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Parin Sharma

Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation ... - 0 views

www.gnu.org/...n-source-misses-the-point.html

shared by Parin Sharma on 09 Dec 09 - Snapshot
  • Tens of millions of people around the world now use free software;
    the schools of regions of India and Spain now teach all students to
    use the free GNU/Linux operating
    system    . Most of these users, however, have never heard of the ethical
    reasons for which we developed this system and built the free software
    community, because nowadays this system and community are more often
    spoken of as “open source,”, attributing them to a different
    philosophy in which these freedoms are hardly mentioned.
  • In 1998, a part
    of the free software community splintered off and began campaigning in
    the name of “open source.” The term was originally
    proposed to avoid a possible misunderstanding of the term “free
    software,” but it soon became associated with philosophical
    views quite different from those of the free software movement.
  • Nearly all open source software is free software. The two terms
    describe almost the same category of software, but they stand for
    views based on fundamentally different values. Open source is a
    development methodology; free software is a social movement. For the
    free software movement, free software is an ethical imperative,
    because only free software respects the users' freedom. By contrast,
    the philosophy of open source considers issues in terms of how to make
    software “better”—in a practical sense only. It
    says that nonfree software is an inferior solution to the practical
    problem at hand. For the free software movement, however, nonfree
    software is a social problem, and the solution is to stop using it and
    move to free software.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • The term “free software” is prone to misinterpretation:
    an unintended meaning, “software you can get
    for zero price,” fits the term just as well as the intended
    meaning, “software which gives the user certain freedoms.”
    We address this problem by publishing the definition of free software,
    and by saying “Think of ‘free speech,’ not ‘free beer.’” This
    is not a perfect solution; it cannot completely eliminate the problem.
    An unambiguous and correct term would be better, if it didn't present other
    problems.
  • suggested, but none is so clearly “right” that switching
    to it would be a good idea. (For instance, in some contexts the
    French and Spanish word “libre” works well, but people in India do not
    recognize it at all.) Every proposed replacement for
    “free software” has some kind of semantic
    problem—and this includes “open source
    software.”
  • The official
    definition of “open source software”     (which is
    published by the Open Source Initiative and is too long to include here) was
    derived indirectly from our criteria for free software. It is not the
    same; it is a little looser in some respects, so open source
    supporters have accepted a few licenses that we consider unacceptably
    restrictive of the users. Nonetheless, it is fairly close to our
    definition in practice.
  • However, the obvious meaning for the expression “open source
    software”—and the one most people seem to think it
    means—is “You can look at the source code.” That
    criterion is much weaker than the free software definition, much
    weaker also than the official definition of open source. It includes
    many programs that are neither free nor open source.
  • Another misunderstanding of “open source” is the idea
    that it means “not using the GNU
  • GPL.” This tends to
    accompany another misunderstanding that “free software”
    means “GPL-covered software.” These are equally mistaken,
    since the GNU GPL is accepted as an open source license and most of
    the open source licenses qualify as free software licenses.
  • ome try to disparage the free software movement by comparing our
    disagreement with open source to the disagreements of those radical
    groups. They have it backwards. We disagree with the open source
    camp on the basic goals and values, but their views and ours lead in
    many cases to the same practical behavior—such as developing
    free software.
  • As a result, people from the free software movement and the open
    source camp often work together on practical projects such as software
    development. It is remarkable that such different philosophical views
    can so often motivate different people to participate in the same
    projects. Nonetheless, there are situations where these fundamentally
    different views lead to very different actions.
  • The idea of open source is that allowing users to change and
    redistribute the software will make it more powerful and reliable.
    But this is not guaranteed. Developers of proprietary software are
    not necessarily incompetent. Sometimes they produce a program that
    is powerful and reliable, even though it does not respect the users'
    freedom. Free software activists and open source enthusiasts will
    react very differently to that.
  • The free software activist will say, “Your program is very
    attractive, but I value my freedom more. So I reject your program.
    Instead I will support a project to develop a free
    replacement.” If we value our freedom, we can act to maintain and
    defend it.

  • The idea that we want software to be powerful and reliable comes
    from the supposition that the software is designed to serve its users.
    If it is powerful and reliable, that means it serves them better.



    But software can be said to serve its users only if it respects
    their freedom. What if the software is designed to put chains on its
    users? Then powerfulness means the chains are more constricting,
    and reliability that they are harder to remove. Malicious features,
    such as spying on the users, restricting the users, back doors, and
    imposed upgrades are common in proprietary software, and some open
    source supporters want to implement them in open source programs.

  • Under pressure from the movie and record companies, software for
    individuals to use is increasingly designed specifically to restrict
    them. This malicious feature is known as Digital Restrictions
    Management (DRM) (see DefectiveByDesign.org and is
    the antithesis in spirit of the freedom that free software aims
    to provide. And not just in spirit: since the goal of DRM is to
    trample your freedom, DRM developers try to make it hard, impossible,
    or even illegal for you to change the software that implements the DRM.

  • Yet some open source supporters have proposed “open source
    DRM” software. Their idea is that, by publishing the source code
    of programs designed to restrict your access to encrypted media and by
    allowing others to change it, they will produce more powerful and
    reliable software for restricting users like you. The software would then be
    delivered to you in devices that do not allow you to change it.



    This software might be open source and use the open
    source development model, but it won't be free software since it
    won't respect the freedom of the users that actually run it. If the
    open source development model succeeds in making this software more
    powerful and reliable for restricting you, that will make it even
    worse.

  • This approach has proved effective, in its own terms. The rhetoric
    of open source has convinced many businesses and individuals to use,
    and even develop, free software, which has extended our
    community—but only at the superficial, practical level. The
    philosophy of open source, with its purely practical values, impedes
    understanding of the deeper ideas of free software; it brings many
    people into our community, but does not teach them to defend it. That
    is good, as far as it goes, but it is not enough to make freedom
    secure. Attracting users to free software takes them just part of the
    way to becoming defenders of their own freedom.
  • Sooner or later these users will be invited to switch back to
    proprietary software for some practical advantage. Countless
    companies seek to offer such temptation, some even offering copies
    gratis. Why would users decline? Only if they have learned to value
    the freedom free software gives them, to value freedom in and of itself rather
    than
  • the technical and practical convenience of specific free
    software. To spread this idea, we have to talk about freedom. A
    certain amount of the “keep quiet” approach to business can be
    useful for the community, but it is dangerous if it becomes so common
    that the love of freedom comes to seem like an eccentricity.
  • Proprietary add-on software and partially nonfree GNU/Linux
    distributions find fertile ground because most of our community does
    not insist on freedom with its software. This is no coincidence.
    Most GNU/Linux users were introduced to the system through “open
    source” discussion, which doesn't say that freedom is a goal.
    The practices that don't uphold freedom and the words that don't talk
    about freedom go hand in hand, each promoting the other. To overcome
    this tendency, we need more, not less, talk about freedom.
Parin Sharma

The Free Software Definition - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF) - 0 views

www.gnu.org/...free-sw.html

software free-software gnu opensource foss linux

shared by Parin Sharma on 09 Dec 09 - Snapshot
  • Freedom 1 includes the freedom to use your changed version in place of
    the original. If the program is delivered in a product designed to
    run someone else's modified versions but refuse to run yours —
    a practice known as “tivoization” or (through
    blacklisting) as “secure boot” — freedom 1 becomes a
    theoretical fiction rather than a practical freedom. This is not
    sufficient. In other words, these binaries are not free software
    even if the source code they are compiled from is free.
  • In order for these freedoms to be real, they must be permanent and
    irrevocable as long as you do nothing wrong; if the developer of the
    software has the power to revoke the license, or retroactively change
    its terms, without your doing anything wrong to give cause, the
    software is not free.
  • For example, copyleft (very simply stated) is the rule that
    when redistributing the program, you cannot add restrictions to deny
    other people the central freedoms. This rule does not conflict with
    the central freedoms; rather it protects them.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Free software does not mean non-commercial. A free
    program must be available for commercial use, commercial development,
    and commercial distribution. Commercial development of free software
    is no longer unusual; such free commercial software is very important.
    You may have paid money to get copies of free software, or you may have
    obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got your copies,
    you always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to
    sell copies.
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