The reasons for GNU's care with gcc licence [LWN.net]

The reasons for GNU's care with gcc licence

Posted Oct 26, 2009 16:32 UTC (Mon) by Doogie (guest, #59626) [Link]

Open source usually wins

Not really. In terms of overall market share, very few software categories are dominated by Open Source software. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Apache's dominance of the HTTP serving market. In operating systems, the best Open Source can muster is a distant third to Windows and OS X on the desktop (although I seem to recall Linux does better on servers). The GIMP loses against Photoshop. OpenOffice loses against Microsoft Office. etc.

Don't get me wrong, I use and love Open Source, but lets not kid ourselves as to market share. Open Source makes for a useful base for companies like Apple to build high quality and popular closed source products upon, but Open Source is still a fairly small niche when it comes to interacting directly with end users.

The reasons for GNU's care with gcc licence

Posted Oct 26, 2009 17:28 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Linux and open source is much more popular then you think.

People get too caught up with what is being used on the desktop and such.
(And even then I believe that Linux is used much more often then OS X on
desktops and workstations. There are 3 types of lies; lies, damned lies,
and statistics)

But people have to realize that the vast majority of all software is
developed for specific purposes for specific orginization. It is very rare
that you have shrink-wrapped software like Photoshop being used.. they are
the exceptions nowadays and not the rule. That is why OSS has a significant
advantage because it is much easier and cheaper to take existing software
hire a developer to work on it and make it work for you then it is it buy
off the shelf proprietary product and hire the original developers to
support you with customizations.

Also the other thing to keep in mind is that computers is much more then
just desktops.

For example with the open source'ng of Symbian combined with Linux the
majority of the world's smartphones run open source software. If your
comparing that to something like the iphone then OSS is more popular 4:1.
Even if you just take Linux by itself and look at things world-wide the
number of Linux-based smartphones being sold exceeds the number of iPhones
and WinMo.

And you pointed out servers; Linux is now much more widely deployed then
any Unix system, even though Unix systems are more "high end" and rake in a
lot more bucks per deployment. Linux and open source software dominates
markets like High Performance Computer and such... I know for a fact that
even the software used in human genome processing is dominated by open
source software like the "R" language.

I think it has gotten to the point now that more and more times customers
simply expect access to source code. Eventually it will get to the point
were people who are serious about software development are just going to
assume that source code comes with the products they are working on and
proprietary folks are start going to have to answer hard questions about
why they are so difficult to work with.

The reasons for GNU's care with gcc licence

Posted Oct 26, 2009 20:11 UTC (Mon) by Trelane (guest, #56877) [Link]

"In operating systems, the best Open Source can muster is a distant third to Windows and OS X on the desktop"

http://www.osnews.com/story/21035/Ballmer_Linux_Bigger_Co...

The reasons for GNU's care with gcc licence

Posted Oct 26, 2009 22:01 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

> If a closed source software is better than an open source one,
> most people will choose the closed one and so they should!

This assumes we should value freedom at zero. I don't. When I evaluate two programs, I place a high value on freedom.

Without freedom, the free software development model stops. That's bad.

The reason people like this operating system is that it does what the users want. It's not a vehicle for ads or DRM or lock-in or for being annoyed into buying an upgrade. It does what users want because at the end of the day, because everyone's been given freedom, the users have a lot of control over the direction the software develops in.

So I'll take a slower free version over a binary blob any day.

The reasons for GNU's care with gcc licence

Posted Oct 27, 2009 9:42 UTC (Tue) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]

>> If a closed source software is better than an open source one,
>> most people will choose the closed one and so they should!

>This assumes we should value freedom at zero. I don't.

I would still go with this, but I wouldn't just include performance in the equation. I would also include trustworthyness of the software (it is possible to get a good idea of how trustworthy proprietary software is, just as virus and trojan detection is possible), price of course and trustworthyness of the authors. Free software has an inherent advantage on all of these points, but sometimes it still falls behind overall.

Of course I don't value freedom at zero either, but software freedom is not at the top of my scale of priorities either, when there are so much more important freedoms in the world which are trampled upon daily - I find it hard to consider my minor freedoms more important than other peoples basic human rights.

The reasons for GNU's care with gcc licence

Posted Oct 27, 2009 15:26 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

Your software freedom does not come at the cost of anyone's human rights, so the two don't affect each other.

And it's worth keeping in mind that free software developed in rich countries is available for people all over the world.

Who's working on software for free communication in oppressive countries? I think all of the big projects are free software. Who's putting blogging systems, news site systems, webservers, and operating systems in the hands of the people in countries without freedom of the press?

When you demand (software) freedom for yourself, you empower less-well-off people just as a by-product, so I hope people do demand freedom.

The reasons for GNU's care with gcc licence

Posted Oct 27, 2009 16:00 UTC (Tue) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]

Of course. But I do think that one should get the priorities right. I suspect that fairer trade would do more good for those people born in the wrong place and time than software freedom, and it makes me a bit sad when I see so much lobbying effort being put into the one which could (also) have been put into the other.

The reasons for GNU's care with gcc licence

Posted Oct 27, 2009 18:33 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

That's debatable. I'm a full-time software freedom lobbyist and have been for 6 years. If I wasn't lobbying for software freedom, would I be lobbying for something that more directly helps the world's poor?

I don't know.

The reasons for GNU's care with gcc licence

Posted Oct 27, 2009 19:22 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

Before getting into lobbying, I was a programmer - I loved programming and it kept me happily employed. If the issues of freedom and the need for lobbyists didn't present itself, I probably would have stayed a programmer.

So rather than being a member of the lobbyist community that's being diverted from one good cause to another, I think I'm a member of the software community, diverted from one department to another.

I'm only one example, but it makes the point that I don't think we can assume that having lobbyists for software freedom is detracting from other areas.

The reasons for GNU's care with gcc licence

Posted Oct 27, 2009 19:34 UTC (Tue) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]

Fair enough. And I suppose that lobbying on one count doesn't stop someone lobbying on the other either if they feel that interest.