Xah Lee, 2009-02-27
This essay discusses Richard Stallman, the Free Software Foundation's moral stance on software, and how legal paperwork required by FSF impedes the progress of FSF's software projects.
Richard Stallman, contributed to society in 2 significant ways. One is his coding, producing many major software, such as emacs, gcc, etc. The other, with far more greater impact, and is the reason he is remembered in human animal history, is the creation of FSF with its GPL.
His technical, coding, contribution is unquestionably a positive contribution. His “free” software movement is, however, questionable. The reason that society recognized this social contribution, is partly, if not significantly, due to the fact that he has achieved success in his vision. For example, to illustrate, if Hitler was successful, today he would be a hero, leader, founder, as opposed to a hateful criminal. As another illustration, if US lost the war to UK, then the “founding fathers” of US would be considered criminals today who got punished by death. In fact, many of the leaders in the US at the time is doing quite morally questionable things besides treason. (including, copyright violation to the scale perhaps beyond any in the history of human animals)
Richard Stallman, also did some morally questionable things before he started FSF. In one perspective, you can consider him a software criminal. Lucky for him that at the time there was no software law yet. Else, he'd be in jail before he had a chance to mouth his manifesto. So, in this perspective, he is someone who breaks the law, got dissed by MIT, got pissed, with vengeance he starts the FSF to recoup his ego.
The above is one perspective. A perspective neutral, where human animal's behavior is considered foremost as ethology, sans a context of any particular moral system.
The FSF requirement of legal paper signing is a significant problem for FSF's software to progress forward.
First, let's presume that it is something that needs to be done in order for FSF to protect GPL.
Now, imagine, there are 2 software A and B. In A, there are paperwork going by postal mail, as part of how A grows code. In B, there is no such.
Today, thanks to FSF, vast majority of open source software use model B. Just look at all the code at Google Code, SourceForge, numerous other open source code depositories and all linuxes. Today, the internet age is at a point where people watch movies streamed online and all sort of online transactions, the paperwork and postal mail legal rights transfer model is a major time drain and impetus killing.
to help see this, imagine, if all open source software today, those hosted by Google Code, Source Forge, all linux development, or any code on emacswiki, requires a postal mail legal paper signing before the code can be published, then, to what degree do you think will slow down the progress? Can you now see?
So, now you see, GNU emacs's requirement for signing legal document thru paper mail is a significant obstacle for GNU emacs to progress.
I have thought about how to remedy this situation for few minutes yesterday, but didn't see any solution or conclusion. First, we presume that the paperwork is in fact necessary, as FSF says so. Ok, then what can we do? I don't really know. If the paperwork is necessary, and of course FSF is practically the leading, if not only, one to protect the GPL, in a sense allowing the thousands other open source or “free” software to progress freely without paperwork. It appears to me we have run into a inherent “unsolvable” problem. I was thinking, perhaps GNU software can be considered as kinda sacrifice, by requiring the legal paperwork in order to protect GPL, for the good of the broad open source community, but meanwhile sacrifice GNU software's progress due to the very nature of paperwork bureaucracy ... but this model of “GNU software as sacrifice for greater goods” cannot sustain itself, because eventually GNU's software will become so bad that most people will use other open source software, and if that is so, then FSF's GPL protection role will rot out too, because only a very small percentage of people is actually using FSF's “free” software...
The above paragraph is a bit of rambling. In any case, i do doubt the necessity for FSF to require the paperwork. Maybe it was critical in the 1980s or 1990s when FSF just started, but maybe not today. It is even questionable if FSF itself was necessary in the 19980s. For example, there was BSD's license. And there's also the much simpler “public domain” release. Arguably these does not propagate the concept behind FSF, which in my opinion is the primary cause of its success. (that is GPL, of which Richard says is “fighting fire with fire”.) But in any case, consider today, with huge participation of google, apple computer, and quite several large organization and commercial entities participating in open source projects in major ways, it is question today that even GPL itself, is needed at all. Richard has been successful in spreading his moral philosophy of software. FSF's role in spreading this moral stance on software use, is today successful and arguably mission complete, in the sense that it is already part of standard practice in the industry. So, in this perspective, FSF can in fact today close shop, and the existing open source and “free” software world may not fare worse.
Today, software from FSF has already rotted to little significance in the industry. Consider Perl, PHP, and all the software written in them. Consider javascript, FireFox, and in mid 2000s Java itself, non are FSF's software. FSF's software has almost no presence in the web development area, where it is today the majority sector in software industry. Multitudes of languages, tools, apps, that are open source or “Free” software crops up daily some hundred or thousands of times faster than the number of FSF's software. FSF's software today probably is less than 1% of all Open Source or “Free” software out there. In fact, if we imagine as some kind of disaster that causes all FSF's software to disappear, the Open Source and “Free” Software out there probably wouldn't suffer a dent. (e.g. in Operating systems, the BSDs can replace the whole Linuxes that use significant portion of software produced by FSF.)
Note: in the above, we didn't even discuss whether Open Source or “‘Free’ Software”'s moral stance is itself good for society. This is still a a hotly controversial subject with no one absolute agreement in human animal society.
For example: “A Case Aganist OpenSources (A New Paradigm in Intellectual Property Law?)” (2001), by Mathias Strasser. At http://stlr.stanford.edu/STLR/Articles/01_STLR_4/article.htm.
For me, i believe that “Free” Software idea is indeed a good idea, but far from the degree of Richard's fanaticism. The gist is that, software is a piece of goods, and by the very nature of software, it can be copied without cost. So, the traditional copyright law, usually allowing one single copy, may not be the best benefit to human animals on a whole, long term wise, when compared to the “‘free’ software” moral philosophy. In the moral philosophy of “‘Free’ software”, software industry more becomes a service oriented industry, where coders get paid to modify and customize existing software. This is also arguably a better business model, more fitting to the nature of software, when compared with existing copyright software laws or practices, where software is closed to public extensions and customizations, and is being rented out as a permission to use.
For some detail on the idea of the above paragraph, see: Responsible Software Licensing.
This essay is a edited version of a newsgroup post in gnu.emacs.help at http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.emacs.help/msg/56f90095e7d6f201.
Richard Stallman, his use of “free” in his concept of Free Software and Free Software Foundation, is a abuse of English. I do not know he did this with the intent to ride the ambiguity for the marketing benefit of the catcher word “free”, or innocently due to the fuzziness of English. In any case, from the numerous talks and lectures he gave, it is apparent he is abusing the concept of freedom to gain supporters.
Non-free, is misleading term for proprietary software. People started to refer to proprietary as non-free, because Richard Stallman abuses the words “free” and “freedom”, and as a consequence, his followers started to call other software that are not compatible with his ideal, as “non-free”.
Despite the fact that the word “free” does not refer to price, but proprietary software isn't necessarily restraining freedom. In fact, the issue of whether source code is non-public has little to do with the concept of liberty. Richard Stallman's vision of software is “free”, in the sense that coder community can freely look at the source code and make use of it. That sense of “free” is a point of view. As a contrast, proprietary software is also free, in the sense that entrepreneurs and businesses can freely develop and sell their software without worrying about some coder making copies with minor or no changes and put it out free of charge that destroys the benefits for their initiative. (this is why, there are little innovation in Open Source software in comparison to commercial software)
Please do not use the word “free” like he want you to. When referring to his philosophical stance of software and his foundation, please say perhaps “Free Software Foundation”, “Free Software Foundation ideal”, or “FSF Ideal Software”.
Don't say “non-free” to refer to commercial or proprietary software that are disliked by FSF. Simply just say software, or commercial software if so, or non-FSF ideal software.
For those of you FSF or Open Source fanatics who are illiterate of the pertinent social sciences, i recommend:
• Basic Economics 3rd Ed: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy. by Thomas Sowell. amazon
I read the first edition in the dot come age circa 2000, alone with other books that helped me understand stocks and related financial things. I've read Thomas's book 2 more times in the early 2000s.
• A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles. by Thomas Sowell. amazon
The above can teach you something about FSF ideals.
(Original post: Source)