This article discusses the political differences between Mono & dotGNU, two .NET re-implementations.
Free Software Group Not Well With Mono
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
“…political differences between …”
Well that’s the root of all problems
Is it just me, or does the whole “call it GNU/Linux” argument seem a little controlling and self-centered for a group so centered on openness and freedom?
Also, the argument that “non-free software is a social problem” seems rather ironic considering the stereotypical social skills of programmers. Talk about fighting for a cause that the majority of the world’s population couldn’t care less about.
People are either demanding corporate involvement in open source funding or are condemming it, depending on the weather.
GNU alone can’t bring a competing product against Windows, etc. It took AOL funding Mozilla, RedHat helping GNOME, Novell helping Mono, Troll helping KDE etc etc etc to get you where you are today.
Try going the pure FSF route and you will end up with a system that is state-of-the-art for 1993.
As for GNU/Linux, this whole thing has become a joke. RMS, I appreciate your efforts but sometimes self-medicating leads to brain damage.
I am confused. Didn’t they provide same API? Didn’t they implement the ECMA standard?
> “… political differences between …”
>
> Well that’s the root of all problems
Exactly I do agree here. In the past years by using Linux I noticed this behaviour too. A lot of decisions done in the Open Source as well as Free Software world are driven by politics. I always thought that these two communities had mature enough people to find a good way to value between politics and true and working solutions. Even highly educated people who should know it better (at least you get that impression when looking at their grade) behave irrational and not logical by times.
Haha, great comment Zachary.
Another quote from the article: “For the Open Source movement, the issue of whether software should be open source is a practical question, not an ethical one.”
Personally, I am more interested in practicality rather than the… ethics of software. What’s next? My recipe and fishtank’s ethics? What matters is the software to work as it is expected to. Software is a tool, I don’t care if it is likes body piercing or if it likes to wear a bra or not. If it does the job as needed, use it, if not, delete it and save some hard disk space. That’s the kind of practicality I am talking about, and that’s all I care as a consumer.
If the source code is available that is an welcome added bonus! But if it is not, it ain’t the end of the world as long the app works and does its job.
I don’t see the point of writing such articles. Do a better job [as you have done in many aspects in DotGNU] and then when you’re done say:
a) I’m cooler in code
b) I’m cooler in philosophy
you don’t have to say anything else, and everything else will follow.
see the recent example of X.org Xserver and Xfree86.
if you disagree with the article you still disagree with GNU/Redicilus comments expressed here. At least I do.
Oh well Eugenia you knew that comments would be around didn’t you?
Does anyone aside from crypto-breakers actually put into consideration ethics and mortality before they polish off that last method call they were just writing?
I mean, software’s just a tool to me; there is no righteous agenda or seething political desires that drive my code. But maybe the compiler does all that for me.
Is there really a need to talk politics about the little 1s and 0s floating around your computer?
Then there was the timing of both projects’ release in 2001. In de Icaza’s opinion, the FSF “hijacked” Mono’s own announcement and announced Mono as the GNU Mono project. “Obviously, everyone in the company (Ximian) was upset about that,” de Icaza said. “There were some bad sentiments there.”
and…
But de Icaza said he was kicked out of the FSF for not strictly adhering to its policy of referring to the Linux operating system as GNU/Linux and ensuring that it was always referenced as such in the press or in any interviews that he gave.
Can anybody confirm these with an archive somewhere? If this is true, then I find this just hilarious and it continues to reinforce the perception of Stallman and his minions as children.
Can Stallman get anymore bitter that the kernel is not his baby and that he is not some defacto dictator of all open source(oh excuse me, free software) projects? Hilarious
Well, I would be very surprised if it were otherwise.
After all, Mono now have a Big Bad Corporation(tm) supporting them. If only Miguel named the thing MonoGNU or Gnomo…
FSF’s radical positions are making them look anachronic even between the FS/OSS supporters, what to say for people outside the circle. This Gnu/Linux thing..gee.
First they should drop this “Free Software” name that only leads to confusion and has been misleading a lot of people (free beer vs. freedom) for too much time. Then they should start acting as if they were in the 21st century, what about removing those Karl Marx pics from the wall for a start.
Only when the term software freedom comes up do the differences emerge. For Bello, this is the core issue of what the GNU free software movement is about. Both projects believe they are “free,” though DotGNU’s Bello questions how long Mono will remain so. “Patent licenses, which are not royalty-free, are inherently incompatible with the idea of free software,” Bello said.
Excuse me, but Pnet is implementing Windows Forms so it’s just as “encumbered” as Mono is regarding non-ecma libraries.
But DotGNU’s Bello also questioned who pulls the strings on the respective projects. “DotGNU will never be controlled/guided by the business interests of a single company,” he said. “On the other hand, in the long run it’s much more healthy to have a funding model like that used for the Linux kernel, with lots of companies contributing but no particular commercial interests being in control.”
Uhm, once again, the code is out there. It doesn’t matter that Novell is employeeing a lot of the Mono developers. Other companies have contributed to Mono as well.
Bello said he doesn’t consider DotGNU to be a free implementation of the .NET development framework (as Mono sees itself). Rather, he sees DotGNU as “a competing framework, which aims to provide compatibility with Microsoft’s .NET framework.”
Does he think anybody is buying this crap? Uhmm, no. It’s still a .NET clone no matter what kind of semantical games he’s trying to play.
Here’s the FSF’s announcement of the launch of GNU Mono: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-press/2001-07/msg00001.html
As for Miguel being expelled from the GNU project for disagreeing with RMS over the GNU/Linux issue, I could well believe it. A similar affair happened fairly recently; Thomas Bushnell was the Chief Software Architect of the Hurd until RMS ejected him for publicly criticising the GNU Free Documentation License (http://lists.softwarelibero.it/pipermail/discussioni/2003-November/…).
No matter how much RMS/GNU/FSF might seem over the top, I feel that they have a role to play in this whole software equation. I feel that there should be parties on both extremes in order for people to realize what the middle ground is.
Is not the whole “GNU/Linux” thing just another variation of the advertising clause which GPL advocates dislike so much? You are forcing people to acknowledge a component or piece of the overall system. They are simply enforcing it through social engineering and politics rather than a software license. How is forcing someone to call the system “GNU/Linux” any different?
Thanks for the links. Yep, these asshats did call it GNU Mono.
It’s all good though. Stallman and his minions slide into further irrelvance with these types of juvenile stunts.
Personally I feel we should acknowledge the Free Software organization for producing the GNU utilities to run on Linux based systems.
Instead of calling it GNU/Linux, which as FSF explains to be a GNU system “simply” using the Linux kernel it ought to be Linux/GNU. Linux/GNU is a better terminology sense all of the GNU user land applications eventually rely on linux kernel level system calls, albeit most of these are abstracted around glibc.
With both Mono and GNU.NET it seems like more unessicary strife within GPL toting communities. Why not just have one free implementation of .net, instead of two competing versions.
I know its been a paradigm in the open source / free software communities of having multiple versions of the same thing, prescribing to the idea that the best will win out eventually. I think this is silly and very counter productive.
An anology would be GM during the 1980’s where different car makers within the same company competed for resources to build cars that will profit the same company. This along with other strife within the same community almost lead to the bankrupt of GM.
I know cars companies are not software production methods, But it would be nice to see more cooperation.
Does anyone know how IBM sees Mono?
“With both Mono and GNU.NET it seems like more unessicary strife within GPL toting communities. Why not just have one free implementation of .net, instead of two competing versions.”
Read the article, political issues.
My biggest problem with open source (and I am for open source) is all the silly politics. It’s a computer, not an election.
I believe IBM and HP were among the co-sponsors of ECMA 334 and 335.
Drawing such comparisons doesn’t really make sense. It’s the Free *Software* Foundation we’re talking about here. As long as it’s not a clause in the license, it’s not mandatory and thus not a restriction on the software’s freedom in their eyes.
Besides which, the FSF’s argument against BSD-style advertising clauses is actually a fairly reasoned one focusing primary on the practical problems they cause (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html) as opposed to just an ideological rant.
And it’s not just the GPL advocates who agree with him – other critics of the advertising clause include FreeBSD (http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2003-August/01…), NetBSD (http://cvsup.pt.freebsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/net/i…), OpenBSD (http://monkey.org/openbsd/archive/misc/0402/msg00919.html) and of course the University of California, Berkeley, itself (ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/4bsd/README.Impt.License.Change).
I read the article
Chris, I agree there is too much politics.
All I know is that I have a large bank account and that’s the only thing that really matters. If Non-Microsoft software becomes illegal I won’t use a computer, infact there is no reason for me to use one, I’m lucky.
I agree.
“Why DotGNU does not have patent issue as Mono?”
Windows.forms, which Mono doesn’t have, is included with DotGNU. It was developed by a developer from India who announced the feature on OSNews.com claiming it isn’t encumbered by patents since it was developed in India. He explained why in that appropriate thread, you might want to look it up.
Without reading his statement, i think he is wrong given the patent counts in the USA. It would render the usage of that code illegal in the USA. However, not in the rest of the world since the patent in question does not count there.
“My recipe and fishtank’s ethics? What matters is the software to work as it is expected to.”
Oh, according to your logic, any ethic in relation software is a non-issue. What if the source code was stolen, developed by some other vague individual, then distributed on the Internet as binary for free beer and you got it and “the software worked as expected?”. What about warez anyway? You’re on grey water with general statements like this.
Food, for example? Some people care wether it contains no ingredients from dead animals, some people care wether it contains no ingredients from dead or alive animals (or either were involved in production), some people care wether it only contains biologic ingredients, some people care for wether no child labor was used in the (primary tier’s) production of the food, some care wether the (primary tier’s) producers were paid with a fair price, some people are allergic to certain ingredients, some people do not wish to eat genetically modified food, some only care wether it is healthy, […], and finally some people like not to look futher than their nose long is only caring how it tastes, looks like, smells like, and use other forms of sense capabilities. Should one not be allowed to advocate either of the above manners, or critize one or another on their manners?
How far along is dotGNU compared to Mono?
Ximian had told the FSF that they want Mono to be part of GNU. At that time, Miguel de Icaza was a board member of the FSF. He cannot deny having had knowledge of why it is important for the GNU project to maintain at least some level of public awareness of “GNU” and what it stands for (free software as a matter of ethics, an expression of fundamental respect for human dignity).
Of course Ximian (now Novell) is free to run their project in any way that they think is best for their “bottom line”. After all, they’re a profit-oriented company. However, given that they had told the FSF that they want Mono to be part of GNU, it’s ridiculous that now they complain that “the FSF ‘hijacked’ Mono’s own announcement and announced Mono as the GNU Mono project”.
It isn’t ridiculous. The GNU tools make up a huge part of the system, and the GNU team deserve credit. Without RMS it is doubtful there would be a Linux kernel, and if there was it may be in a very different form.
It IS a social issue. If I went to school and did worked on a spreadsheet, and then wanted to work on it at home, I shouldn’t have to pay for the privilege to do so. Propreitary software widens the gap between rich and poor, the third world and the rest of the world. It essentially has a huge ripple effect. RMS is a visionary, doing amazing things; if he wants some credit for the 20 years of work he has done, he should get it.
“I know its been a paradigm in the open source / free software communities of having multiple versions of the same thing, prescribing to the idea that the best will win out eventually. I think this is silly and very counter productive.”
Well, it is not as simple as you put it as if everyone is cloning each other and what not. In the examples i’m aware of i became aware that they’re almost the same thing, but never exactly the same. For example a difference could be the program language they’re coded in (Sodipodi vs. Inkscape), GUI toolkit (Many examples available) the design (more general than simply language), the license (BSD, Linux, commie UNIX), or features / aim (The primary difference here IMO, but license is also one. Examples: Samba or Samba-TNG, NetBSD or OpenBSD, and DotGNU or Mono).
Sometimes these conflicts are in harmony and good faith (for example the Samba fork), sometimes not (for example the BSD conflict). But in the BSD conflict, code from NetBSD is still used in OpenBSD and the other way around as well. When one ain’t aware of that, it might look as if all is cloned while in reality that’s not really true. The reason why appears to be important in all of the examples.
Yeah but people are stupid and they deserve to be taken advantage of. As long as you have money you can’t be totally taken advantage of. So one might say, let them have it, let Microsoft run wild. At least I can protect myself but I’m in the top fifteen percent richest families in Canada. Sometimes I think that the people should get smacked because of their total ignorance, they deserve to be dominated.
I am a supporter of RMS and FOSS however I know that people don’t make wise decisions, and it’s only a fools hope that FSF will overcome proprietary commercialism. Either way however I have a brick wall protecting me, I suggest others to do the same.
Good post opa. Thanks.
Remember folks, Stallman founded the FSF. He started GNU and it’s *his* project. When you work on official GNU software, you agree to assign copyright to the FSF. Think about that for a moment: RMS commands such great respect in the community that large numbers of Free software developers (most of them professionals doing it in their spare time) not only happily contribute their work to GNU projects, but even give up their *copyright* on said work. They *want* their work to be part of RMS’s baby, and they trust that RMS and the FSF won’t bend, deal, sell-out, or back-down when it comes to the freedom of GNU software.
If *you* had a project you were working on, and a regular contributor started publicly and intentionally mis-pronouncing it, you’ve got every right to say, “dude — thanks for your help, but if you’re gonna be like that, no-thanks.”
See, there was once this general named Pyrrhus…
My fear is that the great vision that is the FSF (associate member #2221) will drown in urinary struggles.
ok, first off, its not a politics issue. miguel has been dismissing it as a politics issue, but there are some real valid copyright/patent issues that have yet to be answered. the only people that can answer it are lawyers, and so far i have yet to see one fsf/redhat/novell lawyer confirm or deny the risks involved with mono. theres been alot of IANALs though…
now, im not saying there isnt politics in FOSS, but there is politics in the whole industry. look at oracle or sun or ibm vs microsoft, and tell me there isnt assloads of politics going on. #1, we get the memos, the water cooler talk, the design meetings, the friction between leaders… pretty much everything. this stuff happens in propriatary software too, just at a much smaller scale and not in the open.
last but not least are the ethics. ive got a leather jacket that i just love. had it for years. there are many people whose ethics drive them to not wear animal skin. but its just a jacket, right? extremely comfortable, quite warm, and it looks good. why in the world would someone make that kind of deal over a jacket?
its more then just access to the source code. stallman was there during the transition from software being a science to software being a product. he feels the same outrage that an astronomer would feel if suddenly every university and observatory in the world stopped working together, and guarded their research as a “trade secret”. i can understand stallman, and i respect him a great deal, even though i dont totally buy into his cause.
Personally I can’t wait until Intel decides that .NET is such a good idea that they implement hardware support for the CLR. Where Java chips failed, .NET chips will triumph.
No way, come on, the hell with FOSS, let’s see what the world becomes when we allow a dictator to have complete control over the computainment industry. Who needs code so long as the program does it’s job, right. That’s all that matters hey. The source code doesn’t mean anything, obviously.
I want to see some heads get stepped on because people just don’t get it. I think that people deserve to be slaves because they don’t think hard enough they just do what they are told to do. That’s the way human life is meant to be.
Ofcourse in the mean time I’ll be using Linux for the next twenty years, and I’ll have even more money than I have now. The middle class is being whiped out, I’m getting richer! LOL. Bring it on Microsoft!
Right on man, unfortunately consumers aint gettin’ stepped on because the vast majority of em don’t even buy their software, they warez it. The sooner good product activation is widespread the better. That way when my girlfriend’s little brother asks me if he can borrow my Microsoft Office CD I can just say “dude, it wont work on your computer” instead of having to give a 20 minute lecture on why he should use Open Office.
“its more then just access to the source code. stallman was there during the transition from software being a science to software being a product. he feels the same outrage that an astronomer would feel if suddenly every university and observatory in the world stopped working together, and guarded their research as a “trade secret”. i can understand stallman, and i respect him a great deal, even though i dont totally buy into his cause.”
AYE!
Alright, you have been noted, go home now, ok? 🙂
I “halt” you, you program, for I am Neo! 🙂
This is my last post (hopefully for good) and I can say that if FOSS is destroyed than I don’t want to hear people complain if they have nothing to eat but charcoal. I’m arming myself with weapons and getting ready to protect my estate. It’s your stupidity if the future of being dominated hurts your economic situtation. I know that the rich take as much as they can because I do too and I’d rather put a bullet through your head than to give it up. I think that people should protect themselves but when you give that control away that’s your stupidity.
It is funny to see how many people have a notion that making software is not political or should not be political. Of course making software is political. Everything you do is political. Every single footstep you do. It is only a matter of degree, a matter of how much political it is. Under normal circumstances of course, the political impact of one footstep is not even measurable.
But think: What if it were still 1985 and you did one little footstep over the inner-German border. You were probably shot by a East-German border-security soldier. Now even that small footstep had damn much political consequences.
So if you say that the political impact of making software is low, that is your own judgment and one could agree or not agree. But saying it is entirely unpolitical, that is plain wrong.
I’m a programmer as well as a voracious self-read student of history and politics.
As a relative newbie (3-4 yrs.) to “free software” and linux here’s my perspective.
Open Source tends to be analogous to Marxist/socialist philosophy; one which usurps personal responsibility, private ownership, and profit by the fruits of your own labor. All in the name of the “greater good”. One major difference being that socialism prescribes a central governing body or single dictator to take posession and distribute property, so everyone gets what they need and nothing more.
Proprietary software, on the other hand follows a “capitalist” philosophy of private ownership and profit from your own labor. One that employs fully the right of copyright and a strict policy of “thou shalt not steal”.
I might remind everyone that the founding fathers of the United States of America had a laissez-faire capitalist vision for America similar to this. They recognized that liberty is directly proportional to private property and personal responsibility.
In other words, a free market is the “invisible hand” that tends to solve problems naturally as opposed to the disasters and holocausts socialism has wrought all over the world throughout history (10+ million murdered in USSR, 30+ million murdered in China, etc.)
I, for one, am a staunch Libertarian and believe in personal property and personal freedom without question, as long as you don’t harm others.
However, there is a middle ground in the Open Source community. If I’m not mistaken, the LGPL and BSD licenses are amongst those that allow private commercial use of “free” code. In other words a philosiphy of “Here you go. I’ve developed this code for public use but feel free to use it as you like, I won’t try to control you.”
It’s my business if I make a decision to give sometihng away for free, why should I tell people what they can do with what I’m giving away?
For the good of the “community”? Bah! Nonsense! A community is made of a group of individuals and it is those individuals who must take care of themselves and not burden the “community” by imposition of their own wills on others.
I love linux, please don’t misread or misunderstand, I think it’s fantastic. There is a lot of great OSS out there as well, just look at the success of Apache, Mozilla, etc.
The moral of the story? Give your code away if you like, but allow developers to use it how they wish, after all, you wrote it and gave it away.
I may be mistaken but I believe this is how the BSD license works, which is why Microsoft was allowed to use portions of it in their networking functionality for windows?
Think of the advancements in society along made by this. Think of the jobs it created, the new technologies it spurned (again creating more jobs), and so on and so forth.
This is the essence of the free market. I believe radical “free software” (GPL) stifles these possibilities.
Can political thought be applied to software like I’ve outlined? Yes, in many ways, if only abstract, I think so.
Then again, maybe my interperetation of all of these open source licenses is murky, if so, feel free to correct me.
Just my rant, enjoy! I expect a lot of really creative flames, fire away!!
I think it’s going a step further than that. Not only is the research being guarded as trade secret, it’s being made illegal to persue similar research on one’s own.
You can’t run away from politics. You can bury your head in the sand, but the will to obtain and wield power over others won’t go away regardless of how long you keep it there. Everything one does that effects other people is political. Politicians often make a mockery of themselves, but that is not to mean that politics are inherently bad.
Further, these problems aren’t purely political at all. There are real technical problems with the legality of the platform. They have to be addressed.
I, for one, will not stand by while corporations create thier artifical monopolies through laws to lock in ignorant consumers with propietary gimickry whilst denying myself the ability to use the platform of my choosing. Software should be just a tool, but the powers that be are forcing the issue.
“Open Source tends to be analogous to Marxist/socialist philosophy; one which usurps personal responsibility, private ownership, and profit by the fruits of your own labor. All in the name of the “greater good”. One major difference being that socialism prescribes a central governing body or single dictator to take posession and distribute property, so everyone gets what they need and nothing more.”
This is a false analogy. Nobody is calling for the government to take people’s property away. Quite to the contrary, Free Software empowers it’s users to take back control of thier property. It’s certianly not calling for the abolition of religion or many of the other questionable ideas of Marx. Free Software isn’t even about fairly distributing wealth. Free Software is about freedom, not economics.
I’ve seen people frequently equate FFS with communism in an attempt to villify it. It’s just ignorant, and a typical American response. McArthyism at it’s worst.
Before someones goes off on a tangent, McArthysim should read as McCarthyism.
“free market is the “invisible hand” that tends to solve problems naturally as opposed to the disasters and holocausts socialism has wrought all over the world throughout history (10+ million murdered in USSR, 30+ million murdered in China, etc.)”
Don’t even get me started on this one. Genocide is certainly not exclusive to socialism, nor a given side-effect. Worst of all, you haven’t even explained how free markets solve these issues, just stated that it “tends to”.
Free Software is about freedom at any cost. Marxism/Socialism/Communism is about equality at any cost. Very, very different objectives. Anyone comparing the two is scare-mongering.
IBM supports Java, not .NET. IBM has heavy investments in Java Technology.
Microsoft adds browser to OS for free – destroys competition = evil.
FSF- free browser – destroy commercial browses = good.
Microsoft adds media player to OS for free – destroys competition = evil.
FSF- free media player – destroy commercial media players = good.
Microsoft strongly competes against all competitors = very evil.
FSF strongly competes against Microsoft = very good.
FSF – destroy all commercial software and the jobs of hundreds of thousands of programers who except evil money for their programing skills = Sainthood.
Vincent Jenks wrote: Proprietary software, on the other hand follows a “capitalist” philosophy of private ownership and profit from your own labor. One that employs fully the right of copyright and a strict policy of “thou shalt not steal”. I might remind everyone that the founding fathers of the United States of America had a laissez-faire capitalist vision for America similar to this.
That is not true. At least some of the founding fathers had great doubt about “the monopolies”, i.e. copyright and patent rights. They certainly did not endorse them wholeheartedly as a matter of philosophy. For some details please refer to http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/23/23214/3438
These concerns have been expressed in the text of the U.S. constitution, which specifically restricts congress in that it can grant copyright and patent rights only subject to certain restrictions, namely that the rights must be limited in time, and the law must have a certain objective, namely “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”. I think it would be worthwhile to collect the necessary evidence to prove conclusively that allowing software patents has the opposite effect, and then challenge the constitutionality of software patents on these grounds.
craig wrote: FSF – destroy all commercial software and the jobs of hundreds of thousands of programers who except evil money for their programing skills.
This is a common mischaracterization of what the FSF and the GNU project stand for. It is in fact a FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) attack against Free Software, aimed at making programmers fearful of the Free Software revolution. The truth of the matter is that without Free Software, only the biggest companies are able to afford to get computer programs which are taylored specifically for their needs. With Free Software, employing one or more programmers to taylor existing Free Software to meet their needs exactly is within the reach of every company. This means more jobs for programmers, not less.
There will be some jobs lost at Sun and at Microsoft, but that will be more than compensated by the creation of many smaller software companies which focus on adapting/extending Free Software to meet specific user needs.
Well, if your going to play that card, BSD is communist/socialist, and the GPL is capitalist.
How?
Well, BSD dictates that the code is in the commons. It’s the communities. Everyone can use it, no one “owns” it. The GPL gives code only in that it requires the “payment” of all additions to the code be sent back to the codes owner as payment should you wish to distribute or sell the software.
As Linus pointed out when SCO made this same exact claim, monitary gains are not the only gains one can recieve.
Norbert wrote: “The truth of the matter is that without Free Software, only the biggest companies are able to afford to get computer programs which are taylored specifically for their needs. With Free Software, employing one or more programmers to taylor existing Free Software to meet their needs exactly is within the reach of every company. This means more jobs for programmers, not less.”
Exactly, and there’s more. Free interchange of software means free interchange of work, the one that wasn’t turned into money, but could have been. Meaning: people working in one country for free are evaporating economic value that emerges untaxed all over the world without governmental control. I don’t see how this is not related to politics, ethics or economy. It is a silent war, but silence is clearly not on my side.
Yes, I am a citizen of the world and I want my work to be free.
Regards,
Karel Miklav
But de Icaza said he was kicked out of the FSF for not strictly adhering to its policy of referring to the Linux operating system as GNU/Linux and ensuring that it was always referenced as such in the press or in any interviews that he gave.
Man, this is pathetic. This dispells any doubt that RMS has lost any shred of rationality he may have had in the past.
Thank Zod ESR split the open-source “movement” (in quotes, because I think the word is a tad too strong) away from RMS’ zealotry. ESR was right–it was only after people started “selling” F/OSS based on something other than pure idealism that OSS started to become respectable.
“Yes, I am a citizen of the world and I want my work to be free.”
Go for it dude – but don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back.
“free market is the “invisible hand” that tends to solve problems naturally as opposed to the disasters and holocausts socialism has wrought all over the world throughout history (10+ million murdered in USSR, 30+ million murdered in China, etc.)”
So it was those socialist bastards that killed the Indians, the Inka and the Aztecs and thusly wiped out cultures that half of Europe could not match with? I always knew it!
Supporting Stallman and Free Software is akin to murder!! They want to wreak genocide on the valuable IP of fine businessmen like Darl McBride!
How dare they!!!
On a (untypically) serious note: that went too far. Blaming your idea of “socialism” for murder is overly short-sighted. Blaming human greed, bigotry and hatred would be the reasonable thing to do.
What I generally have a problem with is quotes like that:
For the good of the “community”? Bah! Nonsense! A community is made of a group of individuals and it is those individuals who must take care of themselves and not burden the “community” by imposition of their own wills on others.
That is – in my humble opinion – a very bad worldview, one that sacrifices everything for the sake of money, money and more money. It screams “Do not care about others, only care about yourself. If you rely on others, you are weak. Exploit them!” and I hate it. I really do. I hate what this world is turning into and I applaud RMS and his FSF for their effort to make it a better place, no matter how illogical they sometimes act. I’m not sure about this case, though, as it has already been pointed out that the blame could rest on De Icaza and not RMS. But I do not know about this, so I have to look at this horrible flamefest and wonder why someone who wants to preserve or recreate the free flow of information that existed in his time – before it was corrupted into “me, me, me”-thinking – is inevitably flamed by so many as soon as his name comes up. Not even Bill Gates gets flamed this much. Why is that so?
The article said: But de Icaza said he was kicked out of the FSF for not strictly adhering to its policy of referring to the Linux operating system as GNU/Linux and ensuring that it was always referenced as such in the press or in any interviews that he gave.
QV commented: Man, this is pathetic. This dispells any doubt that RMS has lost any shred of rationality he may have had in the past.
Of course that is the conclusion that de Icaza wants people to draw. However, de Icaza has such track record of stretching the truth that you shouldn’t simply believe him. As far as I know, no details of his being “kicked out” of the FSF are part of the public record. However, there is plenty of proof in the public record that de Icaza was not willing to support the goals of the FSF. Giving credit to GNU where appropriate is just a small, relatively insignificant aspect of this, he’s been just as unwilling to support the FSF’s goals in the more important areas. Hence it was clearly inappropriate for him to be/remain a board member of the FSF. If he wants to say “Linux” instead of “GNU/Linux” because he doesn’t want to give credit to the GNU project, that’s his decision, as he is not under any legal obligation to give credit (the licenses used by the GNU project do not contain any form of “advertising clause”). If he doesn’t want to support the goals of the FSF, again that’s his choice. However, if you’re a board member of an organization and you realize that you don’t want to support the goals of that organisation you should resign – not wait until they kick you out and then whine about that!
I bet you’ve never been in a socialist country, so I’ll just not take your words seriously. Why don’t you read some Marx and Engels for start? They wrote some nice books about politics and economy.
The point of all this free software debate is: some people want to be able to think freely and share the products of their work (thinking) with others as they please. That implies: without giving a shit if someone else had same thoughts before or not. It’s simple, as in: I give you three goats and you give me a cow. The only looser here is the tax collector.
Now tell me this: why do you want to steal from me, while I’m exchanging thoughts with others? And in the name of who, there is no god?
Regards,
Karel Miklav
IBM supports Java, not .NET. IBM has heavy investments in Java Technology.
IBM supports whatever brings in money. We had the IBM services team come to our company, analyze all of our systems to come up with the best approach for implementing our hr/payroll application; and in the end they pointed us towards .NET. IBM supports Linux because it helps them sell their servers, but they also support Microsoft because it helps them sell their servers running Windows. They are a business, businesses make money.
> The GNU tools make up a huge part
> of the system, and the GNU team deserve credit.
Of course they deserve credit. But by that logic, distributions like SuSE and Mandrake would have to call their systems something like KDE/QT/XFree/GNU/Linux, because for a desktop system the layers on top of GNU are just as big and important as the kernel and the basic system libraries and tools.
“Why don’t you read some Marx and Engels for start? They wrote some nice books about politics and economy.”
Already been tried. They had to put barbed wire around the countries and put guns to people’s head to keep them in.
“…there is no god?”
Wrong again!
I wish that open source people exchanged ideas more and documented their systems, but free software has more to do with control over the technology than idea sharing.
Ideas don’t mean anything unless you have control because it’s the control that allows you to preserve your work. In other words, I could make an investment into .Net however Microsoft will change everything (in order to sell more junk) and my investment will be useless, because I have no control. Freedom (FSF) means having control, so that you are not forced into bondage.
Maybe eventually people who choose to be free will share their ideas and will further scientific progress and marginalize all of the commercialism. Marx made some observations, so did Webber, and capitalism is not an American ideology as far as I know, but it was scottish. Anyway, the bottom line is that if you are not rich than you are obviously not winning, if you admire capitalism! Just maybe you should kick yourself in the ass.
Well, BSD dictates that the code is in the commons. It’s the communities. Everyone can use it, no one “owns” it. The GPL gives code only in that it requires the “payment” of all additions to the code be sent back to the codes owner as payment should you wish to distribute or sell the software.
If you’re going to liken social structures to software, the GPL is more socialist than the BSD liscense. If I were to use the Soviet model, farmers had their farms taken by the government and they were pooled for the overall “good of the nation”. The requirement of code to be sent back is the same idea. Although people aren’t being killed over software, so that’s a stretch.
I might be off base, but I see the BSD liscense as basically, ‘do whatever you want, we don’t care’. That’s pretty anti social if you ask me(and therefore, not socialist). The BSDs are less about creating a community, more about making software, which ironically creates community anyway.
The GPL doesn’t work in a manufacturing factory setting (commercial software) because you have to make the source code accessible. End of story.
The GPL system is decentralized and localized so that small business can work profitably, however the key is that the devlopers must have knowedge of system implementation. They have to be able to generalize, this is not an assembly line like commercial software development.
….so you need a small team of people with a wider skill set. Think of the starship Enterprise, you had an engineer (scotty) a captain, a doctor, a science guy with pointed ears. You need a team that knows the whole system, and than you have it made.
More than that, the “taken by the government” part isn’t valid in any way whatsoever. Vendors who don’t want to disclose their code are free to simply not incorporate any GPLed code into their own works and release what they wrote themselves under a license that’s more to their liking.
“ “Why don’t you read some Marx and Engels for start? They wrote some nice books about politics and economy.”
Already been tried. They had to put barbed wire around the countries and put guns to people’s head to keep them in. “
Marx and Engels? They never ruled a country.
I did not read their books, but I seriously doubt that they had the idea to subjugate people by means of barbed wire and guns. And please be aware that Marx and Engels very well knew that their ideas had problems as well.
The GPL gives code only in that it requires the “payment” of all additions to the code be sent back to the codes owner as payment should you wish to distribute or sell the software.
No, the GPL doesn’t require that. What it requires is that you make the source code available to whoever you sell or give your modified program to.
> The GNU tools make up a huge part
> of the system, and the GNU team deserve credit.
Of course they deserve credit. But by that logic, distributions like SuSE and Mandrake would have to call their systems something like KDE/QT/XFree/GNU/Linux, because for a desktop system the layers on top of GNU are just as big and important as the kernel and the basic system libraries and tools.
The FSF project to build a Unix-compatible system is called GNU. Stallman is being gracious by using the name “GNU/Linux” instead of insisting it be referred to simply as “GNU”. People who call the whole thing “Linux” are just being discourteous. Sorry, but they are.
RMS & Co. spent many years developing GNU — the grungy parts of GNU that not a lot of folks want to work on. The tedious boiler-room parts like bash, gcc, gdb, and glibc. Linus & Co. came along, supplied this one sexy part (Linux) which brought a lot of new popularity to GNU — but then they went ahead and happily let everyone call GNU “Linux”. *That’s* rude. It’s implicitly taking credit for all the GNU contributors’ work.
When you add an X11 implementation to GNU/Linux and also stuff like KDE, it’s no longer just GNU, and companies like SuSE should just call their product something like “SuSE” and then say, “made from GNU, Linux 2.6, X11.org, KDE,..”.
Anon wrote:
The GPL doesn’t work in a manufacturing factory setting (commercial software) because you have to make the source code accessible. End of story.
No. You only have to make the source code accessible if you redistribute the software.
Stallman is being gracious by using the name “GNU/Linux” instead of insisting it be referred to simply as “GNU”.
Come on! Stallman can’t “insist” on anything. If Stallman stuck to his ideals then he wouldn’t care if a Linux system was called Mud.
It’s ironic that Stallman insists on calling Linux GNU/Linux, but throws a fit when the XFree86 guys want a little recognition of their own. Hypocrisy at its best.
—The FSF project to build a Unix-compatible system is called GNU. Stallman is being gracious by using the name “GNU/Linux” instead of insisting it be referred to simply as “GNU”. People who call the whole thing “Linux” are just being discourteous. Sorry, but they are.—
You are rude – not giving any credit to the originators of the OS.
Should be ATT/Bell/Thompson/Unix/GNU/Linux
I prefer Java. We have our own crazy soap-operas. Yes, I admit Stallman, Icaza and company are more fun than Gosling and a slew of Sun executives, but that’s a price I gladly pay.
try reading about it for yourself, at least before forming an opinion. socialism is not inhearently evil, any more then capitalism. america has been flooded with propaganda about those evil commies for years now.
if we are going to judge socialism by russia, then lets judge democracy by america.
democracy is a system where the people basically rule themselves through elected representitves of their ideals, morals and ethics. safeguards are built in so if a governament does things that it shouldnt in the view of the majority of the population, the power is there to remove them from their position of power.
during the clinton era, who do you think was the largest recipient of US arms? it was turkey, who used those weapons to carry out a genocide of the kurds. ok, so how many of you americans voted on that? how many of you even know about it? the evil saddam and osama bin laden are two men _created_ by the american governament. america has a long history of setting up oppressive regimes if it makes more economic or military sense. can any of you tell me why you are allied with the saudis or the colombians, both of which are huge human rights violaters?
by the logic of democracy, anyone who doesnt stand against actions they dont believe are right which are carried out by their governament are personally responsable for those actions. you have the power to govern yourself, if you dont exorcise that power then whatever consiquences that occur are on your head. what was the voter turn out in america again?
now, all that being said, i like americans. the people, not the governament. the very fact that i make that distinction means you do not live in a functioning democratic society. america operates under the name of democracy, yet supports, and at times even carries out attrocities, and hides them from the population. this means that you are a democratic country like russia was a communist country. the system of governament becomes a form of control, that allows a few men the power of a nation, to do with as they will.
just because democracy didnt work in america doesnt mean its evil or wrong, just like the fact that communism didnt work out in russia doesnt mean its evil or wrong. any system is subject to corruption, some more then others.
anyways, sorry for the long and slightly off topic rant
Why can’t F/OSS develop it’s own parallel framework? I mean, free software could be developed to this free/open framework and we would use Mono/pnet/whatever only for compatibility necessities.
Wouldn’t it solve these problems?
(sorry, for my english mistakes)
I tried to keep my comments simple but that may have muddied the waters even further.
The US has also embraced socialism wholeheartedly. If you are a law-abiding citizen of the USA you are a practicing communist.
Every jot and tittle of American life is under regulatory control of the state, period.
Sure, you’re allowed to make low-level decisions in life but anything that involves anything of any significant importance, Americans are simply not allowed to live.
The state can take away your life, your liberty, and your pursuit of happiness at any time, therefore the US Constitution no longer carries any value other than nostalgia.
Every transaction you make, every federal reserve note you earn, and everything you purchase is taxed and spent by the state.
Our homes, our cars, and in some cases everything we posess is owned by a bank or financier of some persuasion.
The US has gone from the world’s greatest creditor nation to the worlds biggest debtor in less than 100 years.
So, when it might seem that I’m defending “American values” and pitting them against socialism or open source verbally, that is not the case.
Call it what you like, when the state is centralized and in control (i.e. economically) it is the subjegated masses that will be exploited, repressed, and in many cases destroyed.
This is often called Communism, Socialism, Marxism, Fascism, Caesarism, Totalitarianism, etc., etc., etc. They are all essentially the same principles wrapped up in various forms of rhetoric and ideological semantics – central control.
This is what I’d like to *all* software (and civilization) always avoid – centralized control. Assuming someone like Richard Stallman is an “enlightened despot” whom is to be the shephard of all software, once “proprietary software is eliminated” is ignorant, blind, and dangerous. I’ve seen some posts here and elsewhere on the ‘net that call for such a scenario. Whether it be software or the resources/economy of a nation, it should never be centralized. If we are to learn anything from history, at least let it be that much.
I see no less freedom in proprietary code than in an open source license that restricts its use once it is given away to the public.
For the fellow who made the comment that “democracy didn’t work in America” lets just set the record straight. The US was never meant to be a “democracy”, democracy is a miserable failure. The US was founded as a Constitutional Republic.
I like the cliche I’ve been hearing for years:
“A democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s on the dinner menu. A Contitutional republic is two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s on the dinner menu, with a document stating that sheep is not on the menu.”
In other words, majority rule is as dangerous as any dictatorship due to the fallen nature of man. Man’s fallen nature, of course, is the root of all evil.
If you’re going to liken social structures to software, the GPL is more socialist than the BSD liscense. If I were to use the Soviet model, farmers had their farms taken by the government and they were pooled for the overall “good of the nation”. The requirement of code to be sent back is the same idea. Although people aren’t being killed over software, so that’s a stretch.
We’re not likening social structures. We’re likening economic structures. Or rather, I was trying to point out how silly it is to try to, and that it’s completely subjective. But, since we’re going to continue down this path…
The Soviet model was a broken communist system, not socialist. They have a word for that, I believe they call it “dictatorship.” But we’ll ignore this for a moment. You claim code “must” be sent back at all times, always, but this is wrong. The GPL dictates that to use code someone else has wrote under it, you must recontribute your code if you wish to distribute it in any form. This is akin to buying a Windows license or a license for some code library, you have to pay a price (your code) to recieve a enrichment (the ability to use the code you wish to access).
By contrast, the BSD requires nothing. It merely says ‘ok, here is some code, do whatever, we don’t care.’ Since we’re streching and saying software licenses are somehow analogs of economic systems, the BSD fits in most with communism: code is available for the “common good,” with monied corperations taking the place of the “state.” The coders code solely for the enrichment of a corperate entity who will come, at some point, and make use of the “peoples'” code. The original author has no control, and is entitled to no compensation for their work.
So, we’re left with one license that gives the coder payment for their code, and one that takes it and places it in the “commons.” So tell me, which is closer to the concept of a communist state?
well said V. Jenks
Awesome article Jenks! Also i believe that what you said have a common ground with what Matt said. Matt said some details (with some cospiracy flavor, which is btw true) but Jenks article was more abstract!
We all seem able to agree to disagree.
heh, very, very good rant. i know america isnt a “true” democracy (like israel for example), but it isnt a true republic either, and the general public are used to hearing about america being it being the bastion of weastern democracy, so i just used that word.
i disagree with you that state control is inherantly evil, and socialism/marxism/totalitarianism, etc are all also very different things.
ok, so first off, you say stallman is an enlightened dictator. tell me, what is wrong with that? a benevolant dictator is someone who rules with absolute authority, yet doesnt abuse his power, and makes descisions for the good of the nation. fact of the matter is, sometimes an unpopular descision (i.e. raising taxes) is what is in the nations best interest. in a democracy, or a republic, the governament has to be very, very wary of such descisions, as it could cost them their job. a dictator is safe to do whatever he wants.
about the wonders of state control. all governaments are basically systems of power. hierarchys of control. some are blatent, some are subtle. some forms are more dramatic then others, but it all amounts to the same thing. james madison (the creator of democracy) once wrote “The purpose of of governament is to protect the minority of the opulant from the majority”. now, to put it a bit more in context, his view was basically the rich and powerful dont have to learn practical skills or spend effort on survival, which makes them ideal guides for the lower people, sort of benevolent philosopher princes who basically are there to protect the people from their own ignorance. this was a popular view at the time, as britain was just coming out of feudalism, but its almost shocking to see how a system that seems free is actually just a more subtle form of control. madison believed in using propaganda, not force, as coercien to get the people to do what the governament wanted. (anyone who wants an example of this, look at american entertainment. the “bad guy” in all american shows/movies went from germans, to russians, to arabs, pretty much coenciding with whoever america was fighting at the time) they dont come to your door and force you to fight at gunpoint. they just leverage racism and bigotry to make you believe that your country is dealing with an unspeakable evil, and its your sacred patriotic duty to help defeat them.
all governaments are systems of control. all governaments are ways to elevate a few above many. the differences are in how they do it, and how succeptable that system is to corruption.
/me gets down off his soapbox
Give the GNU Project a fair chance and read about many of the accusation made in this comments on their homepage.
Why GNU/Linux
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#why
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html
About selling free Software
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
The page that link to these articles
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/philosophy.html