How close does the Pyra's design come to respecting your freedom?

[diligentcircle]

Because it is a matter of perspective but you're basically trying to sell the idea that if it's good from your perspective it must be good for everyone. The world just doesn't work that way.

I was responding to Steven Craft saying he couldn't comprehend how someone could possibly think that a program being libre would be better than it being proprietary. I'm talking only about simple empathy here, not agreement.

 

[FaeMinx]

Oh. Honestly, I thought this was a more nuanced idea than that a business that depends on a monopoly needs to be protected for some reason. Very well, then...


But really, it's a matter of perspective. For whoever rules North Korea right now, North Korea becoming a free country would be a bad thing. That doesn't make it objectively bad for North Korea to become a free country. So really, how can the idea that it would be better for something to be libre "not compute" for you?

Nicely put.
If someone Gains a privileged position through his intelligence or circumstance by limiting the freedoms of others... You might argue this is good for him.


I wouldn't. His power has an extremely fragile foundation, and is not 'open' to change. He can lose everything in an instant.


If the nation were to become free, he would perceive it and experience it as a great loss. However, he would then have no less than anyone else... And more than he would have had as a subject under his own regime. (unless the people execute him for being a poopy head and in order to bring the change about).


Now concider, as he was intelligent enough to hold power in the first place, if he were to embrace FOSS, and gave freely to the people... He would very quickly become recognized as a person of great worth and people would be very happy to work with him and help him. He would find that in service to all, as opposed to service to self, a greater power is returned to him... One that has a strong foundation of openness, respect, and unconditional support.


This is the ideal situation.


However, in a world still largely ruled by service to self... One may have to apply oneself to restrictive practices simply to survive, and to gather unto yourself the resources and knowledge to elevate yourself to a position in which you can then make an impactful difference.


That is your choice and carries its own traps, the greatest of which is becoming attached to what the restrictive practices offer you.


Embracing FOSS with no resources and a desperate situation can easily save you from ruin, but it is too much to ask of some and their potential may never be realized under the current oppressive system.


That is why you can't judge the choices an individual makes in the quest for his/her own true liberation.


In order to do good unto yourself, and unto others, you need resources.


Acquiring those resources, particularly *how* you acquire them, is your responsibility and the consequences incurred by which are entirely yours to own.


FOSS will always be good, but will not always be a choice the individual can make, depending on the circumstances under which he finds himself.

 

[rygD]

it would be taken, packaged up and sold on the mobile markets

You can't make an activity harmful just by asserting that it is with an ominous tone. How would people selling copies of DraStic be "harm"? What "damage" would it cause?

For someone running a business selling software they've worked hard to develop it would represent a significant loss, especially since the copycats are likely going to ensure they are always undercutting the rightful publisher's price, which then in turn forces prices and profits down even further. 

-Neelix

I have paid for copies of free (libre and gratis) software on discs.  Donations could also be accepted, and if enough money isn't donated to make it worthwhile then the programmer no longer needs to maintain it.  It needn't die there though, since someone else can work on their own version of it.  There are probably at least a few more common ways to make money.

Not trying to debate stuff, just throwing options out there for all the starving programmers of the world.

 

[ible]

as far as i can tell, donate-ware is not typically very successful at raising funds.  (any notable exceptions?)  i would like to believe in a perfect and beautiful world like that, but reality hits you hard, bro.

i really can appreciate the GPL for its "viral" nature; it's a sort of "pay it forward" type of freedom, where the freedom that you have with the software must be shared with anyone you distribute the software to.

i could also get behind a sort of ID software license, where you make a promise in 10 (or however many) years after you release a commercial game, you will open-source the code.  that way the commercial people are happy (they get to make money for a certain amount of time), and the open-source people could be happy, too.

 

[bzar]

as far as i can tell, donate-ware is not typically very successful at raising funds.  (any notable exceptions?)  i would like to believe in a perfect and beautiful world like that, but reality hits you hard, bro.

As a near example: I've IIRC received one (1) donation through the repo for PNDManager

Not that I expected or feel entitled to any though. I mostly do stuff that benefits me and share them so they may benefit others because I'm too lazy to get involved with money things and like to see people happy.

(EDIT: before anyone says I already got a compo prize for it: yes, but the continued development after the initial release is much more than what I had for the compo)

 

[comradekingu]

How would anyone know that its GPL though?

 

[Neelix]

Why should that be a factor?  If it's worth a donation it's worth a donation, especially  given that it's being provided gratis and has no direct application outside this community.

-Neelix

 

[_jr_]

Because the license is a feature. A permissive license may increase the value to me, e.g. because I'd like to adapt it to my needs.


edit: I'm not trying to imply that PNDManager doesn't have a permissive license (it is CC-attribution-sharealike I think)

 

[comradekingu]

Because some people consider funding closed source software immoral.

The line of thinking where software is only for one particular device, made by one particular person leaves you with lots of legacy cruft, much harder to maintain once the developer is nowhere to be found.

 

[Rockthesmurf]

I guess the thing that does annoy me a little is the person who (potentially) loses out by open source with permissive license is the author (the one that put all the time/work in), and the people that (potentially) gain are the consumers (who did nothing). I'm not against people going open source and using permissive licenses (I contribute to open source projects with these sorts of licenses), but what I am against is people telling other people what is right/wrong (or good/bad). Clear something people feel one thing is good/bad and other people think differently. So the answer really is that it is all down to the individual.

Also, comradekingu PM'd me to say he had made one of the posts I couldn't understand easier to read, so just wanted to mention that and say thanks, appreciate the time/effort to help articulate the point.

I am opting out of this thread now, I've said my piece, ruffled a few feathers!  Plus, I really just used Exophase/DraStic as an example (as I felt it was quite a good example of successful closed source and commercial [on some platforms] software, which I feel as a community we want to encourage not attempt to exorcise) however at this point I feel like I am treading on toes, Exophase can comment himself if he has strong views. I guess one question I would have for Exophase is: if there were no issues of people making bad use of a license, would you release the full source for DraStic under a license (that doesn't allow people to use the code in commercial projects, etc.) (i.e. if you knew it wouldn't affect sales, wouldn't cause customer support issues, wouldn't cause other issues)?

 

[_jr_]

This circles back quite neatly to my argument. Without any other context it is exactly as Steven says: one provides value for free ('idiot') and one gains without doing anything ('parasite').

IMO the relevant question to ask is: What is it then that makes me *not* feel like an idiot when I help a single parent carry the pram up a flight of stairs?

The rest is all down to the individual.

 

[Binky]

Heres a possible argument. (not really sure if I agree with it, but here goes...)

For the user, an individual piece of software is better with a liberal license than with a restricive one. They can improve it, and verify the abscence of (or remove) backdoors.

However, in a parallel universe where there is no such thing as closed-source software, the user is worse off. There is less software available because there are few professional programmers. Ambitious, inteligent folks don't learn programming because theres no money to be made. The computing economy falls apart because every company is trying to use their competitors' code instead of writing their own, resulting in poor code quality.

 

[_jr_]

I've seen an argument on the internet (cannot find the link, and I haven't checked the facts, may well be bullshit) that during the 19th century there was no copyright in what is now approximately Germany and as the result there (allegedly) was increased innvoation and output of creative work (everybody trying to be faster and more productive than the others). While Great Britain at the same time introduced strict copyright (allegedly) leading to books being extremely expensive, produced in very small quantities and not read, but rather locked into libraries as treasure along a noticeable decline in innovation.

 

[diligentcircle]

That's not a bad work of fiction, but it doesn't serve as an argument.


You don't even need to go to a parallel universe to see a world with no such thing as proprietary software. It existed first in the real world. Proprietary software was invented by IBM in 1969 because it was under the threat of antitrust litigation. Before then, the idea of not having the freedom to do whatever you wanted with software you possessed was unheard of, as far as I can tell. So if you want to imagine a world without proprietary software, just look at what the real world was like prior to 1969.


People learned programming and wrote useful programs long before the invention of proprietary software in 1969, sometimes just because they were fascinated and sometimes because it was their job, and people have been writing useful non-proprietary programs since then. Even Spacewar, the first digital video game, was developed long before the invention of proprietary software. As far as I can tell, none of the problems you described in your fictional tale existed then, and I see no reason to speculate that they would have suddenly appeared had IBM not invented proprietary software.

 

[TrashyMG]

Can you cite where IBM solely invented proprietary software?

 

[diligentcircle]

Wikipedia's citations are:


Pugh, Emerson W. Origins of Software Bundling. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Jan–Mar 2002): pp. 57–58.


Hamilton, Thomas W., IBM's unbundling decision: Consequences for users and the industry, Programming Sciences Corporation, 1969.

http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/history/year_1969.html


I don't have the books referenced, so I can't check them. The third one, of course, is biased.

 

[TrashyMG]

It's a bit of a stretch to assume IBM solely invented proprietary software as there were other smaller players at the time... proprietary software still existed prior to this, it was just being developed and shipped with their computer hardware and it was assumed when you bought the computer you got the software as well.  You could argue that this unbundling decision eventually opened up the possibility of Open Source software as well. 

 

[comradekingu]

I guess the thing that does annoy me a little is the person who (potentially) loses out by open source with permissive license is the author (the one that put all the time/work in), and the people that (potentially) gain are the consumers (who did nothing). I'm not against people going open source and using permissive licenses (I contribute to open source projects with these sorts of licenses), but what I am against is people telling other people what is right/wrong (or good/bad). Clear something people feel one thing is good/bad and other people think differently. So the answer really is that it is all down to the individual.

Also, comradekingu PM'd me to say he had made one of the posts I couldn't understand easier to read, so just wanted to mention that and say thanks, appreciate the time/effort to help articulate the point.

I am opting out of this thread now, I've said my piece, ruffled a few feathers!  Plus, I really just used Exophase/DraStic as an example (as I felt it was quite a good example of successful closed source and commercial [on some platforms] software, which I feel as a community we want to encourage not attempt to exorcise) however at this point I feel like I am treading on toes, Exophase can comment himself if he has strong views. I guess one question I would have for Exophase is: if there were no issues of people making bad use of a license, would you release the full source for DraStic under a license (that doesn't allow people to use the code in commercial projects, etc.) (i.e. if you knew it wouldn't affect sales, wouldn't cause customer support issues, wouldn't cause other issues)?

If you want consumers to be consumers, then you take their money and be happy. If you want to allow them to be something more than that, the comparison to closed source dissapears.

A permissive license is only the right to grant others the choice you didnt make, they can do whatever they want with it. If you dont like that, dont do it.

What you are actively selling is what you deem to be your loss, and an opportunity for the consumer. If you see no commercial aspect of that, which changes the nature of the argument with regards to closed source, then you are a bad businessman by comparing apples to oranges by saying they are all apples.

Im not saying one is better or worse, but for every successful project you could bring up, you fail to question if the same would be true if it had a different license. Or if it changed.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

A license is in itself restrictive, which again has its own following.

If the liberties extend to everyone else being able to close of the source at will, then you are effectively no longer able to control backdoors. That is if you consider it the same piece of software, which i must say that at its origin, if its worth re-using, is true. Unfortunately the idea of the open variant always winning because of its openness, doesn't always hold true. At some point Osx also dominates the market enough for it to be hard for competitors to enter, even if they come from the same line of software.

Every single change that benefits parasitical behaviour in lieu of being good for the common, is a hoax. At "best" its a "we have accumulated too much power to fail", so we cant or wont change.

The people want the liberties they can grant themselves by the power of being many, at best that means all of them.

We want what is ours, is a argument you could use for both sides. So what do I think?

As for the code, the more eyeballs in front of working brains the better.

 

[diligentcircle]

proprietary software still existed prior to this, it was just being developed and shipped with their computer hardware and it was assumed when you bought the computer you got the software as well.

No... it was customary for those programs to be given to customers in source code form at the time. Please don't try to revise history with speculation on what could have happened. What actually happened was that if proprietary software existed at all before 1969, it was extremely unusual.


If you doubt this, just find some prominent examples of proprietary programs from before 1969. If proprietary software was common, it should be very easy to find it and point it out.

 

[TrashyMG]

No... it was customary for those programs to be given to customers in source code form at the time.

Okay, but it was still proprietary. Source code being visible really had nothing to do with it.

lease don't try to revise history with speculation on what could have happened.

You too seem to be inventing a lot on your own. Like levels of morality dealing with software development and usage.

What actually happened was that if proprietary software existed at all before 1969, it was extremely unusual.

I would consider the software being developed by Governments, businesses and  the likes as being proprietary, the general consumer, nor did other businesses or organizations had access to each other's code, nor had the facility of getting at or sharing it easily. Teams of engineers would come develop the user software for the specific tasks, Since most applications of computer software back then was for business, government or research work these were typically guarded from being shared to the public. And all this was happening well before 1969.