I have to admit it... Vista makes a nice desktop

[eddie]

I agree.

[hellonorman]

I think it's stunningly obvious that the free software community at large understands this very clear difference. It is exceedingly rare to hear from even the most active among free software users that they think that writing and distributing free software should be a crime, and that people should go to jail for doing it. The community simply asks and tries to persuade people to value their freedoms, and respect the freedoms of others, to run the software as they wish, study and understand the software, share the software with others, and be able to modify the software to do what they wish and share those modifications with others. We try to persuade people not to write, distribute, or use non-free software. We ask this of people, we don't seek to make it a crime to do otherwise.

As to why people in the free software community think the creation and distribution of non-free software is unethical has been discussed many times, you disagree, so I won't go into that again.

Edit: On the subject of software freedom, I think the following is the best speech Eben Moglen gave. It runs about a half hour and is in three parts.

I don't think it's stunningly obvious. Let's be very clear about who Moglen speaks for and who really benefits from his brand of freedom. Developers. Even Moglen speaks of freedom as a binary proposition. It's either 1 or 0. There's no room in his logic for pragmatism about using non-free software to get 3d acceleration.

This freedom position also makes the assumption that these developers will fulfill everyone's software needs. I don't believe that assumption. One need only look at this scratch your own itch mentality to see that isn't true. The developers are the ones who enjoy the majority of the freedoms. As a user you are left to hope and pray that a developer has the same itch as you. Otherwise you're just left free to fuck off and quit whining or learn to code.

[MattKingUSA]

I think it's stunningly obvious that the free software community at large understands this very clear difference. It is exceedingly rare to hear from even the most active among free software users that they think that writing and distributing free software should be a crime, and that people should go to jail for doing it. The community simply asks and tries to persuade people to value their freedoms, and respect the freedoms of others, to run the software as they wish, study and understand the software, share the software with others, and be able to modify the software to do what they wish and share those modifications with others. We try to persuade people not to write, distribute, or use non-free software. We ask this of people, we don't seek to make it a crime to do otherwise.

As to why people in the free software community think the creation and distribution of non-free software is unethical has been discussed many times, you disagree, so I won't go into that again.

Edit: On the subject of software freedom, I think the following is the best speech Eben Moglen gave. It runs about a half hour and is in three parts.

I don't think it's stunningly obvious. Let's be very clear about who Moglen speaks for and who really benefits from his brand of freedom. Developers. Even Moglen speaks of freedom as a binary proposition. It's either 1 or 0. There's no room in his logic for pragmatism about using non-free software to get 3d acceleration.

This freedom position also makes the assumption that these developers will fulfill everyone's software needs. I don't believe that assumption. One need only look at this scratch your own itch mentality to see that isn't true. The developers are the ones who enjoy the majority of the freedoms. As a user you are left to hope and pray that a developer has the same itch as you. Otherwise you're just left free to fuck off and quit whining or learn to code.

Can you please rephrase that in binary? I didn't catch the last sentance. Unless you like python.

[greggh]

I don't think it's stunningly obvious. Let's be very clear about who Moglen speaks for and who really benefits from his brand of freedom. Developers.

You mean he speaks for those people who created the software? Those people who seek to be able to continue to be able to create free software? Those people who wish that that the fruits of their work, the software they created, remain free for all future users? You mean those people's rights? You seem to be pointing out that working to protect the freedom to create software that can be used freely is a bad thing. I think it's a good and important thing. By the way, he doesn't just speak for those people, the developers. He very much speaks for software freedom in broader strokes as well. But let's be clear. Without the freedom to create free software, we wouldn't even need to bother having to discuss the ethics of using or not using free software.

Even Moglen speaks of freedom as a binary proposition. It's either 1 or 0. There's no room in his logic for pragmatism about using non-free software to get 3d acceleration.

Let's be clear about this too. When he spoke about freedom being either 0 or 1 he's talking about where free software, free hardware and free culture intersects. He's talking about DRM. And he's talking about those who think they should forever own our culture and ideas, and their continued attempts to lock culture down. Here's exactly what he said...

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Transcrip ... p_Of_Ideas

Free hardware is the process of taking that free software and ensuring that the network within which it exists remains under the control of the people who own and use the hardware itself.

This seems very simple.

But it is not very simple because hardware is now the ground of contestation of the counterrevolution. The distributors of everything, those people who are sorry to hear that their expiration date on their legal regime has arrived, have a proposal. A proposal predicted by my colleague Larry Lessig, in the book "Code".

A prediction that we now see in the layer of silicon, because the layer of software - where Larry thought where it would be - we finished destroying their control of, before they understood what the problems were that they had to face.

And so now we find ourselves in which Mister Eisner-Berlosconi-AT&T-Jones - you know, him, the owner of everything, that one - Mr Berlisconi-Gates-Eisner-Jones-Murdoch thinks that what he needs to do is to have all the physical hardware under his control.

So that it will obey not the wishes of the people who own it and install it in their homes and schools and offices and business, but that it will obey only the instructions of the bitstreams that pass through it.

You understand, the leading technical manager of the world, in the view of Mr Berlosconi-Eisner-Murdoch-Gates, should be the movie, moving through your VCR, your DVD player, your television screen.

The screen should refuse to let you look at it unless you have permission. If you attempt to take a picture of what is on the screen, the screen should attempt to turn itself off. If you attempt to use an ordinary hard drive to store forbidden bits, the hard drive should refuse to work.

You understand that they make and learn only from their own proprietary culture. They are like the man that Will Rogers made fun of when he said that he only knew what he read in the newspapers and he only read what he wrote himself. So they wrote this script for the future according to Mr Eisner-Murdoch-Berlosconi-Gates. The script was called "Poltergeist." Your house takes over and you can't live there any more because your house is not safe for human beings, it is only safe for intellectual property.

Left to their own devices, they would soon be back in charge of everything.

But they are not going to be left to their own devices. We have their devices, and we're going to make those devices work the way that we want them to make.

That's free hardware.

"But you were meant to be talking about fundamental human rights?"

Well, I am talking about fundamental human rights, you see, because otherwise we live in a world like a Skinner Box and you press a button and get either a banana pellet or a shock, depending on if you are pushing the right button or the wrong button, as seen by the guy who built the box.

Twenty first century digital society is a very binary place, as befits its digital nature. Freedom is either zero or one. And they think zero, and we think one.

And so we play a certain game through the net. They lock things up. We make things free. They lock them up. We make them free. And we go on about this business, bit by bit by bit, and sooner or alter, the game is over.

This freedom position also makes the assumption that these developers will fulfill everyone's software needs. I don't believe that assumption. One need only look at this scratch your own itch mentality to see that isn't true. The developers are the ones who enjoy the majority of the freedoms. As a user you are left to hope and pray that a developer has the same itch as you. Otherwise you're just left free to fuck off and quit whining or learn to code.

We are not just "users". The "users" are not just users. The user can also be a developer. They can contribute even without writing code themselves. We don't need to just rely on others to produce what we cannot produce alone. We can take a part in cooperating to produce what we all want and need. But we need the freedom to be able to go about doing this. There are those that want to deny us this freedom.

[hellonorman]

We are not just "users". The "users" are not just users. The user can also be a developer. They can contribute even without writing code themselves. We don't need to just rely on others to produce what we cannot produce alone. We can take a part in cooperating to produce what we all want and need. But we need the freedom to be able to go about doing this. There are those that want to deny us this freedom.

That sounds all warm and fuzzy for sure. But there is nothing to contribute to without the code. The reality of the situation is that if you can't code your own applications you become reliant on the coders. The coders you speak of don't have as a goal to produce what we all want and need. They after all are just scratching an itch. Just ask them they will tell you. There is also no incentive to do the tedious work of fit, finish and usability that so much open source software lacks.

As for the work being done to fight patents, closed protocols and such I can get behind that. However when you make the leap to a world computer user commune and try to sell that this is going to produce all we want and need I think you are dead wrong.

[eddie]

There seems to be a step missing in the systems analysis here. How does a programmer know what to write without getting user input first? Is that not part of defining the problem stage to ask the users what they need? This is even true when the programmer is the user. Also are not users involved when the code is being tested at different stages to give feedback? For software to be beneficial, users have to be involved in the development process, With so much turnover in the it industry, I would also make he point that having open software makes future program modifications easier and therefore possibly cheaper. if users understand that they are definitely part of the process then getting the point across about open source should be easy. But then I have no idea what I am talking about.

[hellonorman]

There seems to be a step missing in the systems analysis here. How does a programmer know what to write without getting user input first? Is that not part of defining the problem stage to ask the users what they need? This is even true when the programmer is the user. Also are not users involved when the code is being tested at different stages to give feedback?

Are you claiming that this is how open source works? It sounds like something a proprietary coder might do with the incentive of making money for their work. Not something a free software coder does while scratching an itch in their spare time.

[Wally Balljacker]

The reality of the situation is that if you can't code your own applications you become reliant on the coders.

No, if I can't code I can hire someone to code for me if need be. It's no different than a car engine. I personally can't fix my engine if something breaks, but I can take it to a mechanic and have them repair it for me. Microsoft Windows is basically like owning a car that only the dealer can fix. Can you imagine how absurd it would be if you could only take your car to the dealer for repair? That's Windows. Open source allows me to do repairs myself or hire any mechanic I want. That's real freedom.

[hellonorman]

The reality of the situation is that if you can't code your own applications you become reliant on the coders.

No, if I can't code I can hire someone to code for me if need be. It's no different than a car engine. I personally can't fix my engine if something breaks, but I can take it to a mechanic and have them repair it for me. Microsoft Windows is basically like owning a car that only the dealer can fix. Can you imagine how absurd it would be if you could only take your car to the dealer for repair? That's Windows. Open source allows me to do repairs myself or hire any mechanic I want. That's real freedom.

I'm not sure what you are saying no to. It's a pretty universal statement that non-coders are reliant on coders for software applications.

That's an interesting analogy but I fail to see how it really applies to the real world. In the real world do you take your firefox source code to any "mechanic" you want and hire them to fix it? How about any of the linux video editors, you think you could just pay a "mechanic" to fix them?

[eddie]

I see the mixing of apples and oranges here. Just because there is a temporary of shortage programmers in particular area still does not mean there is an invalidation of being able to do maintenance on code. That is another issue. The fact that there may not be coders immediately available means that there is an opportunity to negotiate people to adapt to do the code. Instead of looking at it as a negative. Look at it as another job opportunity for linux programmers if they are willing to take the challenge to fill a need.