“This follow-up to the previously published article ‘Ubuntu: Derivative or Fork?‘ takes into account most of everything that has been posted as a reaction to the first article to present a general opinion and compare them with facts derived from various resouces. You’ll see that peace can be achieved between these two, and ultimately any GNU/Linux group out there.”
Debian and Ubuntu: The keyword is Freedom
87 Comments
2005-09-28 2:20 am
Anonymous
This article was written in an attempt to discourage any “harping” and “flaming” between debian, ubuntu and any GNU/Linux communities, or (if some really so hate that word), people, users.. whoever..
And really, doesn’t that make the most sense? It’s Free Software, it thrives on diversity and .. yes.. you guessed.. freedom! 
Thanks
Daniel
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2005-09-29 4:39 pm
Really, this is flamebait… that wasn’t necessary.
The other article that this followed up was definitely flamebait, but this one is not. It clears up much of the misunderstanding that was causing the previous flamewar and tries to reconcile the sides. It even explains in detail why it is appropriate for the various sides to “agree to disagree”. This is the opposite of flamebait.
Yeah, I agree. Although I don’t see why either of these is getting this much attention. It seems like they are just glorified posts on a forum. Are either of these guys in any way a part of GNU/Linux development, or somehow otherwise involved in the community besides just being users?
The article ends with:
“So you see, it’s all about one thing: freedom.”
I can’t stand hearing this word any more. It’s been overused and has lost all of its meaning.
Yeah, I’m pretty much sick of “the community” too. It means nothing.
but dude, it’s like, for such a noble cause. In propoganda, people like freedom, say freedom and ****** often enough together, people like ******. Silence your critics, “What? You must be against freedom!”
…they can take our lives but they can never take our freedom to rebrand the work of others…
Braveheart
Use it, abuse it, change it, share the patches but I don’t think anything should fork until it’s dead and a respectful mourning period has passed, like xfree, or is converted into a completely different app or in a different niche at least. On the other hand the debian release cycle qualified as death.
I say we replace it with the new word “hahadom”. I think it really captures the feeling.
I can’t stand hearing this word any more. It’s been overused and has lost all of its meaning.
Don’t you believe that if it really did lost its meaning that it is an unfortunate situation we should do something about?
The thing is that without the thing that this word represents, you know the thing about not being locked up into monopolies, was the very reason why today GNU/Linux is an issue at all and that we’d be enjoying a free (yes as in *freedom*) operating system like we do.
So instead of avoiding it, we should in a contrary try to promote it as something attractive and good for everyone, something that is worth knowing and understanding. It really doesn’t make much sense to talk about Free Software and GNU/Linux and completely leave the “freedom” issue from it, because the “freedom” is the reason why it is here.
Besides all this, the site where this was published on (founded by little myself) is ALL about that freedom, from Free (as in freedom) software to the Free (as in freedom) culture encompassing it.
Thank you
Danijel Orsolic
free (yes as in *freedom*)
As in which freedom? The developer’s freedom of not being allowed link GPL and (original) BSD licensed code? The developer’s freedom of not being allowed to revoke license when he sees his software used in immoral ways? The “freedom” that the GPL claims is just an arbitrary choice – one man’s freedom is the other one’s prison.
In my experience, the majority of GNU/Linux users mostly cares about the free as in beer aspect more than the freedom aspect. Just give them the choice between paying and getting the source code or getting binaries for free and see what they prefer.
The “freedom” that the GPL claims is just an arbitrary choice – one man’s freedom is the other one’s prison.
GPL was designed to prevent exactly that kind of thing from happening. It balances my freedom with yours instead of allowing my freedom to crossover yours. Societally, too much freedom (or that kind of freedom that allows one to be free on the expense of another) is not an objective freedom for all at all.
And developers that chose GPL know what were they doing (or at least should) and knew what this license allows so the whole implication that developers are somehow loosing their freedom doesn’t really stands, especially considering that it was exactly developers who stirred the whole Free Software movement in the first place to allow for an existence of a culture where they can share code and acomplishments, much like scientists have always done, instead of being forced into non-disclosure agreements companies started to lock them into. It was not only users who were locked in, it was developers too.
Thank you
Daniel
“GPL was designed to prevent exactly that kind of thing from happening. It balances my freedom with yours instead of allowing my freedom to crossover yours.”
That’s what everyone claims about his license. Ask Apple or Sun what the intend of their open source licenses was.
Personally, I found that the GPL often did not allow me to do the things I needed – link against non-GPL code. To be precise, SDKs for non-GPL applications. The GPL prevents me from developing and distributing software because it defines freedom as “everything must be GPL’d”. The LGPL, on the other hand, is allowing me to link it against SDKs of other licenses.
If the GPL stands for “preventing the creation of software that does not follow this license”, I’m fine with that. Heck, I have released software under the GPL myself because I wanted the enforcement of shared source code. But please don’t expect me to call this restriction “freedom” just because someone you do.
The LGPL, on the other hand, is allowing me to link it against SDKs of other licenses.
Then simply use LGPL. As long as people have the four freedoms I am all for it. BSD is in that sense a good choice for a license as well, although for me, not the best choice.
If the GPL stands for “preventing the creation of software that does not follow this license”, I’m fine with that. Heck, I have released software under the GPL myself because I wanted the enforcement of shared source code. But please don’t expect me to call this restriction “freedom” just because someone you do.
I’m not expecting that from you. That particular restriction has its role and it is further protecting the freedoms ensured by the license because, as it happens, the world still doesn’t run on all monopoly free software. If it were, that restriction would probably be pointless. So, this restriction in itself is not the thing that gives you freedom as it merely protects it. It is the grant of those rights that the GPL provides, that gives you freedom.
Thanks
Daniel
“Then simply use LGPL.”
Now I can’t just turn GPL software in LGPL software, can I? I’m talking about cases where I would like to turn existing GPL software into a GPL plugin for commercial applications. However, that would require linking against the non-GPL SDK of these applications, which the GPL does not permit. In that regard, the GPL is valuing the freedom of the software more than the freedom of developers and imposing burdens on developers and users. I prefer licenses that protect the rights of people, not the rights of software.
Now I can’t just turn GPL software in LGPL software, can I? I’m talking about cases where I would like to turn existing GPL software into a GPL plugin for commercial applications.
If by “commercial” you mean proprietary than what you want to do in that case is exactly what GPL shields us against. If we just allow mixing proprietary and Free Software like this, then soon there wont be much point in GPL and the Free Software movement in a whole.
Free Software, however, can be commercial at the same time when it’s distributed for a price (e.g pay to download), but the freedoms always stay. When either of the four freedoms aren’t ensured the software is actually proprietary. There is a difference between “proprietary” and “commercial”.
I prefer licenses that protect the rights of people, not the rights of software.
It protects the rights of the people. I don’t find much sense in the sarcasm I sense here, as software can’t have rights. It is all about people, software users which are both developers and users (as developers use software to make software). As I said, it was developers who started the Free Software movement in the first place, because of themselves and their liberty.
Thank you
Daniel
“If by “commercial” you mean proprietary than what you want to do in that case is exactly what GPL shields us against. If we just allow mixing proprietary and Free Software like this, then soon there wont be much point in GPL and the Free Software movement in a whole.”
Is BSD proprietary? Is Apache proprietary? No? So why does the GPL prevent me from linking against them? The FSF defines the original BSD and the Apache license as GPL incompatible, but Free (see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLIncompatibleLicens… ).
Besides, I don’t see what should be wrong with creating GPL plugins for non-GPL applications, especially if it’s all about the people. Why would you want the people not to enjoy free plugins for commercial software?
Is BSD proprietary? Is Apache proprietary? No? So why does the GPL prevent me from linking against them? The FSF defines the original BSD and the Apache license as GPL incompatible, but Free (see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLIncompatibleLicens….. ).
Licenses like BSD and Apache are indeed Free Software licenses and in that sense I wouldn’t see a problem if GPL would allow linking to them. However, how can you achieve that without completely removing the whole viral (share alike) requirement from the license and thus allowing mixing proprietary and Free Software.
There is a modified BSD that is compatible with GPL: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses
The modified BSD license is an example of a good way this inter-free software incompatibility can be resolved. GPL is the most popular Free Software license after all, practically a standard, so it only makes sense that, for their own interest if nothing else, they modify their own licenses to interoperate with GPL.
Besides, I don’t see what should be wrong with creating GPL plugins for non-GPL applications, especially if it’s all about the people.
I don’t need to repeat myself. Mixing proprietary and Free Software is against the goals of the Free Software Foundation and the movement that it supports. The goal is to ensure that people can use their computers in liberty. Allowing mixing of proprietary and Free Software would be detrimental to this goal. In the end, popularity of GPL speaks for itself.
[i]Why would you want the people not to enjoy free plugins for commercial software?
I wont fall for this. People don’t enjoy lock ins (some get around it by breaking copyright law and others just don’t know better like “it’s the way it is and should be”). So what’s the point in providing free (as in freedom) software plugins for an unfree application, since the whole point behind Free Software is freedom and those users aren’t really any more free by having a free plug in attached to an unfree application.
For those having a fobia against the word “freedom”, try “liberty”. But seriously, what’s up with you guys? Why are you on a site about *alternative* browsers when there is “such a great OS” outthere called Microsoft Windows? What? You don’t like the monopoly and it’s consequences? But you somehow still fear “freedom”.
What has this world become when people actually have aversions against something people have fought wars to have in the past.
If you think it’s meaningless, maybe it’s because your values are meaningless, or you don’t value anything at all.
Thanks
Daniel
Why would you want the people not to enjoy free plugins for commercial software?
What a loaded question.
and you go on…
What has this world become when people actually have aversions against something people have fought wars to have in the past.
and on…
If you think it’s meaningless, maybe it’s because your values are meaningless, or you don’t value anything at all.
So why do you want to kill babies? And hurt all those poor grieving mothers? You don’t value peace or life. You only use those words to complain about the commies who you think are coming to get ya. I don’t see how you can sleep at night.
Why would you want the people not to enjoy free plugins for commercial software?
What a loaded question.
and you go on…
I didn’t ask that first question, it was asked by the guy I was replying to (stew). And I agree it’s a loaded question.
As for the rest of your comment, about killing babies and fearing communists.. I think even you realize how much sesne that (doesn’t) make. I don’t have anything to say to it therefore.
Thanks
Daniel
“The goal is to ensure that people can use their computers in liberty. Allowing mixing of proprietary and Free Software would be detrimental to this goal.”
You are not trying to tell me that “not allowing certain things” == “liberty”, are you? Tell me that I am misreading your post.
“So what’s the point in providing free (as in freedom) software plugins for an unfree application, since the whole point behind Free Software is freedom and those users aren’t really any more free by having a free plug in attached to an unfree application.”
The point is creating software that enables users to do things they want to do. Computers are supposed to aid humans, and I appreciate everything that increases our possibilities of what we can do with computers. I don’t see how this is would be less “freedom” than having software licensing that imposes restrictions that forbid me to create certain kinds of software.
“What has this world become when people actually have aversions against something people have fought wars to have in the past.”
I have nothing against freedom. I have something against the misuse of that word, for example in order to create a binary divide in the software world by categorizing it rigidly in “free” and “non-free”.
Please try not to use this kind of rhetoric: “The GPL is about freedom. If you don’t like the GPL, you hate freedom”. That is just the same (I apologize for having to use this metaphor in this context) as the “if you are against the war, you are against America” arguments we hear.
Daniel,
i value freedom of thought, freedom of expression/speech, freedom of movement. I also value a lack of freedom from a moral code of behavior, freedom to intrude on anothers space,etc,etc. I understand that freedom is supposed to imply a glorious context understtod by all but I fear it has beeb that and become an emotional button.
It appears that men are indeed dieing around an empty call of “spreading FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY to all the world”.
regarding free software. it is free only if the person who invented it, lets it free. I STRONGLY believe that what I produce with my mind, even if it began with the thoughts of others, is mine to do with what I wish. WHAT RIGHT does anyone else have to it?? I will die for my right to own what i produce. I have nothing against generous ones who give it away, I am generous myself. BUT I reserve the right of ownership of my mind and hands and what they produce.
regarding the ownership of natural resources; the earth, air, minerals. all private ownership of such began with theft. I will also die for my right to have my share of the universes resources be it land, air, minerals. The American Native who questioned the European confescation of land was looking from the correct moral standpoint. anything else gives right to the physically strong over the physically week and if you believe in that then you can have your fascist dicatator and i feel sorry for you.
Stew, I think your beef is with the developer(s) of the software you would like to use for your application. They were the ones who chose the GPL, remember? The point of the GPL isn’t to make life and work easier for you, it was to encourage open and rapid code exchange. Whining to the open source community about not being allowed to link someone else’s code to the proprietary application you want is childish to say the least. Nobody owes you anything. If you want “the people” to enjoy your free plugins for commercial applications, write them yourself and place them under whatever license you see fit.
Welcome to life: you have to give a little to take a little.
“stew, I think your beef is with the developer(s) of the software you would like to use for your application.”
No, my beef is with using the word “freedom” for what is a collection of restrictions. “Freedom” is a moral word, a social word, maybe even a political. “Freedom” is something that is generally accepted as good.
Software and its licenses are not good or evil. They are not social, political or moral. Applying the word “freedom” to software doesn’t make sense to me.
Software and its licenses are not good or evil. They are not social, political or moral. Applying the word “freedom” to software doesn’t make sense to me.
Stew, I know that I wont persuade you by saying this, but there is a whole lot of people who actually very much believe that software licenses are a social issue, starting from Free Software Foundation (http://www.fsf.org) to even Open Source Initiative (http://www.opensource.org) to alot of their followers including so many GNU/Linux users around.
Feel free to disagree, but rights and restrictions to your use of software are very much a social issue. Just think of where would this society be if everyone thought the way you do, if there was no Free Software movement in the first place. It would most likely be a Microsoft monopoly and it could have hardly turned out in any different way. In such a monopoly they would be the one controlling everything from government to the little man using his computer because nowadays practically whole world runs on computers and computer software. Their will be done, so to say. And if you think that there would always be someone coming up like Google today to threaten their monopoly think of the fact that even Google itself very much used Free Software to get where it is (GNU/Linux powered servers at the least).
So, if you think that such a monopoly has nothing to do with ethics, morality or even politics, then you must have been just teleported to this planet from who knows where and are yet to learn about Earthlings. It is exactly licenses like GNU GPL that have prevented this overwhealming monopoly to come to this fatal point and allow for freer development and use of software and information technology where millions have their say instead of just MS (and other corporations) employees.
And don’t get me wrong. I’m not against corporations. I’m just against monopolies.
Thank you
Danijel
Just to correct myself a bit here..
It is exactly licenses like GNU GPL that have prevented this overwhealming monopoly to come to this fatal point and allow for freer development and use of software and information technology where millions have their say instead of just MS (and other corporations) employees.
Not employees, but their bosses.
“Just think of where would this society be if everyone thought the way you do, if there was no Free Software movement in the first place.”
You are not putting these words in my mouth.
I have nothing against open source software and I don’t see how you would get that impression from my previous posts. Most of the software I have released so far was open source (few of it GPL licensed). But I have something against using the word “freedom” the way it is used by the FSF. Just because I disagree with the FSF and prefer the LGPL over GPL doesn’t mean I am against freedom or open source software, so please don’t try to put such words in my mouth.
Stew, I apologize for that. I shouldn’t have made it sound like it was pointed putting those words in your mouth..
But you guy are now starting to confuse me by saying that you are not against freedom, but are against the way FSF uses the word freedom.. How should they be using it then?
But I think that I get it
You like the more so called “pragmatic” approach of the Open Source movement, an Eric Raymond “show me the code” approach. I respect your opinion and it’s not the first time I’ve debated with an open source supporter so if nothing else we can feel free to disagree.
I am an FSF supporter as I know the reason why FSF set out to build a GNU system, solely because of freedom. And it was GNU that was used to build linux and finally integrate the two into an usable OS called GNU/Linux, so all of this is rooted at that point and with FSF. But “who started it” matters less than the fact that I believe educating people about the importance of freedom as the central issue is in the long term better than just showing off how superior Free Software and it’s development model is.
You don’t need to look farther than this whole Debian vs. Ubuntu issue here. I think that the only way people are to stop complaining about Ubuntu and flameing each other about this is to understand what is behind all this and why is it the way it is. Ubuntu did what it did because it could, because it had freedom to do so. Others can do the same and derivate from Debian to achieve some other goals. The result is that everyone has the choice and most importantly the freedom to choose. That *freedom* is something that flows beneath all of this, that makes it possible, and only *not* seeing this can make people flame each other because of choices they made, because they don’t agree with those choices. How can they respect their choice when they don’t understand freedom.
In my opinion, open source movement has contributed to this misunderstanding of freedom by hiding the “talk of freedom” and thus detributed from educating people about freedom.
This article, among others, tries to restore this understanding in order to try and resolve a confusion and controversion. And I will continue to promote and try to educate about freedom! This is what my site is dedicated to and what the network I’m founding will be dedicated to: spreading free culture along with understanding and appreciation of freedom that makes it possible.
Thank you
Daniel
“But you guy are now starting to confuse me by saying that you are not against freedom, but are against the way FSF uses the word freedom.. How should they be using it then?”[/i]
Not as an adjective for software. Freedom can stand for freedom of thought, of speech or of movement. Software can’t think, speak or move. So how can software have freedom? Talk about free developers instead, because they are the ones who can enjoy freedom or not, not their software.
“But you guy are now starting to confuse me by saying that you are not against freedom, but are against the way FSF uses the word freedom.. How should they be using it then?”
Not as an adjective for software. Freedom can stand for freedom of thought, of speech or of movement. Software can’t think, speak or move. So how can software have freedom? Talk about free developers instead, because they are the ones who can enjoy freedom or not, not their software
Because they try to anthropomorphize software which is strange since it’s just bits. It’s an unhealthy worship of the feeling of free software rather than what the software can actually accomplish.
And what are these “rights” and “restrictions”. Does someone have a “right” to have source code. Do these restrictions include the ability of companies to control the sale of software they produce? What you people are trying to do is put software at a higher level than any other tool and most people don’t. You guys want to get “philosophical” about it.
We are certainly not *trying* to get philosophical about it. As a matter of fact I don’t think Free Software advocacy is something many of us consider the fun part of computing in freedom, but it is a responsibility that we feel towards others to promote this way of computing in contrast to the one where companies have monopoly over their software even when user paid a good deal of money to get it. Software under proprietary licenses is never really yours, how much you pay for it. You have merely rented it for use under the terms of this monopoly holder and why? Just so that he can gain as much of profit from you as possible. This is a terrible imbalance of rights between rights of a proprietary software owner and software user which comes from treating software, a digital product that has more similarities to plain information than a physicall product to be treated as if it was physicall property instead of information that can be shared for absolutely no cost.
So in this way, software proprietor not only gets payed for the first copy that he sells, but for every single copy of his software that has ever been made anywhere in the world, according to the copyright law. Compare this to the real physicall world where one invests time and money to create a physicall product, say a chair, and sells it. He will no longer have that first copy, that first chair he made. He’s gonna have to invest some more time and money to create another one if he is gonna sell a second chair. This does not and cannot happen with software as once you make first copy of software you can instantly make thousands of copies. Does it seem fair to you that a software proprietor must be paid for every single of those thousand copies even if he didn’t invest thousand as much into creating it?
Software is indeed a tool, and it is only you who is somehow trying to pervert us by saying we consider software to be as a person that should have rights and freedoms, even though software isn’t a person. We call it “free software” in much the same sense that you’d call anything else you get for free, except that by “free” we mean not merely freedom of cost alone, but four freedoms and rights we represented as essential for a developer – user relationship to be balanced.
Free Software “model” of ensuring freedoms for all computer users is called “copyleft” (as in copyright flipped over to instead of restricting rights and freedoms, grant them).
Software may be a tool, but using and creating it is an action. Depending on how are you gonna regulate these activities you can have a freer society in an information age or you can have a monopolized society for the benefit of only those that managed to become the monopolizer.
Once again a ridiculous hypothetical based on an imaginary world that wouldn’t happen in a capitalist society. Microsoft can’t “control” everything. There would always be others in the software market, whether it be proprietary or open source.
I thought you were calling me naive? How more naive can you get? Come to the real world. MS already has a nearly 100% monopoly and Free Software just happens to be the greatest competing force on its radar that’s keeping it from reaching that 100%.
Capitalism as we know it has one major flaw. It encourages monopolies as every company within a capitalist so called “free market” (nowadays far from it) are having monopoly as their ultimate goal. And antitrust laws can do too much in that regard. Tell me how much did it do in Microsofts case. Microsoft got burned *after* netscape was practically killed off already – mission acomplished for them. Now the competitor is coming back in form of a *Free Software* web browser, Mozilla Firefox.
Because they try to anthropomorphize software which is strange since it’s just bits. It’s an unhealthy worship of the feeling of free software rather than what the software can actually accomplish.
It is you who is trying to anthropomorphize software in this discussion to pervert both your own and other people’s understanding.
Thank you
Daniel
Not as an adjective for software. Freedom can stand for freedom of thought, of speech or of movement. Software can’t think, speak or move. So how can software have freedom?
Your argument doesn’t hold if one considers code to be a form of speech. If speech can be free then so can software.
Look at it this way: speech, by itself, can’t think, move or (in the case of written words) speak. So how could it have freedom? Following your arguments, because speech is not by itself a sentient organism, it cannot be free, and therefore “free speech” cannot exist.
Nice little rethorical cage you’ve made for yourself, there…
As usual with these discussions: if you don’t like the GPL, don’t use it.
Meanwhile, you haven’t responded to my suggestion of contacting the software authors for relicensing…which GPL app were you talking about earlier that you’d like to make into a plugin for a proprietary app? I assume it was a real example, and not a made-up one…
“Your argument doesn’t hold if one considers code to be a form of speech. If speech can be free then so can software.
Look at it this way: speech, by itself, can’t think, move or (in the case of written words) speak. So how could it have freedom? “
Speech doesn’t have freedom. Humans have freedom of speech (unfortunately, not all of them).
You’re arguing semantics here. Are you saying that “free speech” doesn’t exist?
If “free speech” exist, then it is conceivable that “free software” exists as well.
If humans have “freedom of speech”, then humans should have “freedom of code” as well. The GPL doesn’t restrict this. It can restrict the relicensing, but not what you can actually code…
Freedom is a multifaceted word. The GPL might remove from you the “freedom to relicense”, but it also gives the coder freedom from the fear of someone relicensing their code under a license they don’t agree with.
The thing that I don’t understand is that you already agree with this, since you say you’ve released code under the GPL before, and that you like the LGPL (which is identical to the GPL except for linking). I don’t understand why to take such a contrary position. The GPL protects a certain type of freedom, other licenses protect other types of freedom. There is no “absolute” freedom, as anyone who’s ever had Philosophy 101 can tell you. Freedoms are always balanced one against the other. So saying that GPLed software is “free” software is not a contradiction in term. It all depends on which freedom you’re referring to…
“There is no “absolute” freedom, as anyone who’s ever had Philosophy 101 can tell you. Freedoms are always balanced one against the other.”
Exactly that is my point. The use of the words “Free” and “non-Free” for software is idiotic to begin with. Someone just came, made a list of five things he wants to have in software and stamped the word “freedom” on it. Afterwards, he accuses everyone who has different interests of being against “freedom”.
Besides, freedom of speech and “freedom of code” are worlds apart. Freedom of speech is a basic human right no one should be denied and strict censorship is an act of oppression. Applying the same words to software is implying a parallel, that there is oppressive software licensing and a human right to modify and redisitriute other people’s work. This is the thing I disagree with, because I consider producing and selling proprietary software a basic right everyone should be granted in a free society and there is nothing oppressive about it.
Stew, I know that I wont persuade you by saying this, but there is a whole lot of people who actually very much believe that software licenses are a social issue, starting from Free Software Foundation (http://www.fsf.org)
Yes, we know that their beliefs go beyond a merely technical, economic interest in software, but you have to understand that the vast majority of people don’t think like them. Most people look at software as a tool or a technical curiousity and don’t agree with the FSF definitions of “freedom”.
Feel free to disagree, but rights and restrictions to your use of software are very much a social issue. Just think of where would this society be if everyone thought the way you do, if there was no Free Software movement in the first place
And what are these “rights” and “restrictions”. Does someone have a “right” to have source code. Do these restrictions include the ability of companies to control the sale of software they produce? What you people are trying to do is put software at a higher level than any other tool and most people don’t. You guys want to get “philosophical” about it.
The free software movement has been around for a long time. It didn’t start with Stallman, it was around way before he came upon the scene. You can’t stop free software so the hypothetical is ridiculous.
In such a monopoly they would be the one controlling everything from government to the little man using his computer because nowadays practically whole world runs on computers and computer software.
Once again a ridiculous hypothetical based on an imaginary world that wouldn’t happen in a capitalist society. Microsoft can’t “control” everything. There would always be others in the software market, whether it be proprietary or open source.
So, if you think that such a monopoly has nothing to do with ethics, morality or even politics, then you must have been just teleported to this planet from who knows where and are yet to learn about Earthlings.
Translation: “you must join my cult”. You are laughed at….seriously.
It is exactly licenses like GNU GPL that have prevented this overwhealming monopoly to come to this fatal point and allow for freer development and use of software and information technology where millions have their say instead of just MS (and other corporations) employees.
You have no evidence to back that up
Software and its licenses are not good or evil. They are not social, political or moral. Applying the word “freedom” to software doesn’t make sense to me.
Perhaps, however the case could be argued that the prevalence of a certain economic model with regards to software has an economic impact, which in turns means that it has social and political effects as well.
Like it or not, almost everything we do has economical, social and political ramifications. This goes from putting gas in our cars to where we shop to what we eat.
As software becomes more and more present in our lives, so does its economic importance increases (not necessarily as a marketed product, by the way). Access to low-cost/free software is very important to developing economies, and that includes freedom from vendor lock-in.
I know many people are not interested in the political aspects of software licensing, but that doesn’t meant that they don’t exist…
I’m talking about cases where I would like to turn existing GPL software into a GPL plugin for commercial applications.
There is a way to do this: simply ask the developer to release their code under a dual license: a GPL one for normal release and a LGPL one to be used as plugins. The LGPL could apply only to those portions of code used in the plug-in architecture. Why not try to make your case with them? After all, as copyright holders, they are free to relicense their software as they see fit!
However, that would require linking against the non-GPL SDK of these applications, which the GPL does not permit.
Actually, you can link to non-GPL SDK if they are GPL-compatible, such as the current BSD license.
I care about freedom and free stuff.
Do you mean to tell me that as a developer you would complain about getting free stuff that requests any products you make with it must be available as free stuff, too?
Why expect someone to give it to you and trust you to be good with it?
I know BSD does that. But if you’re so greedy that you don’t want to share your modifications you shouldn’t expect anyone to give you Linux(TM) to do with as you please. You must be crazy, man. This is real world production quality technology here, not some unversity’s toy project. Need me to spell it out for you? If you want to benefit from the Intellectual Property IBM and HP and SGI and countless others are dumping into this technology you gotta pay for the right to distribute with your Intellectual Property.
I’m sorry, but Linux ain’t free beer. If you want to drink this beer you must promise to go pee in the toilet.
I’m with you there. I am so sick and tired of the word freedom. freedom from guilt, freedom from morality, freedom from responsibility. Like the Devils Rejects, freedom to kill.
The word is meaningless by itself.
javajazz
First, this article could hae been written years ago about Debian and any of its deriviatives. And, it was, over and over.
Second, id you’re viewed as a small sect that’s trying to covincce the majority that you really do have a better idea, wouldn’t it be smart to avoid public doctrinal catfights about issues only members of the sect understand and care about?
It’s been my most used distro for the past year at least and after the colony 5 release, I’m back to an almost pure debian – Kanotix: http://www.kanotix.com. Kanotix even had the very new open source wireless realtek 8180 driver, detecting my hardware and insmoding it, as well as autodetecting everything else since it’s based off of knopix.
I liked Hoary, it was a nice distro, but I’ve found out that personally I don’t really like the Ubuntu development model anymore. I’m either stuck with stable with no new packages (besides backports), or I go to unstable Ubuntu (development) which seemed to be in a perpetual broken state even up to now. I’d rather just deal with the Sid model where things don’t get in bleeding edge, but things are relatively up to date, along with some other goodies from kanotix’s repositories.
Hell, with klik I can just run anything I want at the click of a button. I clicked on the e17 button at the klik website, went out and smoked a cigarette, came back in 7 minutes later and I had a fully running e17 in an nx session on my desktop.
I wish Ubuntu the best, it served me well, but I’m moving on for the time being.
Exactly! Just one man (Kano) has proved to the world what Debian at its best can do. No forking, no large teams of developers, no millions, no hype, no zealots…
These Debian/Ubuntu flamefests over the past few days have really done a good job at hashing out the differences between Ubuntu and other Debian derivatives.
So now I’d like to know why people use other Debian derivatives instead of just using Debian. If all of their packages are compatible and you can just point your sources.list wherever you want what’s the point of them?
Not criticizing them, just honestly want to know.
Debian is fine. Compatible derivatives are just “ready to use” customizations of Debian.
Such customizations, if they are really good, stay 100% Debian compatible.
You could get there from Debian, but somebody else has done a lot of work in order to make your life easier, your Debian experience more pleasant.
I’ve tried Ubuntu and Kubuntu.
I found both of them too buggy for production, but that’s just me. I’ve been using Debian Sarge since.
Yeah, it does not have X.org and all the bells and whisles, but works like a charm.
I was one of those that fell in love with just plain vanilla debian. After trying Knoppix, Gnoppix, Mepis and others, it really boils down to (for me that is) a few simple things. A: nvidia drivers, *noppix and others allowed me to EASILY install nvidia drivers and have it up and running in no time, while with plain debian it was a pain in the a$$. B: Install, while all of the installations for all the derivatives is the same, the hardware detection for those are head and shoulders above vanilla debian install.
The way I see it, there are many camps that veiw debian in different ways. Those that want the stable release, those that want the bleeding edge, and those that just want it to work.
I for one love how Ubuntu works, I don’t need bleeding edge all the time, I just “want it to work” and be done with it. The last few times I’ve installed Knoppix, the HD install just doesn’t install clean. I have alot of useless packages that I don’t need, configurations that I can’t fix without muddling around all the conf files and guessing what’s what. It should’nt be that way.
anywhoo, my $.2
You seem to have a lot of… zeal. Let’s face it, without a certain amount of “marketing”, whether it be word of mouth or a billboard, very little would be bought/sold/used anywhere. The argument is (as I have feebly understood it here) that if something doesn’t “work” in the open source model, it gets abandoned. That’s all well and good, but the implied idea is that what does work remains, or gets adapted. Love or hate Ubuntu, they seem to be doing something right. Perhaps it isn’t a graceful or new creature from a purely computational perspective, but if it is only the ability to generate enough “hype” and positive reviews, then it is something from which all Linux distros can benefit. I use Ubuntu, but until I saw your “hype” about Katonix, I wasn’t inclined to try it. Now I am. I think you’re on to something…
“You seem to have a lot of… zeal.”
LOL. One of my points is, and I keep reading it more and more often, that this little distro, Kanotix, is really very good and yet it is almost unknown.
“if something doesn’t “work” in the open source model, it gets abandoned.”
That is very true.
“Love or hate Ubuntu, they seem to be doing something right.”
Yes, they have managed to make installing Debian with Xorg and Gnome easier. If they hadn’t created incompatibility between Debian’s and their own binaries, nowadays everybody would like them.
“I think you’re on to something…”
LOL, like what? I won’t earn any money by recommending Kanotix. I am just somebody who’d like to see the overall linux standards raised.
Yes, they have managed to make installing Debian with Xorg and Gnome easier. If they hadn’t created incompatibility between Debian’s and their own binaries, nowadays everybody would like them.
Although that may be all Ubuntu itself has done, Ubuntu is essentially a product of the Shuttleworth Foundation. They have invested money in the KDE Education Suite, they have helped poor African schools convert to Free Software to save money and help African students have greater access to computers to improve learning, they are making a distro which is aimed at lowering the costs of mass deployment of desktops at schools worldwide (Edubuntu, which uses a lot of technology from LTSP).
So yes, while Ubuntu itself may only be what you say, the people backing it have done far more for free software than you may think.
Oh, and BTW, Hoary and Sid were compatable until Debian altered their libc which broke compatability. I think it is a bit unfair to ask Ubuntu to break their policy of freezing all packages just because Debian wanted to alter a package in their distro. I suppose Red Hat should break compatability with older, certified apps for their enterprise products everytime their is an ABI change upstream? Why isn’t everyone harping on Mandriva for breaking compatability with Red Hat, whom they were originally derived from?
Like I said in an earlier post, Ubuntu has done far more than any other distro that is based on Debian but doesn’t track the main repos to ensure compatability. They send their patches to Debian as soon as they are modified, whereas Linspire, for instance, releases a big ISO of source code at every new release, with no disclosure beforehand. Go harp on them.
“Linspire, for instance, releases a big ISO of source code at every new release, with no disclosure beforehand.”
We can’t really put Linspire into the equation, although I must say that once I dist-upgrade Linspire 5.0 to Sid and I didn’t break anything.
For everything else they have done for the poor and the Open Source community, kudos to them, I try to be a fair man.
I don’t understand why my post was modded down. Maybe because my last sentence wasn’t clear enough:
“For everything else they have done for the poor and the Open Source community, kudos to them, I try to be a fair man.”
“They” I mean Canonical, not Linspire.
I agree — this is one of the things I really dislike about ubuntu. I’d like kanotix a lot more if it had a better installer, but I have it installed on one of my drives. Also, not speaking german is a major bummer when looking at their forums. But yeah, the 6 month freeze/upgrade cycle is something I could do without.
“Also, not speaking german is a major bummer when looking at their forums.”
Dear friend
There is a pretty good English section of the forum (and growing), the wiki is in English as well as in German…
Besides if you post in English in the German forum, you get quite often a polite reply in English, mostly from Kano himself.
Kano, besides being a genius, is incredibly down to earth and approachable.
There are english forums and you can always talk in english on irc as well as german. if kanotix takes off, there will be a lot more english chatter.
“Hell, with klik I can just run anything I want at the click of a button. I clicked on the e17 button at the klik website, went out and smoked a cigarette, came back in 7 minutes later and I had a fully running e17 in an nx session on my desktop.”
Would like to point out that Klik is available for Ubuntu as well.
So, did Mark Shuttleworth play this role right? Can the community trust him?
There is no freaking “community” to “trust” Shuttleworth. I hate these geek idiots that try to lump people and themselves into organizations that they are not part of. “the community” doesn’t even know who you are. These guys need to get their heads checked.
There is no freaking “community” to “trust” Shuttleworth. I hate these geek idiots that try to lump people and themselves into organizations that they are not part of. “the community” doesn’t even know who you are. These guys need to get their heads checked.
NO
the community does not know who YOU are. We might if you bothered to register !
BUT beleive it or not there actually is fully developed linux and oss communities. If there were not, then it would be impossible to develop.
It appears you never thought your post through before you sent it, doesn’t it ?
Mark and his millions]
Most people today have learned not to trust the rich ones and keep them under constant suspicion instead. I actually think that this is a good thing, especially considering that money has indeed proven to be something that truly does have the power to corrupt a person. I actually believe that everyone with a lot of money and power should very well be aware of this (positive) societal trait and act accordingly and responsibly. In other words, people with money have an additional burden to bare and this is one of keeping their image (their motives and intentions) straight, especially if they genuinely are honest.
More leftist bullshit about hating the rich.
“More leftist bullshit about hating the rich.”
So where’s your rebuttal?
Nothing leftist about it you dirty freedom loving pinko interacial dating homosexual!
Actually he makes a valid point. Money is power, and power corrupts unless it is closely monitored.
in my vision there are penguin’s everywhere with different patches on their stomach, they are hold knives and killing each other! AH!!!!!
I think Ubuntu could piss less people off by making their packages compatible with Debian. And there’s no reason they couldn’t do that.
That being said, its not like they are obligated in anyway to be compatible. We’re talking about GPL-licensed software. Ubuntu is not breaking the license, and they are better-than-most at keeping only Free software in their standard install.
It seems like the original article was trying to suggest that Ubuntu, Mark S, and Canocial are planning some shadowy corporate evil in the future, and frankly as long as they stay rooted in GPL software, they can’t do anything that Users won’t have the last say in.
This how argument is mostly pointless. The maintainers of Debian have a right to feel slighted by the popularity, and (to some extent) snubbing of their work, but frankly, tough noogies, nobody Owns this stuff.
I think Ubuntu could piss less people off by making their packages compatible with Debian. And there’s no reason they couldn’t do that.
That being said, its not like they are obligated in anyway to be compatible. We’re talking about GPL-licensed software. Ubuntu is not breaking the license, and they are better-than-most at keeping only Free software in their standard install.
It seems like the original article was trying to suggest that Ubuntu, Mark S, and Canocial are planning some shadowy corporate evil in the future, and frankly as long as they stay rooted in GPL software, they can’t do anything that Users won’t have the last say in.
This how argument is mostly pointless. The maintainers of Debian have a right to feel slighted by the popularity, and (to some extent) snubbing of their work, but frankly, tough noogies, nobody Owns this stuff.
Shuttleworth and the Debian team had a discussion about this. Ubuntu WAS compatable with Sid when Hoary was released. When Ubuntu makes a release, they completely freeze all packages, with no version upgrades. Even RHEL has version upgrades for certain apps (Gaim is one that comes to mind). Debian upgraded libc to fix some problems with some of their architectures, and thus it was Debian that broke compatability, not Ubuntu. Shuttleworth was actually incredibly reasonable, he said that neither team should hold the other back and if they need to diverge for a period to acheive their own goals, then thats what should be done. He said he wouldn’t feel right forcing Debian to stray from their goals to maintain Ubuntu compatability, just like Debian shouldn’t force Ubuntu to stray from his goals.
Source : Deb Conf videos (can’t remember URL, google for it). I watched the one on Ubuntu cause I was interested, the other ones seemed boring so I didn’t download them.
I don’t see what the big fuss is. Ubuntu could be a real pain in the ass and release all of the source code in one huge tarball at release time, much like Xandros and Linspire do. Instead, they make it very easy for Debian and Ubuntu to maintain compatability. All patches are sent to Debian in real-time. They even have a webpage with changes information to make it easy for the changes to be merged back into Debian. So why don’t we see articles about Linspire vs. Debian or Xandros vs. Debian?
Shuttleworth and the Debian team had a discussion about this. Ubuntu WAS compatable with Sid when Hoary was released. When Ubuntu makes a release, they completely freeze all packages, with no version upgrades. Even RHEL has version upgrades for certain apps (Gaim is one that comes to mind). Debian upgraded libc to fix some problems with some of their architectures, and thus it was Debian that broke compatability, not Ubuntu. Shuttleworth was actually incredibly reasonable, he said that neither team should hold the other back and if they need to diverge for a period to acheive their own goals, then thats what should be done. He said he wouldn’t feel right forcing Debian to stray from their goals to maintain Ubuntu compatability, just like Debian shouldn’t force Ubuntu to stray from his goals.
Debian sid (and etch) now have the same glibc version as Ubuntu, so that should be no problem.
A good example of Debian and Ubuntu choosing different roads to a common destination is the introduction of X.Org in Debian after the sarge release and their way towards the modular X.Org release (7.0). Ubuntu helped to make Debian’s transition to X.Org quicker but Debian decided to diverge from Ubuntu’s way with the modular X.Org. However, once X.Org 7.0 has been released and they’ve both got it packaged, there are plans to converge Debian’s and Ubuntu’s packages so that the collaboration and sharing of patches between these two distros can continue.
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/06/msg00865.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/06/msg00882.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/06/msg00888.html
As it seems, Ubuntu will release breezy badger with X.Org 6.8.2 and introduce X.Org 7.0 in dapper drake. And Debian has already X.Org 6.9RC0 packaged and available in experimental. So independence and cooperation are not mutually exclusive. 🙂
The different paths of Debian derivatives simply show that evolution is much faster with free software / open source. Closed systems are often maid to be protective and sustainable, with open source it is the opposite. The articles and the debate is just a way for people to deal with these speedy changes. Or as Einstain said – The only constant in Universe is change.
“To Fork or Not To Fork” by Benjamin Mako Hill at