[Pan-users] Re: OT: freedomware vs... Was: Building Pan on Windows?

[Duncan]

Alan Meyer posted on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:51:34 -0800 as excerpted:

> But having said that I have to say I'm not really opposed to commercial
> software, any more than I'm opposed to commercial hardware, commercial
> cars, commercial food, or commercial television.  Hundreds of thousands
> of people make their livings writing software, just as millions of
> others do building computers, building cars, farming, or working on TV
> shows.  I don't see anything inherently evil in that.
> 
> I don't endorse monopoly practices.  I think that's bad for society, and
> I think that many of the practices of Microsoft and Intel have
> anti-social monopoly characteristics.  I oppose those. But if someone
> wants to buy a computer program, even including buying it from
> Microsoft, why not?

There's no problem buying a program.  In fact, Richard M Stallman and the 
Free Software Foundation encourage developers to charge whatever they can 
get for their free (as in freedom) software and/or services.

<quote>

Please note that "commercial" and "non-free" are not the same.  They
deal with different questions.  Free software is a matter of freedom
for the users--it is not a question of price, and not a question of
whether a business is based on the software.  Non-free software is a
bad thing, but commercial software can be a good thing if it is free
software.  GNU Ada is a good example of commercial free software,
because there is a company whose sole business is supporting GNU Ada.
They develop and support free software, and make a living doing it.
That is a good thing.

<end quote>

That's from:

http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-licensing&m=89249041326259&w=2

(where RMS was talking about the then (1998) non-free Qt).

Also see _Selling Free Software is OK!_ , here:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

It's just that the software alone price (as opposed to additional 
services) will over time naturally tend downward, since any user can 
request and redistribute the source for lower cost, and one will surely 
find it profitable to do so, if the original provider is charging more 
than some small token amount for it.  Thus, the service tends to be what 
ultimately gets sold, either the service of developing the software 
originally (for hire, or first copy or copies), or customizing it for a 
specific purpose and installation, or consultation related to that 
customization.  While non-freedomware still exists, there's also the 
business model where the freedomware license version is free to use under 
those conditions, but a servantware vendor can purchase usage rights under 
terms that allow them to keep their usage and modifications proprietary.  
That's the business model Trolltech and MySQL used for some years with a 
pre-packaged proprietary license offer, but in practice, many FLOSS 
developers would consent to proprietary use of their code in return for 
continued development funding of the code for both free and non-free 
licensed use.

And RMS has said that's OK too -- since at least then, those that refuse 
to contribute back to the community in terms of code at least do so in 
terms of funding.

But ethically, I'm with RMS when he stated, in that first reference above:

<quote>

Writing non-free software is not an ethically legitimate activity, so
if people who do this run into trouble, that's good!  All businesses
based on non-free software ought to fail, and the sooner the better.

<end quote>

It's unethical because it infringes on:

<quote>

the user's freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the 
software. More precisely [...] the four essential freedoms:

The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).

The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do 
what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for 
this.
 
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 
2).

The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others 
(freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to 
benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for 
this.

A program is free software if users have all of these freedoms.

<end quote>

That's from _The Free Software Definition_ , found here:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

I strongly believe in those freedoms, and cannot agree to a EULA that 
abridges them and believe software and developers that don't honor those 
freedoms to be as surely ethically deficient as is a slave trader, 
depriving other humans of their natural human rights.

Of course, the other reason I can't run proprietaryware is because pretty 
much all software today disclaims legal responsibility for damages, etc.  
Now, that's a very sane position to take, but what's NOT sane is expecting 
a user to simply waive their rights to damages, without being able to 
inspect the code for themselves and/or have someone they inspect it for 
them, to see exactly what sort of stuff the code does that they're signing 
away their rights to damages on.  Without that transparency, I don't see 
how anyone can sign those waivers, or how they can be held to be legally 
enforceable.  As such, I think a rather simple solution would be to 
invalidate any such waivers, given the signer's right to know the terms of 
the contract he's signing.  That would rather quickly eliminate the 
problem, since as I said, it's rather insane in the normal case to assume 
that liability for the software one may write, not knowing under what 
conditions or on what hardware it may be run.  Of course, it's possible to 
get software that does NOT disclaim such liability, as it's run in such 
things as ships, airliners, and nuclear reactors all the time, but the 
cost of development and testing to that degree is very high, and the 
insurance even then prohibitively high as well, so it would in practice 
price nearly all proprietaryware out of the market, leaving only open 
source, with the required transparency to at least be able to get a proper 
opinion on whether the liability waiver is sane to agree to or not.

Obviously then, I can't on two counts (liability and anti-sharing 
provisions) agree to probably 99%+ of the eulas out there, which means 
there's serious legal question as to whether I can legally run the 
software.  If EULAs are held to be legally enforceable, I DEFINITELY 
can't, but whether they are or not in fact remains an open question, in at 
least some jurisdictions.

But regardless, there's still the question of whether I'd be willing to 
trust a supplier that's already demonstrated they're that unethical, in 
any case.  If they have that little regard for what I consider basic 
freedoms, who's to say what else they are doing in their after all, black-
boxes?  Would I trust a slave runner with my daughter?  Would I trust an 
unethical disregarder of software freedom with my computer?  Of COURSE 
not!  So even if I CAN legally install and run servantware, if EULAs are 
NOT legally enforceable, I wouldn't WANT to!

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman