From a philosophical standpoint, yeah it would be nice if all software was open-source/GNU free so that everyone may bless each other with their outstanding wisdom by constantly improving upon what is built... but that is an ideal (most would just inject porn into the files and redistribute it as soon as they have the chance). Moreover, it comes in conflict with development as a profession.

Yes, that's exactly what happened with the Linux kernel, aka the biggest open source project in the world, that runs on most of the digital devices that exist.

Also, if you'd actually check trends in software, you'd notice that more and more big companies are moving towards releasing their source (though not necessarily in a complete open way), because they realized that having their source in a (sort of-) public space allows other people to help them maintain and improve it.
This is especially seen in game engines.

And that point illustrates why open source ends up being good for everyone in the general case. You get outsourcing for free, your product becomes better, and people still pay for it regardless.

Just to be objective, I'll say that these are things that I noticed by myself, I didn't read anything on the subject.
I use MIT, although I don't really have any big public project.

 

[edo494]

open-source != GNU free tho

 

[N.Knight]

Why are so many people butthurt about proprietary software? Why cant free software and/or copyleft extremists accept proprietary software(e.g. GNU project members and every second GNU/Linux user?)?

Not quite. I am not sure what you take as bashing could be genuine criticism, which should exist, I mean it would be counterintuitive if Microsoft puts its cons on its website.

 

[edo494]

I have nothing against listing it, but they are almost like attacking it, or making fun of people writing or supporting proprietary systems.

I think you quoted wrong part too

 

[Dr Super Good]

It is the entire HTML5 vs Firefox problem. Many content providers like BBC, Warner Brothers, Disney, Sky, Fox, Sony, Universal etc all were going to blackmail Firefox unless they added proprietary secure media streaming stuff to it to protect their video content.

 

[edo494]

GNU Project is twice as old as Mozilla Foundation tho.

 

[loxie]

Open source promotes learning and an understanding of what your computer does. It's like the food movement in America to get rid of GMOs. Companies say we need GMO (and closed-source software) those who are concerned more about an open community and a community of understanding are concerned for the consummer or the end-user, not the company-side of the issue. Depending on where you go, you'd get one-sided responses to questions.

 

[edo494]

Once again, Free software != open-source

 

[loxie]

Once again, Free software != open-source

That's really annoying. The words are interchangeable informally.

 

[Dr Super Good]

There are several reasons why GNU bashes proprietary software. Many of them I even strongly agree with.

Firstly there is the re-use factor. Where as from GNU software you can pull down parts of it and use for completely different projects, proprietary software does not allow this. For example one can easily get a C/C++ compiler for any platform by porting GCC code. A proprietary compiler (Visual C++) does not allow this, forcing you to "re-invent the wheel" rather than actually getting something done.

Then there is the entire pay for something simple problem. Why should you have to pay for a decent image processing program? Adobe Photoshop and Paint Shop both have hefty licence costs. Operating systems like Mac and Windows also require expensive licences. However you can get programs like Gimp and operating systems like Linux completely free of charge. To produce a DVD player you in theory need to pay a licence fee still, again something completely stupid as it is not even that complex to do.

There is also the product quantity argument and maintainability. Paid software is only as good as the financial resources allow it to be. After maintenance stops you may find bugs never get fixed. GNU software on the other hand encourages users to help fix problems. If you encounter a really annoying bug that has been around for a long time you can go and fix it yourself. Better still you can then send a patch to the software maintainers and many of them will be happy to integrate along with a constant stream of fixes from users just like yourself. If a feature is missing you can do the same, there really is nothing to stop you doing sensible stuff.

Finally there is the argument of product life. Most commercial software has a finite life after which all maintenance stops. Eventually the product might become so un-supported that it becomes impossible to use or requires expensive specialist hardware (not off-the-shelf components). GNU projects on the other hand have practically an infinite maintenance time. When such software stops working on one platform, you (or others) can work on porting it to a new platform and feed back the changes to the developers so everyone can now use it on the new platform. Even if no one bothers to do any maintenance for 10 years (imagine some old tool people stopped using that you need to load some old files) you can still make it work as you have full access to the source code to work on.

The main argument against GNU is the financial model. To put it bluntly, it has none what so ever. You cannot charge for a build of GCC (although the licence permits it if I recall) simply because anyone can download it for free. Also the overall quality of GNU products is generally much lower due to a lack of expertise or simply resources to spend on improving quality. You open Adobe Photoshop and chances are you will never find an error let alone a crash, even more so after a few patches. Open GIMP and you will almost certainly find errors somewhere and there is a good chance the process could even crash under some conditions.

This is not the case for all GNU software however (only most). Compilers like GCC and the Linux Kernel do have paid for development due to their wide spread use in industry.

 

[edo494]

all you named can be achieved by open source, but not free code too.

Yes, I should call it like PnF(GNU free).

Linus has a foundation for maintaining Linux kernel, yes.

 

[loxie]

all you named can be achieved by open source, but not free code too.

I disagree, strongly.

The GNU movement is more legal than computer-related.

For an example, Ubuntu (a distributor of the Debian GNU/Linux kernel unstable distro with security updates) includes non-free driver support and software. Without knowledge of these licenses, people may install these drivers (or worst, not be aware that they have the choice, which is the case with Ubuntu's PR) without any consideration.

Debian does not install non-free drivers or software initially but does give you the chance to later (and supports it in its package manager).

This is an example of where the two projects differ in opinion.

There are GNU projects that rely only on the GNU license. The GNU project overall is to convert an entire operating system to open-source, free software. It's important that open-source remains conjoined to this project because nothing can be truly free unless it's open.

Matthew Garrent made a really good blog post a few months back about how many open-source projects are not readable. Meaning the source that's released can't be understood because there's no documentation. The need for documentation is something that open-source isn't required to fulfill. GNU on the other hand needs documentation to allow for someone to be considered free.

 

[Dr Super Good]

A big issue that Linux currently has is the lack of GNU graphic drivers. NVidia and AMD offer proprietary drivers but the GNU people do not like that (as it means the OS is not really free).

 

[edo494]

there are some nonproprietary for AMD at least too.

@Loxie, I was referring to DSG's post

 

[loxie]

@edo494

Sorry, I'll sit down and go back to the kitchen. *eye roll*

 

[edo494]

I dont know if I offended you, because that is hard to deduce from that post but if I do I do apologise. If I didnt, than no apology for you!

 

[Dr Super Good]

there are some nonproprietary for AMD at least too.

Yes however they suffer from the lack of resources I described above. The official AMD ones will perform far better in almost all cases as AMD spends millions every year developing drivers as does NVidia. The only people who work on the GNU drivers would be people who are GNU worshipers and outright reject proprietary software which basically means few people of which most lack experience. The results are chalk and cheese.