Request: Completely free OS

[bismuthdrummer]

Well perhaps freedom 0 (haha 0-indexing I get it <_< ) is broad enough to allow for commercial use, but 2 and 3 use purpose-specific verbiage like "so you can help your neighbor" and "give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes". Your neighbors may have to shell out cash to benefit though, so maybe not the poor part of the community. Strange that they omit that purpose since selling stuff seems like something humans do overwhelmingly ever since the invention of currency. I think that's a pretty generous interpretation of those statements in isolation given their choice of language here.


If in freedoms 2 & 3 they really meant that, in order to be free software, my program must allow others to profit from it, then they should have simply written what they did two sentences later:


"The freedom to redistribute copies, either with or without modifications, either gratis or charging a fee for distribution, to anyone anywhere." (freedom 0x00)


... and leave out the heartstring-tugging blather about helping thy neighbor and assisting thy community (by selling other people's code), and also the repetition about access to source code being a precondition (I think the reader gets it, just state it once as a requirement).


The writing style actually reminds me of the 12 principles of Agile software development; certainly inspiring and lots of wise concepts there, but definitely not sound writing for people who are supposed to think like programmers. They actually sugar it up the same way, for example "welcome changing requirements", as though you should encourage your clients to pile on new features and changes the week before release.

 

[_wb_]

As far as I understand the GPL, you're allowed to sell GPL'ed stuff (like physical DVDs of GNU/Linux distributions), but since the license also requires that anyone else can also redistribute it, either gratis or for a fee, chances are that you're not going to actually make a big profit out of your sale.


Note that the GPL originates from the early 80s, which was a time when access to the internet was still very limited (www still had to be invented, outside the USA there were only a few dozen academic institutes that had some kind of access to the internet). So the main means of redistribution was through physical media like tapes and floppies, delivered through snail mail. Obviously in that context you're not going to demand from authors of GPL'ed software to send anyone who asks for it a copy for free. Instead, anyone can charge whatever they want (the intention of this is to cover the cost of the medium and its delivery), which also means that if you happen to own an ftp server you can put it on that server and charge nothing at all. For obvious practical reasons this very soon became the de facto standard way to do it. But even today it can still make sense to do it the "old-fashioned" way, e.g. in areas with poor/slow internet connectivity, where bandwidth is not virtually free, it still makes sense to distribute full distributions (several GB worth of stuff) using DVDs or USB sticks or whatever.

 

[bismuthdrummer]

Ah, of course I didn't take into account the context of the writings, I'm not versed in the history at all. However, they did mention that they change the definition, so I think perhaps they should consider including something more suggestive to commercial use.


You probably wouldn't be able to resell for very much, I would agree from my non-expert view that the redistribution model here is pretty stable. What I really am getting at with my sarcasm is that they're having their cake and eating it too in their interpretation of their grand definition. The definition says you can distribute the software for the purpose of helping your neighbor. This therefore means you must be able to charge fees? It could be updated to provide a better canonical definition.

 

[Exophase]

As far as I understand the GPL, you're allowed to sell GPL'ed stuff (like physical DVDs of GNU/Linux distributions), but since the license also requires that anyone else can also redistribute it, either gratis or for a fee, chances are that you're not going to actually make a big profit out of your sale.

Look at the Android marketplace. Lots of people are selling GPLed emulators they ported and lots of people are making quite a bit of money doing so. Some of them don't comply with the GPL in providing source, but some of them (some of the more popular ones) do. So there's definitely a market for making huge profits off of GPLed code, whether you wrote much of it or not. This isn't that hard to understand, it goes hand in hand with the same reasons why the iTunes style sales model has been fairly successful in fighting piracy - if you have a product that's very cheap, very accessible (ie, available via listings and searches) and very easy to obtain it will sell, because the free alternative, be it finding a pirated source or getting the toolchain and compiling it yourself, is considered too much work. Yes, someone can go ahead and compile it then make it available for free on the same market, but that doesn't happen much because people generally don't want to put in the effort for something they get no benefit from while also screwing over the original developer(s). But when the prospect is making tons of profit things quickly change, and you can easily steal a lot of their profit with a quick slightly modified fork that undercuts their pricing.

Note that the GPL originates from the early 80s, which was a time when access to the internet was still very limited (www still had to be invented, outside the USA there were only a few dozen academic institutes that had some kind of access to the internet). So the main means of redistribution was through physical media like tapes and floppies, delivered through snail mail. Obviously in that context you're not going to demand from authors of GPL'ed software to send anyone who asks for it a copy for free. Instead, anyone can charge whatever they want (the intention of this is to cover the cost of the medium and its delivery), which also means that if you happen to own an ftp server you can put it on that server and charge nothing at all. For obvious practical reasons this very soon became the de facto standard way to do it. But even today it can still make sense to do it the "old-fashioned" way, e.g. in areas with poor/slow internet connectivity, where bandwidth is not virtually free, it still makes sense to distribute full distributions (several GB worth of stuff) using DVDs or USB sticks or whatever.

FSF has been very clear that their viewpoint on commercial freedom is not about compensation for cost of distribution. Read this:


http://www.gnu.org/p...hy/selling.html


IF it were about distribution costs then it'd be easy to separate those from paying for the software itself. If bandwidth is limited or expensive then someone can first mail you the DVD or USB stick and return postage to send what you need. Or the materials can be purchased for you online. Or you can include receipts for these items and send them an invoice.


But of course that's not the issue as FSF is not okay with licenses that only allow for covering distribution costs.


IMO, the main reason why FSF is big on allowing profit off of free software is because they have a vision of it replacing proprietary software but they don't see software development as a vocation going anywhere so hand wave a vision of being able to still be able to make a living off it in the same capacity. IMO IP and software sales tend to go hand in hand in the long run. If the entire pay model that necessitates IP was changed then charging for free software would be less pivotal.


We're finally seeing some movement in this direction with crowdfunding. People put up money upfront before a product is even fully developed (or at least released). This works well for software and dampens the need to try to make money per-copy. Commercial freedom for GPL stuff makes less sense in this model (and since I'm sure someone will argue that funds are about continued development there's no reason why you can't crowdfund that in advance too, albeit in pretty discrete steps)

 

[klapse]

For those skimming, the score is Exophase 1: everyone else: 0


Wash: "But do we care? Are we caring about this?"


EDIT: bingo @ Exophase - crowdfunding+open-source is one viable alternative to the dubious legal artifice called Intellectual Property

 

[bismuthdrummer]

I think it's safe to assume the posters care. I don't see debates as competitions so much as a learning experience, but to each their own.

 

[Frederico]

Wash: "But do we care? Are we caring about this?"

Because if the FSF OR even RMS Supports this it will help sell more units, and that is the most important thing now.

 

[klapse]

Maybe. I also prefer open source. Have you guys checked out this very cool OS? http://merproject.org/

 

[hedwards]

Wash: "But do we care? Are we caring about this?"

Because if the FSF OR even RMS Supports this it will help sell more units, and that is the most important thing now.

I don't know about that. The FSF and RMS are both very popular amongst a certain group of people, but it's a smallish group and there's another group that seems to be similarly sized that avoids things that the FSF and RMS support.


I suspect that it would be a net gain, but I'm not sure it's really going to be that many more units.


But, as long as the person or people doing the work think it's worthwhile enough to do, it's their business. Even if ultimately only a few more units are sold, it's still a net gain for the community.