https://www.paritybit.ca/blog/free-software-is-an-abject-failure
Free Software is an abject failure. It may sound like a good concept on its face—especially with the kind of language often used to describe the movement and its opponents—but, when put under scrutiny, the institutions and practices that make up the Free Software movement fundamentally fail at their stated goals. Free Software is an ideological mess, Free Software hampers collaboration, Free Software is legally ineffective, Free Software makes the lives of developers harder, and Free Software fundamentally gets in the way of a thriving software ecosystem.
in nearly every Free Software project which exists today, there is a clear “owner” of the software
1) No there is not ex: net-tools
2) The "clear owner" is not always static (ex: busybox.)
Or later clause is bad
Yeah that's not great since the FSF can relicense your project. CLAs are usually better.
Users can't maintain complex software
Some can and do, not all of them have to but the ones that can need the option.
People complain about it as hostile
Ok. People complain about roads and trains as "hostile." That doesn't mean they're bad. People say stupid things all the time.
Free Software certainly has it's issues but "it's the best we've got."
• on software ownership
Stallman is always advocating for users who install software onto their own computer. The software freedom that he advocates is all about the user to control their own computer. The software ownership that Stallman is referring to relates to the people who distribute software and also forbid the users to practice any of the four freedoms of free software. Linux and Qt have software owners by definition; the fact that Linux and Qt have owners is not the point, the point is that the user is permitted to practice all four freedoms for the cases of Linux and Qt software. The free software manifesto exists to the antithesis of the people who distribute software and also forbid the users to practice any of the four freedoms of free software.
• on the failure of the GPL
The GPLv3 is a very simple license when you can understand the spirit of the GPLv3 preamble. All the legalese exists specifically for people who do not understand the spirit that's expressed within the preamble. If you want to get tricky by finding a software conveyance technicality that contradicts the spirit of the preamble, the GPLv3 is specifically defined for these people who desire to contradict the spirit.
The GPL3-or-later clause is specifically an expression of convenience. The reason why a software conveyor to use this clause is because they agree with the spirit of the FSF and GNU who writes the licence. There's no mandate for a copyright holder to declare this clause.
I need to make a distinction here regarding the GPL: it is not necessary to licence your work to be GPL when you integrate and distribute other people's GPL works into your own. The actual requirement is that the licensing for your own work doesn't contradict the GPL. The easiest way to ensure this is to distribute your software under the GPL, but it isn't the only way to comply with software conveyancing under the GPL.
The GPL does not corporations from stealing GPL-licensed code and integrating it into projects. The GPL does not harm developers of non-GPL-licensed FOSS software.
• on the failure of FS culture
The guy is conflating the principle of "users must control their own software" with the practicality of "it is expensive and often unfeasible to hire software developers to modify the software on the computer". These are distinct matters that must not be conflated to be the same thing. The matter of software freedom doesn't deal the financial burden and time burden of tinkering with source code. The principle of software freedom is that users have the default freedom to do it, no other explicit permission is needed from any software owner.
• on the failure of FS with cultural relevancy
He doesn't like the strict adherance to ideological consistency. He wants the FSF to weaken their own principles for the sake of "fitting in with the majority of people", people who oppose the FSF principles.
The quality of GNU software isn't a high ideal for the free software movement. The highest mandate for GNU is simply to exist: it is a platform to allow users to escape from proprietary software. It's good that other free software exists, there's no requirement for GNU to "be the best out of everything".
Stallman does his activism work for FS because he knows what he's talking about. Anybody is welcome to take on the burden of advocating for free software; there's no requirement for activism to be exclusively about Stallman.
* Where Do We Go From Here?
The FS movement is a failure when you judge it based on principles that the FS movement doesn't care about. "Real men don’t attack straw men"
At the end of the day who really cares? It's some legal jibba jabba. Nothing more, nothing less. The only thing notable about it is that every piece of code that cites said jibba jabba comes with a bunch of strings attached. That's kinda annoying. Well at least to a somewhat honest person. Everyone else just ignores it and usually gets away with it. So bottomline: Annoyed honest person, everyone else: *shrug*
At the end of the day who cares about copyright?
The courts do.
The GPL is a tool to turn copyright against itself.
I like Free Software because it is like me: an abject failure.
>>5
Obviously some courts do. If they get called to the battle and decide it's worth joining. That's quite unlikely to happen with a lot of people and places for various reasons though.
Besides what are the chances of being awarded damages on a GPL violation outside the US? Good luck reasonably claiming a financial loss. [Morally-misguided-person] is probably dead scared of being told to "not do that again"...
>>8
The distributors who would be most likely to be affected by a GPL violation lawsuit are the distributors who load GPL software onto physical hardware and sell the hardware. For countries that do take copyright violations seriously, it won't be hard to get a court injunction to stop importing the violating product or stop marketing the product.
For all the other distributors we can maintain a blacklist of violating titles, businesses, and countries that we can avoid doing business with. This would be a long-term strategy for dealing with copyright violators that doesn't involve the need for a copyright infringement lawsuit.
We should all violate the GPL in an act of civil disobedience, in protest of the GPL's restrictions. United we stand against tyranny, divided we fall. If you live outside the US, remember to violate the GPL as much as you can, in order to show everyone that the FSF is merely a paper tiger.
>>8
Ok, but in jurisdictions where copyright law isn't enforced there's no need for the GPL.
>>11
It's not entirely about enforcement. It's also to a huge part up to the person(s) holding the copyright in question. Suing individuals (maybe even in foreign jurisdictions) isn't a lot of fun or cheap. It's also a huge question what enforcement means in this context. Not being able to export your product obviously isn't great but it's not really scary either. There simply isn't much determent in "having to stop" violation x while violation a, b and c go unpunished or even just after having profited on x long enough to make it profitable to gamble on it.
https://code.gouv.fr/#/stats
The AGPL is the third most used license by the French government.
Free software is a failure because it is hypocritical. It purports to "increase freedom", whereas in reality, it increases the amount of restrictions. The license is always about not being able to do this, forbidden to do that, incompatible with this, non-compliant with that ... Just look at the AGPL. It's all about restrictions, not about the mythical "freedom" that the FSF constantly spews from its propaganda department. At one extreme, we have the closed source software vendors. At the other extreme, we have the FSF. These two extremes are antagonistic to one another, but they are really the same at their core. They are all about being control freaks, and all about imposing restrictions.
Free software is a success because it delivers on its mission for freedom.
>>14
The so-called "restrictions" are guarantees of freedom. They ensure that the software cannot be used to control the user.
free software won cope
Of course it can be used to control the user. To a user closed and open source are literally the same thing. They hit install and try to use it. If any of that fails, well, though luck.
>>18
You're making a very common mistake. It is a mistake to conflate the principle of user freedom together with the capability of having a technical aptitude. Users do not need any form of technical aptitude to have freedom in the software they have on their computers. It is possible to have a very strong programming aptitude and have no freedom to the software that is installed. A free user is supposed to take responsibility to find a helper for any complicated task they need to achieve.
>>1
No, it is not.
Worse, the free software movement is controlled opposition to the destruction of users computing freedom.
Who cares about open source if all your shit just runs via thin client in the cloud, and you can't even buy the components for a proper machine to run software locally? Because that's what's coming.
EVERY SOFTWARE IS FREE AS LONG AS THE USER KNOWS HOW TO USE A DEBUGGER
>>22
No, it is not.
Yes, it is.
>>21
Most free software supporters are probably against that.
I mean, even Firefox and systemd are "free software", but do they truly respect the user's freedom? I do not think so.