Weekly Edition
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Quotes of the week
I'm significantly happier with the ideas in PEP 3150 now that I've
reframed them in my own head as: "You know that magic fairy dust we
already use inside the interpreter to support out of order
execution for decorators, comprehensions and generator expressions?
Let's give that a syntax and let people create their own
declarative APIs"
-- Nick Coghlan
The FSF would welcome a legal requirement to make all software free
but does not advocate one now. It would be too drastic a change
for the current situation.
-- Richard Stallman
I'm not advocating breaking other apps for "no good reason", but
moving faster and making bigger strides in Gecko and Firefox
development is "good reason". These are the big levers the Mozilla
project has in advancing the Mozilla Mission. They will become less
effective over time if we do not move faster and smarter with both
of them.
-- Asa Dotzler(Log in to post comments)
Stallman's quote Posted Oct 27, 2011 19:52 UTC (Thu) by runciter (guest, #75370) [Link]
Stallman's quote is interesting in that he is often painted as wanting to strictly impose the free software ideology on others; in messages such as the one quoted, he comes across as nothing of the sort. He is not imposing and shows a pragmatic side to his character.
Stallman's quote Posted Oct 27, 2011 20:02 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
I read it as exactly the opposite, the fact that he would welcome a law forbidding proprietary software shows exactly how extreme he is.
Stallman's quote Posted Oct 28, 2011 17:34 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
If a law were passed it would mean society agreed on it. The quote appears to be welcoming of the idea of society getting to such a state, but recognising that it is still far away from it. It seems very pragmatic and non-extreme to me.
Stallman's quote Posted Oct 28, 2011 20:51 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
> If a law were passed it would mean society agreed on it. The quote appears to be welcoming of the idea of society getting to such a state, but recognising that it is still far away from it. It seems very pragmatic and non-extreme to me.
um, no. just because a law is passed, it does not mean society has agreed to this.
google for prohibition for an extreme case of this.
Stallman's quote Posted Oct 30, 2011 17:52 UTC (Sun) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]
I guess it depends on to what extent the people who create the laws represent the society the laws cover. This varies wildly across the world. Also, the relationship been the existence of a law and its enforcement is wildly variable.
Stallman's quote Posted Dec 6, 2011 9:30 UTC (Tue) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]
What I want isn't a law forcing freedomware, but simply a law with the commonsense meeting-of-the-minds requirement that in ordered for a waiver of damages, etc, to be considered legally valid, the sources must be available to the user to examine and decide for themselves about, or have someone they trust examine if they don't feel upto it themselves, free of any NDA or other such restrictions.
The software would still be protected by standard copyright, regardless, so that shouldn't be a worry. And authors who felt the need could keep their code secret; they just couldn't demand that the user waive damage rights if it did something the author didn't disclose upfront.
That (and abolishing software patents, etc), would reasonably effectively take care of the problem, since freedomware authors would have nothing to fear since they're disclosing their code, while the closed source author's insurance costs would drive prices for closed source that very possibly drive them out of the market, since their legal costs would very likely skyrocket, so the insurance rates to cover it would likewise skyrocket, so the price of the software would skyrocket as well.
But, as I said, it's simply the result of taking the very basic concept of a requirement of a fair meeting of the minds for the purposes of risk agreement and waivers to its most sensible logical conclusion. If an author wished to continue doing closed source on that rather more level playing field, they'd certainly be welcome to do so.
Duncan
Stallman's quote Posted Dec 6, 2011 23:27 UTC (Tue) by DOT (subscriber, #58786) [Link]
If being happy when the law agrees with your vision makes you extreme, I have a bunch of extreme black people, women, gay people for you to meet.
He's not advocating such a law. He would just be happy if there were one. He's a fundamentalist. He has one value (user freedom) and does not care about other things, like economy. There is a lot going against mandatory free software, but it would definitely increase user freedom.
Imagine if all closed source software were forced to open source. Wouldn't you secretly be jumping at the chance to study and integrate all that software into your favorite distribution? LibreOffice would have perfect compatibility. Hell, Microsoft Office would run on Linux in a week. Wine would be perfect. BluRay's would play on Linux. For every game there would be a port to Linux. Yes, I would be happy.
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