Re: “Free Software”: An idea whose time has passed?

[Matt Ivie]

On Thu, 2021-03-25 at 12:33 -0700, Danny Spitzberg wrote:

Let me just say that from my perspective this article is non-sense.
I've detailed some points below but damn, I'm not going to spend any
more time with this thing. I think reading through the first portion of
it is enough to get the point which he makes abundantly clear: he
doesn't want to understand the concept of Free Software -- or, he
doesn't want you to take it seriously enough to think about it
yourself.


> Interesting perspective, worth engaging with. It covers everything
> from the
> term free/libre and beer, to Microsoft and IEC 62304, to not getting
> credit
> and reactionary attitudes.
> 
>  “Free Software”: An idea whose time has passed
> 
> Robert M. Lefkowitz
> <https://r0ml.medium.com/?source=post_page-----6570c1d8218a----------
> ---------------------->
> 
> Almost forty years ago, in 1985, the idea of “Free Software” was
> born. That
> is not to say that the idea of sharing software with colleagues and
> making
> source code available was born. Ten years before the GNU Manifesto
> and the
> Free Software Foundation, I worked at a cloud services company (only
> we
> called it “timesharing” back then), and in order to encourage people
> to use
> our offerings and pay us for renting computer time and disk space and
> network bandwidth, we curated a collection of software libraries that
> customers could freely use. We called it the Public Library, of
> course. The
> software therein was public software. The idea of public software was
> software that anybody could freely use. 
And rms participated in this culture. While it was functioning, there
was no reason to codify the freedoms in a license.

> What happened in 1985 was the birth
> of the idea that creation of software was a political act. And that
> when
> the creation of software was motivated by politics, it should be
> called free
> software to differentiate it from software created for other reasons
> 
> This
> became clear to be when I attended my first O’Reilly Open Source
> Conference, where I watched Miguel de Icaza debate Richard Stallman —
> and
> the question on the table was whether or not there was a difference
> between
> “free software” and “open source software”. The conclusion was that
> there
> was no detectable difference from examining the software or the
> license or
> any artifact. The difference was the intent of the programmer. If the
> intent was political (i.e. a concern for freedom), then the result
> was free
> software. If the intent was industrial, the result was open source
> software. I use the term industrial because the motivation of the
> open
> source crowd is to use what they believe to be a superior method of
> producing software.
I suppose  that intent is the seed from which the project is born. If
the intent is wrong then eventually the project could easily take a
turn to become non-free.
> 
> My interest in free or open source software has never been either
> political
> or industrial. My interest has always been educational. That is,
> access to
> the source code provided the opportunity to learn from it. So, in the
> same
> spirit as the Open Source / Free Software distinction, I coined the
> term Liberal
> Software to refer to software where the intent of the programmer is
> educational(liberal as in education). Any one of these three intents
> can
> produce software for which the source code is available — and that is
> often
> called FLOSS, meaning Free, Liberal, or Open Source Software.
> 
That is only one concept that is encapsulated in Free Software. Why
break these things down this way? It seems he is deconstructing the
meta rather than the core issues.

> I prefer to think about these categories in terms of intent, because
> that
> opens the door to reflecting about effective strategies to implement
> that
> intent. So, for example, if it were to turn out that, all other
> things
> being equal, providing source code for libraries could be shown to
> produce
> software of inferior quality (and there is much evidence to support
> such a
> conclusion), then someone with an intent to produce industrial
> software
> might choose to pursue a course of action that did not involve making
> the
> source code available. The availability of source code is certainly
> invaluable in Liberal Software, and there are several scenarios
> regarding
> industrial software that require access to the source code. But that
> is a
> discussion for a different time.
> 
This ignores the concept of user freedom. If I have no source code and
the program doesn't do what I need then it doesn't make a difference
about the quality of the code. I don't give a shit as I'll never see
it. I care if it does what I want or not. If it doesn't, then I need a
way to fix that problem. What if this god of a developer dies or goes
out of business? I have no way to get my feature implemented.

> Today’s topic is political software. I think it is clear that the
> Free
> Software Foundation has failed to move the needle on the political
> issues
> relating to software. Those of us who are interested in issues of
> freedom
> and ethics and social justice related to software must explore
> alternative
> stratagems to achieve those objectives. The tactics of the Free
> Software
> Foundation (the insistence on copylefting software and fighting
> software
> patents) have become more and more ineffective. The world of software
> has
> evolved and changed in the years since 1985: we need to let the past
> die
> and build a better future.
> 
I think we could argue that the entire landscape of software and the
way the world interacts with it has changed. This is precisely the
argument FOR Free Software and the FSF's goals and mission.

> The first sign that free software is intellectually bankrupt is that
> the
> Free Software Foundation seems unable to develop new generations of
> leadership. 
> Free societies are usually lukewarm to the practice of
> “dictators for life”. After around a decade, it is a healthy sign if
> new
> leadership emerges. It is a sign of growth and innovation. It is
> healthy.
> Seeing the same people in the same places pursuing the same failed
> tactics
> decade after decade is evidence of a lack of broader acceptance.
> 
What basis does this argument have? Some of the strongest companies are
considered so because their leadership is in place for a long time and
it creates stability. I didn't site any evidence just now, but neither
did he.
> Secondly, I am reminded of Harry Truman’s quote:
> 
> It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the
> credit.
> 
Harry Truman? Moving on.

> The Free Software Foundation is famously fixated on insisting that it
> be
> given credit for Linux. 
False. Credit for GNU so that it all comes back to the correct ideals
of thinking about software freedom. It has been stated numerous times
that if it were only about credit it wouldn't matter. It is about
trying to point a new person toward the software freedom ideals rather
than the comprising ideas of "open source".
> Caring about who gets the credit more than
> successfully creating change is not a good look. It is, of course,
> consistent with the ego required to cling to power and smother the
> growth
> of the next generation. Linux is perhaps the child that succeeded
> where GNU
> failed.
I just don't think he understands what he's looking at here. If he
does, he's ignoring it. Either way the net result looks the same in his
writing.
> 
> Thirdly, the rhetoric of Free Software devotees is awkward and
> unconvincing. The inflexibility (or inarticulateness) that has failed
> to
> evolve the talking points to make them more effective is a failure of
> politics. To take my own pet peeve, it is unarguable that inanimate
> objects
> cannot have freedoms. People have freedoms. Frying pans, as an
> example,
> cannot have freedoms. 
Free Speech = The rights people have that are associate to speech.
Free Software = The rights people have that are associated to software.

I know that people struggle with the concepts of free speech too. What
can be done?

> If one were to talk about Free Frying Pans, the only
> way to interpret that statement is that one is referring to frying
> pans
> that one needn’t pay for. When one uses the phrase “free press”, one
> is not
> suggesting that the pile of metal and wood that constitutes a
> printing
> press machine is entitled to freedoms. The word “press” in that
> phrase is a
> figure of speech known as metonymy. It refers to journalists.
> “Freedom of
> the press” is talking about the freedom bestowed on journalists. Most
> people understand that “the press” refers to the journalist
> collective. So
> when one says “free software” or “software freedom” we know that the
> freedom is not given to an executable file. The expression (unless we
> are
> referring to software that we needn’t pay for) is referring to
> freedom for
> some group of people that we know as “the software” (y’know, like
> “the
> press”). And who are those people who are members of “the software”?
> That
> was a rhetorical question. Please don’t try to explain it to me. I
> was
> pointing out how nonsensical this framing is. Rhetoric is a
> discipline that
> has been around for over two thousand years. We have two thousand
> years of
> scholarship that inform us that the phrase “software freedom” is
> meaningless gibberish. It can only sow confusion — and the confusion
> is
> only exacerbated by explaining that you used the words to mean
> something
> else entirely. That was Lewis Carroll’s point in Through the Looking
> Glass:
> 
> “I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory’”, Alice said.
> 
> Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t — till I
> tell
> you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’”
> 
> “But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,” Alice
> objected.
> 
> “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone,
> “it
> means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
> 
> “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so
> many
> different things.”
> 
> The Free Software coterie is fond of insisting that words mean what
> they
> say they mean, and that is a profound misunderstanding of the nature
> of
> language. Such linguistic naïveté is not an asset in pursuing
> political
> goals.
> 
> With all that said, the intent of the adherents to the term Free
> Software
> is to seek to promote certain freedoms for the users of software, by
> depriving the creators of software (at least in the United States) of
> the
> rights afforded them by Congress under Article I, Section VIII,
> Clause
> VIII. Many programmers are under the impression that “software
> freedom” is
> meant to increase the freedoms of software producers. Nothing could
> be
> further from the truth. The GNU manifesto and Free Software
> Foundation take
> great pains to explain that their intent is to increase the freedom
> of
> computer users — at the expense, of course, of software producers.
> “The
> Software” is a metonym for software users. The difficulty is that the
> freedoms that the Free Software Foundation insists on giving software
> users
> are freedoms that most software users do not want, and the freedoms
> that
> they wish to restrict for software producers are freedoms that most
> software producers would rather retain. The so-called Free Software
> coterie
> might make more headway if it took the trouble to find out what
> freedoms
> “the software” (a/k/a software users — see how awkward this metonymy
> is)
> actually wanted. Instead they invest most of their energy trying to
> convince “the software” of which freedoms they ought to want. In that
> vein,
> the intent of the programmer who selects the license makes it “free
> software” or not — the intent of the user is not considered. If a
> user uses
> software with political intent, but it is not licensed in a way that
> the
> Free Software Foundation approves of, can “the software (meaning the
> user)”
> be exercising freedom?
> 
> Prior to 1983, (two years before the Free Software Foundation was
> founded),
> all computers sold by IBM (which in those days meant pretty much “all
> computers”) came with the source code to the operating system. Like
> Linux
> (although you usually have to download the source code separately
> nowadays). Every company (because computers were so expensive that
> individuals couldn’t afford them) had a “data processing” staff which
> might
> make changes to the source code should the need arise (fixing
> problems,
> adding features). Many companies, however, were not large enough or
> sophisticated enough to have the kind of staff which could do this
> effectively. They would prefer to contract out the maintenance of the
> operating system software to the vendor (IBM). IBM, however, was
> unwilling
> to take this on, since everybody had the source code, and might have
> made
> modifications. IBM had no way to know what modifications might have
> been
> made, and consequently would be unable to accurately estimate how
> much work
> might need to be done. Eventually, due to persistent customer demand,
> they
> came up with their OCO (Object Code Only) program — in which you
> could
> receive the software WITHOUT the source code. In that case, IBM could
> provide a service contract for their software as they wouldn’t have
> to
> contend with individual local modifications. It turns out that
> computer
> users mostly wanted freedom FROM source code, rather than the freedom
> to
> use the source code to modify their operating system. Two years
> later, the
> Free Software Foundation was founded to try to foist the source code
> on
> people who didn’t want it.
> 
Nice anecdote. I don't think it captures the true issues. If Free
Software were just a nice way to FORCE people to take the source code I
don't see how rms would ever had gotten any place at all with these
ideas.

> If your counter-argument to that is “but that was the 1980’s and the
> nature
> of software has changed since then — so that situation no longer
> applies” I
> have two responses. Firstly, the GNU manifesto was written in the
> 1980’s,
> and the nature of software has changed since then, so it no longer
> applies.
> Secondly, the largest Free Software business, Red Hat, has always had
> “freedom from source code” as its business model. A business pays Red
> Hat
> with the same licensing scheme as they would for any proprietary
> commercial
> operating system, in exchange for which Red Hat frees them from the
> inconvenience of needing to be exposed to the source code.
This is is one facet of what can be done with Free Software. I think
there are many examples where someone has actually paid a third party
to fix code and submit it upstream. There are examples of companies
using Free Software and not releasing the code, then subsequently
having to offer that code based on the law in the license and the
community benefits from the changes.
> 
> Discussions of Free Software often start with the origin myth about
> access
> to the printer software source code at the MIT AI labs. Being denied
> the
> ability to get a notification when the network printer jams is fairly
> low
> down on the list of human rights violations. When discussing why Free
> Software partisans think “software freedom” is of any use or
> interest, the
> canonical answer is some form of the argument: fear the “bad actor”.
> 
> This conspiracy theory goes something like this: If you can’t examine
> the
> source code, then some bad actor might provide you some executable
> software
> that has evil baked in, and you wouldn’t be able to tell — whereas
> the bad
> actor would not be able get away with such nefariousness if you had
> access
> to the source code. As with all conspiracy theories, two things are
> true.

---------
> 1) If repeated often enough, people will start to believe it. 2) It
> is
> nonsense.
> 
----------
This argument alone causes the author to lose credibility with me. We
have plenty of evidence of companies doing nasty things with their
software. Of governments doing nasty things with software. Maybe he's
right though, Schools aren't watching your kids through their webcam
for any nefarious purpose. We should ignore that it is happening.

> Free-softwarists are right on their fundamental premise: this is a
> political issue. Protecting myself from bad actors is not my job. It
> is the
> government’s job. Americans like to perpetuate the myth that it is
> everybody’s job by pretending that the right to bear arms is somehow
> related to protecting one’s family. Somehow, we still need to spend
> close
> to two trillion dollars a year to hire government employees to
> protect us
> (military and police and border patrol and firemen and sheriffs and
> marshals and immigration agents and intelligence services). If owning
> a gun
> were sufficient to protect ourselves, we could save those two
> trillion
> dollars. But the same people who proudly display the weapons that
> they own
> (to protect themselves) are the first and loudest to insist that we
> need to
> spend trillions of dollars on government-employed protectors.
> 
I think this conflates two different issues in a way that doesn't even
make sense.



-- 
"Under the sky, under the heavens there is but one family."
        --Bruce Lee