We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible

– We collaborate inside proprietary environments<p>Why is that? Why have users chosen those environments? <i>Assume they are rational beings, and get at the heart of it.</i> Ask: &quot;How can we address the actual user needs while supporting our goals?&quot;<p>– Many Linux and FOSS geeks today use Linux only professionally<p>Same answer as above.<p>– We&#x27;re not modeling our values<p>WHY? (Hint: &quot;the use of nonfree&quot; is not, and has never been a primary human motivator <i>even for many people who &quot;get it&quot;</i>.)<p>etctera.<p>Finally, regarding the below... only one of these, the first, even tangentially touches on <i>the user experience</i>. There&#x27;s an implied expectation of so much FOSS advocacy which reduces to &quot;by <i>writing and using</i> our software, you will be wearing a hairshirt for the cause&quot;. This mindset is guaranteed to fail in front of users, who are by and large &quot;non-believers&quot;.<p><pre><code> &quot;Having real-time chat is absolutely essential to the advancement of free software.&quot; &quot;We&#x27;re the resistance now.&quot; &quot;We need to create mass movement.&quot; &quot;Volunteer to write free and open code, to participate in communities.&quot; &quot;If you didn&#x27;t live the history, learn from those who did.&quot; &quot;If you did learn from history, teach those who need to know it. Respectfully.&quot; &quot;Be patient. Remember that the tortoise won not only because it was patient, but because it ignored insult, ridicule and dismissal.&quot; &quot;Model your values. Use free software and hardware.&quot; &quot;Remember always how &#x27;the rights to copy, share, modify, redistribute and improve software&#x27; are fundamental rights that matter to people.&quot; &quot;Work to convince developers that their software freedom matters.&quot;</code></pre>

&gt; We collaborate inside proprietary environments, such as Slack and Google Hangouts. Most of the chat and messaging systems in use today are also proprietary and closed. So are most video-conferencing systems and the codecs they use.<p>This one in particular worries me. Having access mailing list conversations and IRC logs provides such a rich history of open source development. I worry about every open source project moving to github &#x2F; slack, where we may not have nearly as good a record of conversations that formed the software in 20 - 30 years.<p>On the other hand you won&#x27;t see any argument from me that these services provide an easier workflow than what existed before, and maybe that easier workflow opening development up to a wider community is more important.

So the initial letter hits upon something that the article itself ignores, namely that the FOSS community requires <i>more than just developers</i>. I see this attitude all the time in certain circles that only the developers contribute any value to a project, and prospective contributors should either learn to code or get f--ked. It&#x27;s not terribly welcoming to the larger community (of whom the majority are <i>not</i> developers), and the fact that many of these projects lack adequate documentation, wide availability, or a centralized support forum only reinforces that understanding.<p>It&#x27;s a problem that can be remedied, provided the projects stop pretending that the packagers, technical writers, GUI&#x2F;UX artists, and community managers are expendable.

Searls says that the fight for general purpose computing is the one most worth having: but I think he&#x27;s using a definition of &quot;general purpose computing&quot; that most non-developers won&#x27;t even understand, much less agree with.<p>The problem is that development is an extremely <i>special</i> purpose--one that most people don&#x27;t do and don&#x27;t understand the needs of. As a developer, I want a level of control over every aspect of my computer that most people don&#x27;t want, need, or even think of. To most people, &quot;general purpose computing&quot; just means their computer (or more likely their phone, these days) can run any app they want it to run. It doesn&#x27;t mean what Searls (and the people whose articles he references, like Doctorow) takes it to mean.<p>And to the ordinary person, the idea that it is essential to society that developers have the freedom to configure their computers however they want, regardless of what the government or some corporation says, doesn&#x27;t sound like something worth fighting for; it sounds like something scary. They don&#x27;t think of Stallman developing Gnu or Linus Torvalds developing Linux; they think of computer viruses and worms running rampant.

Its more abjectly a moral failing of society that institutions have not aligned to enable free software proliferation.<p>Software, and information in general, have been a prisoners dilemma for time immemorial. The optimization of utility is total freedom of information - but such a state of affairs means benefactors reap the labors of others and have no obligation to give anything in return.<p>Copyright was fabricated to solve 18th century problems with an 18th century bureaucratic solution. The whole free software movement in general emerged as a counterculture to how intensely harmful to society that policy influenced the natural state of affairs to become.<p>If anything, the fact free software enthusiasts have lost sight of what the ultimate goal has to be - the abolition of copyright and institution of basic standards of living for all citizens derived from the productive gains of the extraordinary multiplicative effects technology, itself derived substantially from free software, produces - is what really needs to shift. Anything less keeps the movement in an atrophying limbo where fresh minds join, put in their best effort, and fall out from the captured value innovation produces in our society.<p>We need to move towards a state of affairs where enthusiasts can produce freedom respecting code because they want to, that don&#x27;t go hungry or homeless for their efforts, and where all of society can reap the benefits of theirs (and billions others) generosity and compounding efficiency produced through technological innovation. And where everyone has access to the fruits of those labors regardless of means as a way to improve the collective knowledge of mankind for all the rest of us.<p>Just think for a moment of the bizarre world where the brightest need not toil to manipulate tired and depressed minds psychologically to siphon scarce money from them to line the pockets of robber barons masquerading as productive members of society, but instead could comfortably collaborate towards actually making the world a better place.

I still cannot believe that we live in a world were:<p>- A website with a silly name like &#x27;Facebook&#x27; is worth half a trillion dollars and is extremely profitable.<p>- A website with a silly name like &#x27;Twitter&#x27; which only lets you post 140 characters at a time is worth 30 billion dollars.<p>- An app with a silly name like &#x27;Snapchat&#x27; which loses billions of dollars per year is worth almost $15 billion.<p>- An international taxi service with a silly name like &#x27;Uber&#x27; which is losing billions of dollars per year is worth almost $100 billion.<p>- That software developers don&#x27;t see anything wrong with building apps on top of proprietary cloud APIs (e.g. Amazon Lambda) - The closest real-world analogy that I can think of is that it&#x27;s like building a house with your own bare hands for years and then, once you finally finish it, you start paying a corporation rent (at whatever rate they ask for) so that you can live in your own house! Meanwhile, the whole time, there was an even better plot of land right next door which was 100% free but you ignored it because the signposts on the corporate land were flashing with bright neon lights.<p>The economy makes so little sense that there is no incentive left to create value. The best you can do is just look for the next financial scheme to take advantage of. I bet it will be something completely random and useless.

A bug in GPL is that it allows SAAS Software as a service built on Open source software which means Software as a service can leech on open source software without contributing back.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;resources.whitesourcesoftware.com&#x2F;blog-whitesource&#x2F;the-saas-loophole-in-gpl-open-source-licenses" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;resources.whitesourcesoftware.com&#x2F;blog-whitesource&#x2F;t...</a><p>Using AGPL instead of GPL closes the Saas loop hole.<p>Also due to close to zero bank interest rates the general availability of venture capital is to some extent stopping new open source software. Instead of giving away your software for free as Open source software you start a venture capital funded Software as a service instead.

I love the way commenters here equate FLOSS development with unpaid hobbyist developers.<p>Fact: most of the contributors to the Linux kernel are highly-paid professionals who do that work full time.<p>The same goes for many, if not most, of the popular and successful FLOSS projects.<p>It is an error to assume that free (as in speech) software is only made by free (as in beer) development.

Here&#x27;s a thought - can we trace this back to the point at which everyone moved from Slashdot to Hacker News? All of a sudden the dominant social incentive changed from open software to startups and profit.

Most people engage with FOSS for practical reasons, not ideological reasons. Given that developers of proprietary software have made a lot more money on the whole than developers of FOSS, I don&#x27;t see that changing anytime soon.

What made Linux and FOSS possible is a specific time and context and that is not happening again. There is no job security, everything is about building a resume, getting a job and hanging on or a startup, everything is related to money or status.<p>There is also an ahistorical perspective of tech, as if things just are or happen with no deliberate effort and its an open question whether there is any real commitment or concern for the principles which drove the open source movement.<p>In many ways Slashdot defined the original generation and Hackernews defines this one. And even paying lip service to principles would be quaint here. Defending building surveillance systems and stalking people 24&#x2F;7 while referring to general users as idiots are often the top voted comments. This is a huge shift.

Sure, we need naive wish lists, but for open source to be more than a curios historical blip and not fall into a Venezuelan disaster, the least we can demand of FSF and OSI is to give us a proper open source license so those who want to _do_ open source work can also succeed commercially. They need to understand and address problems faced by MongoDB, Redis, Elastic et. al. and support their needs with a new license (something better than AGPL). Not flat out dismiss the problems and swipe it under the rug.

Yeah, I&#x27;m often puzzled by some FOSS developers not using open communication tools and not running Linux on their actual day to day work computers.

We also need to donate more to FOSS. And find more ways to monetize FOSS. It&#x27;s tough for many FOSS projects to succeed on a volunteer basis.

The opinions in this article are simply fear-mongering and divisive of the programmer community as whole.<p>They are formulated on an irrational fear of FOSS being extinguished by the greed of the corporations.<p>So long as there is at least one programmer left with the will to post their source to the world FOSS will not die.<p>Let&#x27;s also not be so one-eyed as forget to value equally the contribution of all programmers who write great software whether free or not, open or closed-source - we can still admire the fruits of their labours if not their algorithms.<p>FOSS community, please stop wringing your hands in fear, go write some code with them!

This! Like much else, these kind of movements (FOSS etc.) depends on having good “institutions” that work. In this case e.g. the documentation project and similar. They are fundamental building blocks ...

I don&#x27;t think the problem is that FOSS (as a movement) can&#x27;t accomplish what proprietary software does. For a while, some FOSS software did address certain user needs better than proprietary software.<p>But the world of proprietary software (including permissively licensed open source software) just moved faster, because its associated business models gave it the money, incentives, and the early signals needed to attack problem spaces in human-computer-interaction and secure, managed application platforms, among other things, that FOSS didn&#x27;t have the resources to address, and so it just fell behind in key areas relevant to users.<p>We just don&#x27;t know what the FOSS movement could have achieved given similar resources (or how it would have gotten those resources in the first place without a business model), or a lot more time.

I have several things to say here.<p>I see we are still debating the same points as many years ago (GIMP vs Photoshop, Visual Studio, paid vs unpaid labor, chicken and egg, convenience...). It’s like we haven’t learned anything.<p>About the end of general computing, I don’t see it as a bad thing. In some way it has always existed. Right now we have server computers, desktop computers, smart phones, mainframe, cloud... even on a single class of computer we have some segmentation. It just means we’ll have even more specialization. And FOSS still can have a place there.<p>Speaking about that, I believe FOSS is stronger at the foundational layers.<p>Maybe the future is kind of and hybrid model in which we have lots of new computer classes with FOSS as their foundation. Not very different from what we have now, just much more diverse and, I hope, more open.

There&#x27;s a great deal of irony in a publication promoting FOSS, but their own website is closed source.

Convenience seems to be the only value of things in the real world, so bad even that people en masse are prepared to submit to slavery to get it.<p>I suggest that the FOSS community now finally starts building something convenient for themselfs instead of making things hard and massochist.

Bit of hypocrisy on the part of the author for publishing on this platform....<p>The comment section of this article: &quot;Our discussions are powered by Disqus, which require JavaScript. &quot;

Wonder how many free software would be in china inside e-great wall?<p>What wonder what we use if majority of computer is intel based and they have a parallel computer controlled your cpu?<p>Strangely arm is sort of open what can you pay to develop your own total open env and ...<p>Any further, wonder what is open source movement is all about if not asking for a mixed environment ? It is the dying middle that might be the problem or is there no problem. Wonder.

Linux was built in an era of fierce resistance from the corporate world, so what is there to save today when everything runs or touches OSS in one way or another and most decent developers will make an OSS contribution, to claim on their CVs?

Don&#x27;t listen to the Copyleftists. FOSS is bigger than ever because <i>non-copyleft</i> free software is what professionals can build on.<p>For the most part, Copyleftists are stuck in Hobbyland and it really shows when you look at the software they produce. Their business models - if they even have one - largely don&#x27;t work. Given that software is very expensive to produce, copyleft software eventually runs out of suckers to support it after the &quot;fun factor&quot; wears off and the &quot;real work&quot; starts.<p>The Linux kernel is the major exception, but only because the particular exceptions that the GPL grants to it do not encumber the enterprises that develop Linux. Wherever it does, enterprises will choose non-copyleft alternatives (e.g. Sony and Nintendo building on FreeBSD).

&gt; <i>Our discussions are powered by Disqus</i><p>Abandon all hope.

That&#x27;s what happens when you are bogged down in Donglegate-like discussions.

People choose proprietary software because proprietary software doesn&#x27;t make you memorize and type things like &quot;systemctl suspend&quot; for the most basic of tasks such as putting your computer to sleep.<p>They don&#x27;t want to find, audit, install, and evaluate dozens of obscure third-party extensions to make their OS usable.<p>They want options for setting their background image besides Fit to screen.<p>And they want to be able to use their friend&#x27;s computer without having to learn how to use all their friend&#x27;s customizations.

I am generally a fan of Linux and FOSS on my personal gear. However, I&#x27;m still not sure where this article is coming from, or who it addresses.<p>The author seems to be mixing the use of FOSS in the professional world with the use of FOSS in their personal world.<p>In a professional environment, there is no room for &quot;modeling your values&quot;. It sounds harsh, but that is the way it is. You use what works. Yes, Linux OSs do some things better than Windows OSs, and vice versa.