I really really really wish the FSF-haters all the luck in the world in their quest to thread the needle between bigcorp-hostile, GPL-style copyleft and user-hostile, bigcorp-friendly open source.
I'm sad they can't learn to love GNU projects. I for one do. They just... work. Whenever they don't, invariably there's some freedom-hostile hardware in the way. This makes me want to move closer to FSF-recommended hardware.
I wish them all the luck because the FSF just seems cursed at this point. They do absolutely essential legal and advocacy work and the world wouldn't be what it is without them, and virtually nobody has a deep enough sense of history to recognize that. They will still get my donation dollars for the foreseeable future, and I hope they can rehabilitate their image.
I do sorta think this whole thing will end up working out well overall for the FSF's mission of building a software domain that's solidly out of the clutches of proprietary predation. I've never seen the FSF, the distinction between open and free software, in the public mind more than the last year. I can get really snarky about how all these people who never cared before suddenly come out against the FSF. You didn't care before, you still don't care, good job expressing the total lack of impact you insist on wanting to have.
Are more free software foundations a good thing? Probably. It'll dilute the impact in the short run, these new projects will have to spend time and effort solving run-of-the-mill nonprofit stuff that the FSF worked out decades ago, but it also means more people will get invested. Eventually the new blood will learn to work with the old guard and we can all build a new order together.
Color me optimistic about the future of free software.
It was (still is?) really cool to hate on the GPL. I think the long lost root of the discontent is because it restricts developer freedom (in favor of user freedom, of course), but in reality it just became a meme and most people who critique it don't actually understand what its purpose is. It's like PGP, show me a better alternative and I'll gladly jump ship. But it's not terribly productive to complain without offering solutions.
As a developer, you have a choice to make when you encounter GPL bashing: jump on the bandwagon, or rebut. If you choose the bandwagon, don't come crying when you can't make a living building honest software that treats users with respect because you have to compete with large companies who ~~take~~ steal agnostic software and subsidize their products with user disrespect and line their pockets selling ad profiles.
As a user, demand honest software and new companies will rise to meet your demands. Instead of ads, pay $30 and support a project that puts your interests first. Subscribe for $3/mo when you find a product that brings you continuous value.
As a technical leader and someone in a position to make impactful technical decisions at your small company, educate yourself on the license landscape, examine your core product and target market. If you're targeting open source adoption by big companies and expect them to eventually pay for a proprietary overlay, probably avoid the GPL. If you're building a product for _users_, consider enshrining that position in your license terms and simultaneously defending their freedom while deterring predatory abuse by large companies.
It runs contrary to the FSF guidance, but I'd also suggest, out of practicality, patenting your (software) inventions. Ultimately it gives you flexibility and defense in the event that somebody else tries to assert their own patents. It also protects your GPL users because you explicitly license them to use your patented work, and it allows you to license that technology regardless of any software you've written to companies who may not find the GPL palatable but still would like to use your invention. Win win win.
But if you want to send secure messages it also matters if your friend has remember to enable --dont-be-stupid and disable --automatically-guess-its-20-year-old-insecure-format
I'm not quite sure if you're serious or not. The person you're responding to thinks that a special purpose app would be better than PGP, and your response is that the best solution is a special purpose app which calls into PGP. Why is the latter preferable?
The person I'm replying to says that PGP is hard to use because there's so many options you have to know and use correctly. I completely agree with that, its UX is most probably the main reason it isn't more widespread. But that doesn't invalidate PGP itself: the format is still useful, we have the tools to use it correctly. So I'm saying that using PGP crypto is still worth it, especially if all the bad bits (configuring, tuning) are managed automatically by the application.
The problem with a universal format is it's hard to know that everyone you're talking to does things right. If you have end to end security and the other end leaks, that's not very good. Whereas with a limited format I know a non-malicious counterpart probably has their client configured just like mine.
Here's a good quote from the article at the top of this chain:
> Take AEAD ciphers: the Rust-language Sequoia PGP defaulted to the AES-EAX AEAD mode, which is great, and nobody can read those messages because most PGP installs don’t know what EAX mode is, which is not great. Every well-known bad cryptosystem eventually sprouts an RFC extension that supports curves or AEAD, so that its proponents can claim on message boards that they support modern cryptography. RFC’s don’t matter: only the installed base does. We’ve understood authenticated encryption for 2 decades, and PGP is old enough to buy me drinks; enough excuses.
> You can have backwards compatibility with the 1990s or you can have sound cryptography; you can’t have both.
I am very well aware of the criticisms against PGP-as-a-model and I actually agree with them. The premise that having an open protocol makes changes 10x harder to actually spread is very true. I still believe that it's better to have that than everyone doing the same thing over and over and over again, "but this time it's better".
HTTP, javascript and TLS have also shown that a sufficiently motivated set of actors can move the ecosystem forward. True, organizing the ecosystem is not the same job as actually building stuff, but it's still beneficial to all of us.
That's the problem. You have n*m possible combinations of clients, leading to many opportunities for bugs, and everyone has to degrade to the lowest common denominator because you can't upgrade in lockstep.
I understand pessimism of author and others in this thread when they notice that free software ideas are attacked from everywhere: companies subverted idea with fake "open source", many young people dislike GPL as "not cool", companies taking over projects such as with redis and so on.
But I noticed change in my personal perception (and I am not alone) towards more positive reception of actually free software and I believe that mass perception may change.
This is what changed my perception:
You see how often proprietary and "fake" open source software gets subverted by companies over time, especially when company is heavily funded by VC. After you see it couple of times you just get tired and there is no motivation to invest yourself into it so you just ignore it. Keybase is perfect example of such failure.
Now when I see something like Signal I just ignore it (their recent controversial addition of crypto proved to me that it was right decision).
And it applies to software that I use in my work too, if I get to decide what software to use I try to avoid such projects.
The irony of the GPL hate, is that without GNU we would just be using the usual UNIX flavours, with everyone taking whatever they felt like from BSD, as it was happening before Linux came into play.
I and others were there, with source available, PD, shareware, beerware, postware and whatever else was available as business friendly license.
I will give it two decades max, for everything to get back to the old way of selling software.
> The irony of the GPL hate, is that without GNU we would just be using the usual UNIX flavours, with everyone taking whatever they felt like from BSD, as it was happening before Linux came into play.
More like: a small part of the professional word would be using the usual UNIX flavours, and the rest of the World would use Windows both for desktop and for servers (add a tiny share of free BSDs here and there if you wish).
> I will give it two decades max, for everything to get back to the old way of selling software.
It would be nice to get back to Turbo Pascal-like and old Adobe business models, instead of the divide between subscriptions and free (as in beer) open source funded by a bigcorp making money from something else. So I'll take that.
That is easy actually, many just have to do like in other professions and pay for their tools, instead of expecting to be paid, while the authors of their tools need to survive from charity.
I think Free software has lost. Open Source is a far more popular brand (thanks to big tech, no surprise there) and it's designed to keep Free software ideas digestible by corporations.
Big tech has learned how to keep Free software at bay, to the point that loving or hating the FSF doesn't matter anymore. It's irrelevant.
> I'm sad they can't learn to love GNU projects.
I think you don't realize how this sentence comes across. In some ways, it's an extremely concise way of describing why the FSF has failed.
I can see how you think this way, if you're only thinking in terms of popularity.
Let me reiterate. The FSF does legal and advocacy work. You're only thinking in terms of advocacy. The legal work is just as important, without it, we wouldn't be able to use GPL licenses at all.
Big tech didn't accomplish it's goal of killing the FSF itself. The one org standing in its way of complete dominance. It's not a battle of ideas, it's a battle of people.
All it takes is a core group of people willing to put their money and time into it to keep it alive. Stallman himself said he never thought free software would ever become a thing and that the FSF has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.
As long as the GPL continues to be a viable alternative, we will continue to have a bastion against the endless waves of proprietary software.
Do you believe they are making a genuine effort to do that? Or is it arrogance on the part of Stallman and co. which is still keeping the FSF closely associated with the Epstein scandal, while MIT and others have successfully moved on.
It's an old org with a lot of cruft. Stallman isn't stupid, and absolutely cares about the cause of free software, more than any of us could ever possibly care.
What's happening isn't 100% the fault of Stallman, but a continuation of the long-running chasm between the free software and open source communities. Though it certainly didn't help that Stallman chose to reclaim his board seat. There's just a lot of antipathy between the two camps. There always has been.
The he said/she said of RMS and Epstein scandal “misinformation” doesn’t need to be clarified. RMS said some questionable things (to some people). The corrected version is still questionable (to some smaller subset of people). This Epstein thing is not the only questionable thing he’s done/said. He’s a liability regardless of the truth, because the truth does not exonerate him.
The FSF is an advocacy org and you can’t advocate well for a moral position (free software) if your main advocate is ensnared in scandal over morally questionable behavior, regardless of the truth.
The FSF first now has to advocate for the morality of RMS to clear his name enough that he can advocate for the morality something else and have enough people listen. Frankly, his track record beyond the Epstein mess was already dubious, so it’s a losing battle.
You mentioned Epstein specifically so that's what I'm responding too.
What does it mean to be "questionable"? controversial? wrong? That the earth is round is questionable (to some smaller subset of people) - that doesn't change the fact that the RMS was misrepresented (without scare-quotes) - the truth of his actual comments wrt Minsky do 100% exonerate him - that a subset of people don't agree is irrelevant.
Questionable is that some significant group of people might not be ready to support or condone the views. The fact that its still in discussion means that even with his "exoneration" he's still not viewed positively.
He's viewed so negatively that this Epstein thing (which he is not exonerated entirely imo) is not the only reason to distance from him.
Sure, because of misinformation. A significant number of people may hold an insignificant view; a significant number of people don't wear facemasks either.
I really don't think it is just that. It is not just Minsky/Epstein scandal, those are just something people who disliked how much more low key much less impactful "uncomfortable" behaviors were enabled.
And it has zero to do with open source to wining over FSF. Like, nothing at all, popular organization survive sex-abuse scandals just fine. Partly it is business friendliness, yes. But also, personally I remember finding culture around FSF off-putting years ago, for reasons that have nothing to do with Minsky/Epstein kind of issues.
I found that off-putting because of hollier then tho, we are geniuses everyone else is looser and if you don't agree with us is bad programmer attitudes. And the massive thread wars over everything that kind of pretend to be rational, but are actually massively emotional.
I'm sad they can't learn to love GNU projects. I for one do. They just... work. Whenever they don't, invariably there's some freedom-hostile hardware in the way. This makes me want to move closer to FSF-recommended hardware.
I wish them all the luck because the FSF just seems cursed at this point. They do absolutely essential legal and advocacy work and the world wouldn't be what it is without them, and virtually nobody has a deep enough sense of history to recognize that. They will still get my donation dollars for the foreseeable future, and I hope they can rehabilitate their image.
I do sorta think this whole thing will end up working out well overall for the FSF's mission of building a software domain that's solidly out of the clutches of proprietary predation. I've never seen the FSF, the distinction between open and free software, in the public mind more than the last year. I can get really snarky about how all these people who never cared before suddenly come out against the FSF. You didn't care before, you still don't care, good job expressing the total lack of impact you insist on wanting to have.
Are more free software foundations a good thing? Probably. It'll dilute the impact in the short run, these new projects will have to spend time and effort solving run-of-the-mill nonprofit stuff that the FSF worked out decades ago, but it also means more people will get invested. Eventually the new blood will learn to work with the old guard and we can all build a new order together.
Color me optimistic about the future of free software.