He has a valid point about restructuring the three freedoms that he did keep to make sense. However that 'zeroth freedom', which both the FSF and he initially forgot, is important as well.<p>"The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose"<p>This is about licences that restricted possible uses of software. Just as you are free to drive your vehicle anywhere * , and transport anything * while using it, so to should you be free to use software the same way.<p>( * the point is no artificial additional restrictions, not literally wildcard)<p>Multiple edits: I will never get used to the crazy custom syntax HN posts have. It isn't pure plain text (maybe with hyperlinks), a form of psudeocode tagging, or markdown like.
The author makes a serious mistake in calling Freedom 0 "just silly". He doesn't seem to <i>disagree</i> with Freedom 0, just considers it obvious and trivial ("I mean of course I can use the program as I wish").<p>An example demonstrating that this freedom is <i>not</i> obvious, even to people who believe in "free software" is the "Hacktivismo Enchanced-Source Software License Agreement" [0]. To quote from the FSF [1]:<p>> The Hacktivismo Enhanced-Source Software License Agreement (HESSLA) is a software source license that tries to put restrictions of ethical conduct on use and modification of the software. Because it restricts what jobs people can use the software for, and restricts in substantive ways what jobs modified versions of the program can do, it is not a free software license. The ironic result is that the community of people most likely to feel sympathy for the goals of the HESSLA cannot contribute to HESSLA-covered software without violating its principles.<p>> The restrictions in the HESSLA prohibit specific activities that are inexcusable: violations of human rights, and introduction of features that spy on the user. People might ask why we do not declare an exception for these particular restrictions—why do we stick to the general policy of rejecting all restrictions on use and on the functionality of modified versions?<p>> If we were ever going to make an exception to our principles of free software, here would be the place to do it. But it would be a mistake to do so: it would do harm to free software movement and would achieve nothing. Trying to stop those particular activities with a software license is either unnecessary or ineffective.<p>[0]: <a href="http://www.hacktivismo.com/about/hessla.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.hacktivismo.com/about/hessla.php</a><p>[1]: <a href="https://www.gnu.org/licenses/hessla.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.gnu.org/licenses/hessla.html</a>
I like free software just as much as the next guy and I don't find it appealing to remove a freedom just for the sake of a blog post.<p>I mean, why is it implicit that I can run a program but e.g. distributing it is not?<p>Next time I get some free AI software I will find that I don't actually have the freedom to put it in my car/tractor/vacuum/etc because software license says so, not to mention the hardware locks that I would have to overcome.<p>Edit:<p>Example: BMW decides to release their AI software driving their car under a "free software" license. In this hypothetical situation, Audi would not be allowed to use BMW' software because the license restricts this.
But now, because _using_ the software in any way you wish is no longer an explicit freedom, nobody could claim that BMW software is not __FREE__<p>I know of at least one GPL licensed project for audio editing and synthesis that has an explicit ban on using it in commercial applications.
Am I the only one sitting here, thinking that I value the 4 freedoms, but thinking that software vendors does not owe that to us in any way?<p>I use free software where it makes sense. I don't use it for my desktop, because it cannot do what I need it to do. I use it for my 3d printer because it can do what I need it to. I pay (at least indirectly through my MSDN subscription at my job) for Windows, and it it suddenly stops working that is it, and I'll have to figure out a different solution.<p>I don't like that the ECU of my car is closed down, but trade secrets an all, I can understand. I would love to be able to at least look, not necessarily modify the software, I'm not qualified to do that and I don't want to void my warrenty. But this is a trade secret, of course it is not open for anyone to look at.
The biggest exception for freedom 0 i've seen is the license on the original JSON implementation <a href="http://www.json.org/license.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.json.org/license.html</a>.<p>> The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.<p>The JSON license is not considered a free software license due to this violation of freedom 0(not to mention all the problems with definition including the fact that many things could rightly be considered neither in Good or Evil and the license actually explicitly says it must be used for Good).
Ok so this is the 'Information wants to be free' based list of freedoms. It's too narrow, only applying to OSS.<p>I think we need a list of rights that does more than cover the OSS-ness of our software.e.g<p>Privacy of personal information.<p>1. Use software without having to login to facebook or google to do it. e.g. Android apps.<p>2. Sign up using credentials (e.g. email or phone) that cannot be sold to other parties.<p>Copyright<p>3. Be able to sell software without it getting freely redistributed contrary to the license.<p>4. Be able to reverse engineer commercial software.<p>Open web<p>5. Discourage web pages that are only available through social networks, e.g. small businesses using facebook pages.<p>6. Somehow reduce peoples dependence on Facebook as their primary online news source.
I fully agree with most points made. But there are some caveats:<p>- there are quite a lot of commercial software packages around, which depend on constant paid programmers work to keep up to date. Without a guaranteed revenue stream, those would not exist.<p>- if people are free to modify all software, liability questions can arise. I am mostly thinking about any kind of firmware, like the one controlling cars or any other software which has the potential to create expensive if not disastrous accidents when malfunctioning.<p>There is some work needing to be done addressing those issues before we can have a completely free-software world (which I would like to have).
The best thing about this is it doesn't hector readers about features of their individual consumption or production (e.g., licenses). The call to action at the end instead is:<p>> The government can help us by making software companies distribute the source code. They can say it's "in the interest of national security". And they can sort out the patent system (there are various problems with how the patent system handles software which are out of the scope of this article). So when you chat to your MP please mention this.
"Also Freedom 0 is just silly I mean of course I can use the program as I wish."<p>Tell that to people spending time in jail for using a program in a way that was frowned upon by government. Clearly the author hasn't spent much time thinking about these topics.
<i>The freedom to study is normally taken away because the software vendor keeps the human-readable version of the code secret, only distributing the compiled program.</i><p>This is an argument which I think could go away if more people knew reverse-engineering, and decompiler technology has also been constantly improving in the meantime. The freedom to study and availability of source code are related but not entirely the same thing; regardless of legality, people have been studying and modifying software for <i>decades</i> without source code. One great example of this is in security research, where plenty of vulnerabilities are discovered without needing to obtain source. In fact I'd argue that sometimes it's better to not use the source, since it could be somewhat misleading --- whereas the binary, the actual instructions that execute, is <i>the truth</i>. Thus, one can have all those freedoms without having source code.<p><i>It was not possible for third-parties to provide security support, because Windows is proprietary software, lacking all of the freedoms.</i><p>Look at the various unofficial patches available. They might not be legal, but they are definitely possible and made without access to the original source code.<p>As the saying goes, "Source code? We don't need no stinkin' source code!" ;-)