Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Posted Sep 20, 2023 7:21 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)Parent article: Forty years of GNU
They can surely celebrate without taking credit for others' work, or minimising others' work.
"GNU is the only operating system developed specifically for the sake of users' freedom" — what about the BSDs, and various Linux distros?
"Usually combined with the kernel Linux, GNU forms the backbone of the Internet and powers millions of servers, desktops, and embedded computing devices" — this is what turns many people off GNU. A typical Linux distro has glibc and a bunch of GNU utilities, yes. But that doesn't constitute an operating system. Some Linux distros (eg Alpine) don't even use glibc or GNU coreutils (Alpine uses musl libc and busybox), and many use llvm instead of or in addition to gcc. And the majority of Linux-based systems out there are Android, which have zero or negligible GNU content.
GNU and RMS deserve credit for seeing what was possible, and developing gcc, glibc, and a bunch of utilities from scratch. But they have spent 30 out of the last 40 years trying to grab credit for Linux. Linus's very first release in 1991 may have depended heavily on GNU but GNU software's development for the last 30+ years has depended on and been driven by Linux and its community.
There is no GNU operating system. There never has been a GNU operating system. This GNU/Linux stuff just leaves a bad taste.
GNU is a valuable project but RMS and FSF have been reducing its value and relevance for decades now. The ongoing success of GCC, GNOME, etc is despite GNU, not because of it.
Numerous other GNU projects, which should have been important, have slid into near-irrelevance by this time: eg, Guile, GNUcash, GNU Scientific Library, arguably even emacs... how many new users does emacs pick up these days? GSL was likely doomed by its (ideological) choice of GPL rather than LGPL as licence, despite it being a library. GNUCash's quirks were documented by corbet recently here; one in particular, the "unfortunate" choice of Scheme as an extension language, again seems to come from GNU ideology and not the superiority of that language.
Posted Sep 20, 2023 9:00 UTC (Wed)
by vadim (subscriber, #35271)
[Link] (6 responses)
My understanding is that way back, GNU software was extremely relevant. It competed with what you'd get from a commercial Unix, and was free of charge, modifiable and much more functional than what you paid $$$ for. It wasn't just there, but was better in every significant respect. And when Linux showed up it was there to provide a good core.
Today things seem to have stagnated. Where's the GNU answer to PowerShell, or to VS Code? Why isn't GNU jumping on the "redo everything in Rust" bandwagon and producing their own, GPL licensed versions? Because it seems to me that other people are now doing this "redo this software better" thing GNU did back in the day, but mostly without the GPL. And GNU should find this a very concerning development.
Posted Sep 20, 2023 14:29 UTC (Wed)
by jzb (editor, #7867)
[Link] (4 responses)
Is a question that rarely has an answer, or at least one that will appeal to a larger audience. I have, somewhat uncharitably, described the FSF as "the Party of Gno" -- that is, if there's a type of computing or tool that doesn't have a free analog, don't do it. Maybe, someday, there will be a free version, maybe not. But if not, don't use a proprietary version in the meantime.
There's no urgency or feeling that the FSF/GNU needs to meet users where they are: Those users should just *not do* anything that isn't free software.
There's also a pretty big crossover, in my observation, is that folks who strongly identify with the FSF are usually fine if things don't "advance." They're not agitating for VS Code or PowerShell or whatever. GNU Emacs is enough for everybody, right? I'm being slightly facetious but if you look at the alternatives proposed by the FSF's "Defective by Design" campaign, for instance, they're mostly "worse" by any objective measure that's not software freedom.
But if that's the thing you care about most *and* you happen to already be comfortable and happy with what a lot of folks would now see as "retro" computing, then it works out OK. To be candid, a lot of technology could've come to a complete standstill about 2008 and I'd have been OK with it excepting storage, RAM, and home internet speeds... My family, however, not so much.
If you don't see software purely as an "ethical" issue, though, this retro computing for the sake of free software falls flat pretty quickly. Most of the people in my family and social circles outside tech just do not care enough about these issues to change their habits or refuse a better whatever because it doesn't meet ethical standards they don't hold.
All that to say: Yes, it has stagnated. The FSF starts from a position that isn't held by most people and seems uninterested in really reaching them.
Posted Sep 20, 2023 15:06 UTC (Wed)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link] (3 responses)
There's stagnation in some software goals of the free software movement. Not sure it's fair to blame this on FSF, saying FSF has stagnated. (With VSCodium, we already have a free VSCode, right?)
I take your point about FSF's message being ineffective with a certain (large) category of people. But FSF doesn't have a monopoly on spreading messages. We can all adapt the message and spread it in new ways that we think will make sense for other audiences.
Posted Sep 20, 2023 19:33 UTC (Wed)
by vadim (subscriber, #35271)
[Link]
And VScodium isn't the preferred approach by the FSF's standards because it's MIT licensed, not GPL.
Posted Sep 21, 2023 17:13 UTC (Thu)
by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75)
[Link]
I think this is where things have fallen down. The FSF started as much as a developer of free software as an advocate. That gave it a lot of influence, both by proving it was possible to write great free software and by making tools other people wanted to use. It was important to have your new tool play nicely with GNU, which often convinced people to use the FSF-preferred licenses even when they weren't compelled to. Over time, though, FSF has gradually moved out of writing software. Now they're mostly an advocacy organization, with a secondary role as home for projects developed elsewhere and gifted to them for one reason or another. What was the last great piece of software that was written primarily by people from FSF?
That failure to produce its own software anymore has cut into FSF's moral position as an advocate of free software. People tend to respect and respond to the free software developers who write the most and best new stuff. Unfortunately, a lot of that has now been taken over by big companies who release "free software" mostly for their own purposes and don't really want to cede control to users. Some of that is a response to free software's success and the fact software as a whole takes much bigger teams to produce than it did back in GNU's heyday. Whatever the cause, it means FSF has lost a lot of its influence. Instead of the leading light of free software, it's mostly a bystander making less and less relevant criticisms of the real leaders' choices.
Posted Sep 22, 2023 6:27 UTC (Fri)
by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648)
[Link]
https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell
Not a lot makes sense in the most you replied to.
Posted Sep 23, 2023 11:34 UTC (Sat)
by anton (subscriber, #25547)
[Link]
In a way, the fact that large parts of PowerShell and VS Code are free software can be taken as success of free software. One may wonder whether this is a case of Microsoft doing the Embrace part of its Embrace-Extend-Extinguish strategy, but those of us who value free software can always stick with the released parts (if they care about that software at all; I am much too invested in bash and Emacs for that).
Likewise, if the redone-in-Rust software is free, why would GNU want to rewrite that? Sure, GPL (if enforced) would help against such software being taken proprietary, but proprietary extensions can be countered by copylefted extensions when the proprietary extension happens. And that would be a more effective use of limited resources.
Posted Sep 20, 2023 9:01 UTC (Wed)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link] (51 responses)
You think GNUCash, GSL, and Guile should be better, or that Richard should have done a better job with technical planning of GNU, or that he should have done a better job of structural planning so that others could do this technical planning, or that he should have...
He designed a philosophy, a movement, a technical implementation and a legal implementation. No one has done as much as Richard has for users having control of software. No one is even close.
Posted Sep 20, 2023 9:45 UTC (Wed)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link] (33 responses)
What makes me deeply sad is that he's failed to pass on the torch as he's got older; there is no clear RMS successor appointed with RMS's approval to any of the roles he has filled, and there's no sign that he has mentees who are learning what it will take to replace him in 30 years time. There is a very good chance that the FSF will fade into irrelevance after he dies, and the whole GNU project will follow him, leaving just the GPL to show for all of RMS's great works.
And even then, there's a good chance that the GPL will fade too, and just become "that Linux license" instead of the force for social good it was designed to be. This would be a very sad end to a great career.
Posted Sep 20, 2023 12:40 UTC (Wed)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (4 responses)
On the 40th anniversary of GNU, why not celebrate the *many* things RMS /did/ accomplish, and give him the credit for that?
Posted Sep 20, 2023 13:14 UTC (Wed)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link] (2 responses)
Because the thing that makes me sad is that unless this changes, we're unlikely to see a "century of GNU". And the good things RMS has done mean that I feel that it would be appropriate for GNU to keep going long after he's gone, not just as a memorial to the good he's managed so far, but as an active organisation that's continuing to make the world a better place.
Posted Sep 20, 2023 13:51 UTC (Wed)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (1 responses)
We can look for faults, and we will always find them, everywhere.
Is your mindset one that chooses to emphasise the faults? At a juncture of an anniversary to celebrate what was achieved?
WRT GNU, even if the project and the FSF whithers, it has had a major impact on software and the culture of software engineering. An influence will continue, regardless.
It's 40 years of GNU. Let's just celebrate the immense achievements.
Posted Sep 20, 2023 14:05 UTC (Wed)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link]
My mindset is "it is a shame that we're choosing to run to a world where GNU anniversaries are no longer relevant". There's a lot else to criticise about GNU, but those things are things that I would expect to see fixed over the next few decades if GNU keeps going (and new reasons to criticise will come out of those fixes, but that's life).
An organisation like GNU does not have to die with its founder; IBM is still around, yet all of its founders have died. And I would love to see many more anniversaries of GNU, not have this be the last one we celebrate before it fails.
Why are you so keen on the idea that GNU should fail?
Posted Sep 20, 2023 16:12 UTC (Wed)
by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
[Link]
Indeed, I intended above to say I wish the FSF article celebrated those things, and not non-existent stuff like the "GNU operating system" or make claims that no other OS cares about user freedom.
In ESR's article "The cathedral and the bazar", the cathedral was not just proprietary software, but GNU. Linus basically invented the bazar model. Free software exploded after that, including the development of GNU software (remember the gcc/egcs split and subsequent unification?)
GNU taking credit things for what they did do (which is a lot!) is entirely fitting. But for over thirty years, with this GNU/Linux nonsense, they have been trying to grab credit for things they did not do. And, by saying they are the only ones focused on user freedom, denying credit from other projects.
BSD may or may not have been ahead of linux in the absence of the AT&T lawsuit—undoubtedly the lawsuit hurt them—but I think Linus's development model is better, he went as far as to write a new version control system just to support his model (which has been adopted by FreeBSD!), and I feel even without the lawsuit Linux would have pulled ahead. But that's a counterfactual. And the BSDs have contributed a lot. And, yes, I mean Linux, not GNU.
Posted Sep 20, 2023 13:24 UTC (Wed)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link]
This reminds me of what happened with Islam. Its founder left behind a blueprint covering nearly every aspect of society... except how to choose his successor (and leaders in general). Barely a decade after his death things had already begun to fracture, and within a generation, succession had largely become a matter of heredity (and who could back up that claim with a sufficiently large army) . This culminated (48 years after Mohammed's death) with the Karbala massacre that became the root of the Sunni-Shiite schism. 1353 years later, it _still_ dominates Middle Eastern geopolitics.
> and there's no sign that he has mentees who are learning what it will take to replace him in 30 years time.
Unfortuntely, RMS probably doesn't have 30 years. As the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago...
Posted Sep 20, 2023 14:02 UTC (Wed)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link] (25 responses)
Is that his failure, or ours?
Maybe we, the community, should be working on this, trying to figure out exactly what his role is, looking at what strengths lead to his successes, and maybe organising some regular forum where topics could be discussed and hopefully some candidates to take over Richard's role would emerge.
Posted Sep 20, 2023 14:14 UTC (Wed)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link] (2 responses)
His failure.
He left the FSF presidency in 2019, and started the processes that would lead to him ultimately being replaced, allowing GNU to continue on. Then, instead of asking the FSF to create a special position for him (something he's surely earned), he took the presidency back in 2021.
He could have chosen to leave the presidency for someone else to fill. He could have asked the FSF to create a Founder-Emeritus position for him (not uncommon in academic or industrial circles), and even set it up so that the Founder-Emeritus takes over the President's rights and responsibilities if the Presidency is empty (thus allowing him to leave it empty, and signalling a desire for someone to step in). He could very easily be telling us what he wants a future replacement to look like - he's demonstrated an ability to write philosophical documents that force you to think.
Posted Sep 20, 2023 18:28 UTC (Wed)
by donbarry (guest, #10485)
[Link] (1 responses)
I frankly think he should have returned as well to the presidency, and that Alexandre Oliva not been hounded off the board (he remains a voting member, a parallel panel to the board that chooses board members). But I am very glad that both continue to be involved with the organization, and that figures who got caught up in prosecuting the witch hunt have departed.
Missing from this discussion is the fact that billions of dollars of profit and "property" are now tied up with aspects of free software licensing. The ham-fisted and transparently vicious attacks promoted by Microsoft and its, witting or not, apparatchiks like the OSF smearing the GPL as a "cancer" or a "virus" twenty years ago have been replaced by more subtle forms of mass manipulation. Those whose salaries and "respectability" are tied to promoting the line of the large cartels often do so without even being cognizant of the social forces which have recruited them to do its bidding.
Posted Sep 20, 2023 19:16 UTC (Wed)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link]
I stand corrected - I was relying on past statements by Alexandre Oliva on what RMS had done after rejoining.
But it's a bad sign that such changes can happen, and yet it's not clear to relatively well-informed outsiders (LWN readers) that FSF leadership has changed. The FSF used to be such a significant player in the world of software that even entities diametrically opposed to Free Software would tell you about what the FSF was doing now. If now we've reached a point where the FSF is simply irrelevant to people interested in Free Software (LWN readers and the like), then that's a really sad place.
Posted Sep 20, 2023 16:24 UTC (Wed)
by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
[Link] (19 responses)
His doing, but not a failure: it's deliberate.
Let's remember that he was made to step down due to his toxic personal behaviour (I use the word toxic carefully; it's well-documented in his case) and then brought back in. That suggests an institutional setup that, he ensured, couldn't survive without him. But one day he will be gone and what then?
Posted Sep 21, 2023 9:43 UTC (Thu)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (18 responses)
There was a lot of back and forth in the comments here on a LWN story not so long ago. The feeling I'm left with is that RMS may be a very socially awkward person, there are no real examples of any actual nasty behaviour from him.
Posted Sep 21, 2023 9:44 UTC (Thu)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (17 responses)
Posted Sep 21, 2023 10:43 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (16 responses)
He has the classic autistic trait that he would be horrified if he thought he were upsetting other people, he just doesn't understand the consequences of his actions until they are spelled out to him.
Cheers,
Posted Sep 21, 2023 10:54 UTC (Thu)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (13 responses)
These conversations are largely pointless. Many people have had poor personal interactions with RMS. Many people have had reasonable personal interactions with him. But most of the people making the most noise have never had any personal interactions with him, but seem to want to espouse their certainty one way or the other at length. That just drowns out people's actual experiences without adding anything.
Posted Sep 21, 2023 11:13 UTC (Thu)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (12 responses)
Also, it was in the previous set of comments where you left the inference hanging of RMS abusing his power as an elder, FOSS rockstar wrt to the dinner with the young student - without mentioning it occurred when RMS was also young, and before any of the FOSS fame, and that the lady was left feeling uncomfortable and sorry for him.
I mean this with respect, and I know you mean well and want to do justice to all sides of the story - you have very reasonable blog posts on RMS' behaviour - but aren't you sort of engaging in the same thing you are saying we should desist from? I.e., you're adding (and have added) incomplete, one-side-of-the-story accusations here (above comment and previous), which will just fuel that "espouse their certainty one way or another" behaviour in others - which I know you are uncomfortable with.
I havn't met RMS, but have heard stories 1st hand from women who have (and who have met other FOSS luminaries). I don't want to have to judge, but when accusations against RMS were (and still are) regularly thrown around, as part of a campaign to get him removed from FOSS positions, then I - and others - have little choice but to (hopefully carefully) read the available evidence and form a (hopefully well considered) opinion as to whether I should change my support for various things.
To date, I have not read any accusations that hold up. Nearly all lack substance - they're vague accusations at best. Quite a few are just /false/. The remainder are social awkwardness and humour that falls flat with some (also, judging humour from times past by today's standards - and not necessarily a 100% representative standard).
Posted Sep 21, 2023 11:19 UTC (Thu)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (11 responses)
Posted Sep 21, 2023 11:27 UTC (Thu)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (9 responses)
It seems like there's no malice there in RMS' position. It's RMS being RMS in analysing language in terms of (his view of) technical correctness and elegance and ignoring social aspects. His reasoning is based on grammar elegance, and not any of the other socio-political stuff which may come with nasty motivations.
Posted Sep 21, 2023 11:32 UTC (Thu)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (8 responses)
Posted Sep 21, 2023 11:38 UTC (Thu)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (7 responses)
Posted Sep 21, 2023 11:46 UTC (Thu)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (6 responses)
Posted Sep 21, 2023 12:00 UTC (Thu)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (5 responses)
A well-rounded person should be able to cope with a well-meaning autistic-type person using words in odd ways (inc. using pronouns in ways other than the well-rounded person would prefer).
Posted Sep 21, 2023 13:59 UTC (Thu)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Sep 21, 2023 14:48 UTC (Thu)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (3 responses)
On personal experience, again, a number of people have engaged in a campaign to paint RMS as unsuitable for any kind of visible role in FS, resulting in numerous tweets, blogs, and articles in various tech media (inc. here). To the extent that /any/ article touching on RMS now, inc this one marking the anniversary of GNU, has comments intended to further that campaign.
It is impossible for me - or any one else who participates in Free Software, and who has any kind of influence in things (inc., in paying dues) - to not have to read and form judgements. I, and everyone else, is being _encouraged_ to engage with this and form a judgement, particularly to condemn and excommunicate RMS.
And while in the beginning I took the accusations at face value, and was greatly disappointed in RMS and him being something of a low-level sex predator, the more I read the more it struck me the claims lacked substance. And when I interrogate those who are informed in the claims (and who I consider reasonable and good-faith actors - hence worth engaging with), and reading more of the falsehoods in some of the claims, I have since gone the other way. I have become very sceptical of this campaign. To the point I consider it mostly an unwarranted smear campaign, and maliciously so in some cases.
Again, I, and everyone else, was surely _invited_ to engage with those accusations and judge RMS by those who raise them (and keep doing so). That was the point of that campaign. We can't be blamed for doing so and digging into the evidence and interrogating things. And having done so, I find I am _required_ to push back against a lot of the accusations - as they lack substance, or they are simply false, or they indicate social-awkwardness issues in RMS *and* potentially /also/ some slight degree of a lack of tolerance, flexibility, and/or empathy from the /accuser/. I can't sit by, I just think - having followed this and dug in, that where one side is put forth someone should at least put the other side.
On the change behaviour comment: Can't say myself, don't have experience. Interested in data-points. That type of personality I can imagine would be willing to change on general social points when they were pointed out to them, but also that personality will dig in completely on any point where they have formed some "technically correct" view. ;)
Posted Sep 21, 2023 14:50 UTC (Thu)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link]
Posted Sep 21, 2023 15:00 UTC (Thu)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (1 responses)
There surely is a difference and it should be possible to see the intent, and avoid being hurt?
Posted Sep 21, 2023 16:27 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
You're being rational. Most people aren't.
And, from my view, I'm sorry but my world revolves around me. What I call myself is IMPORTANT. What refers to ME is IMPORTANT. I can put up with people making mistakes, but I get seriously offended if they choose not to get it right.
Okay, I try to reciprocate that - I use your choice of name when referring to you, I use your choice of pronoun (if it doesn't grate too much with me), etc etc. I would be (and am) insulted by people not using my choice of name, therefore it's only right I should use your choice.
(But not least, it's important because if you don't refer to me on my terms, how am I supposed to know you're referring to me? :-)
Cheers,
Posted Oct 3, 2023 10:34 UTC (Tue)
by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958)
[Link]
I read his statement as merely a more general discussion about grammar, that wouldn't prevent the use of less optimal solutions until consensus is reached on a better one.
Posted Sep 21, 2023 11:35 UTC (Thu)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link]
There's a degree of "ableism" in not allowing for this fact when judging him, given there appears to be 0 nastiness coming from RMS in any of the "accusations" against him. Bad behaviour is bad behaviour and should always be addressed, but an autistic person - without ever any sign of malice - being unable to follow social cues, obsessing over technicalities (inc. in grammar), is something that well-rounded, well-functioning adults should be able to work around.
Posted Sep 21, 2023 16:11 UTC (Thu)
by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
[Link]
Posted Sep 20, 2023 20:34 UTC (Wed)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (1 responses)
It's interesting to contrast RMS and Guido van Rossum. RMS clings to whatever power he has. Guido van Rossum voluntarily relinquished his position as BDFL once Python outgrew him, but remains an active voice in Python development.
I intensely dislike Python myself, but I have way more faith that Python will still be actively developed in 2050. I'm not so sure about the FSF's products.
Posted Sep 21, 2023 10:02 UTC (Thu)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link]
That influence will live on well past python. Who cares what institutional acronyms are or are not attached, when the ideas live on?
Posted Sep 25, 2023 10:05 UTC (Mon)
by jafd (subscriber, #129642)
[Link]
Posted Sep 20, 2023 12:52 UTC (Wed)
by ballombe (subscriber, #9523)
[Link]
What Richard managed to achieve despite such opposition is impressive.
Posted Sep 20, 2023 20:25 UTC (Wed)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (15 responses)
That's pretty much the definition of a "cult" right there...
Posted Sep 20, 2023 21:40 UTC (Wed)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link] (14 responses)
Give us your list of people whose contributions are comparable to having developed the Free Software Definition, copyleft, the GPL, GCC, the GNU Project, legislative campaigns on various topics (software patents, DRM, copyright...), and 30+ years of travelling the world giving thousands of talks to a community and a movement.
This should be entertaining.
Posted Sep 20, 2023 22:00 UTC (Wed)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (13 responses)
Posted Sep 20, 2023 23:53 UTC (Wed)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link] (12 responses)
And that would be unfortunate, because Linux and Git are better than the BSD kernel and SVN.
But "Linux kernel is better than BSD kernel" is not what lead to millions of projects and thousands of organisations and hundreds of laws.
For one example, no government has a law saying they should use Linux-like kernels. Lots of governments have laws saying they should use (and/or invest in) software that can be used, studied, shared and redistributed in modified form.
Posted Sep 21, 2023 0:21 UTC (Thu)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (8 responses)
I'm not getting your argument at all.
Posted Sep 21, 2023 1:16 UTC (Thu)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link] (7 responses)
Richard created the concept of free software, a technical implementation, a legal implementation, and he went on tour for decades to encourage others to advocate for this. The result has been world-changing.
Of course, you might reply that you still don't see the difference. So I tried to think of where third parties might give us a sign: Laws. Governments recognise that the idea of having the four freedoms is important. Important enough that many have made rules for themselves to use free software.
No government has looked at the Linux kernel and decided that its technical benefits compared to other kernels are so important that they think they should make a rule that the government should only use kernels with a quality level equal to or higher than Linux's.
Posted Sep 21, 2023 4:48 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (2 responses)
UTTER BULLSHIT.
Sorry for the language, but one only has to look at the story about the printer that started everything off to know this is complete rubbish.
Yes, Richard CODIFIED it with the three (back then) freedoms, but to credit him with free software is rubbish. It was there before Richard was even born.
And this is what pisses people off - the FSF claiming what has nothing to do with it.
Cheers,
Posted Sep 21, 2023 6:29 UTC (Thu)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link] (1 responses)
You're right that the printer story explains this clearly. And why do we all know the printer story? Because Richard spent twenty years travelling the world telling the printer story.
He never claimed to have invented free software, and I didn't say so either. He invented the definition, the movement, and a lot of details that have proved extremely sturdy four decades later.
Posted Sep 21, 2023 11:28 UTC (Thu)
by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
[Link]
Linus's contribution was a new, collaborative method of development. GNU may have been about freedom but the development process was behind closed doors. By the mid 1990s development of one of their two flagship products, gcc (the other being emacs), had stalled at version 2.7.x and numerous forks were out there trying to fill the gap. Eventually one of those forks, egcs, became so successful that GNU abandoned their own gcc (then at a very buggy version 2.8) and "blessed" egcs as the new GCC (now uppercase) version 2.95.
RMS and GNU may have "codified" free software but Linus, and ESR via his "The cathedral and the bazar" article, showed the world what the benefits really are.
That brings me to the second point. RMS tried to promote free software by haranguing, calling proprietary software evil and unethical, and so on. Predictably, that didn't work well. The "open source" folks promoted its benefits for development, collaboration, stability, importantly pointing out the benefits to the developers and corporations as well as the users. Their definition of "open source" was essentially identical to the FSF's definition of "free software", but it was persuasive where the FSF was dictatorial. And it worked. Yet, to this day, FSF disses the term "open source" on their website.
Linus changed the world, not just by writing a good kernel: he changed how people saw the process of software creation, even how GNU's own software is developed. (There were collaborative open-source projects before, but Linus's hierarchical stewarding was unique, I think. And git, which he wrote for his own needs, has become the standard VCS now, basically synonymous with version control.)
And the existence of Linux is what accelerated the development of almost all GNU software. This has been true for over a quarter of a century now. It is not a GNU operating system that happens to run a tiny kernel called Linux that could just as well have been Hurd. It is an entire ecosystem, including GNU and much else, that was developed mostly after the Linux boom, driven by Linux developers for the needs of Linux—I doubt very many of the 1980s-era GNU projects would still be alive if not for Linux, and most of the later projects would not exist at all.
And that is why the FSF's language in this release is so offensive.
Posted Sep 21, 2023 6:22 UTC (Thu)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (3 responses)
It is.
> Richard created the concept of free software
He invented the term, not the free software. Even for putting the legal basis, he was not quite the first one. Artistic License for Perl predates the GPL, and it has similar provisions (although it also allows just renaming the executables to clearly indicate that it's not the official Perl).
RMS did a lot of work to popularize the GPL, and that's true. His early works were extremely influential.
> No government has looked at the Linux kernel and decided that its technical benefits compared to other kernels are so important that they think they should make a rule that the government should only use kernels with a quality level equal to or higher than Linux's.
I don't believe that any government has looked at GNU software and mandated it. And no government has looked into GPL and mandated it for all projects either.
Posted Sep 21, 2023 8:05 UTC (Thu)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link]
Posted Sep 21, 2023 9:59 UTC (Thu)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (1 responses)
Well, exactly.
Linus referenced GNU "just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu" used GCC to get Linux going. "It also uses every feature of gcc I could find, specifically the __asm__ directive, so that I wouldn't need so much assembly language objects." and - most importantly - Linus had grokked the concept of copyleft and the GNU licence "It will be free though (probably under gnu-license or similar).".
What RMS did had _great_ influence.
Did RMS invent everything? Of course not. Did he make significant contributions though? Yes, of course he did. Huge contributions. And only a very few people could have spent the lifetime of travelling and writing deep in advocacy of these concepts of "Freedom" (misunderstood by some) to cement the significance of (one set of) those contributions by spreading them widely.
Posted Sep 21, 2023 13:37 UTC (Thu)
by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
[Link]
True, but it can reasonably be argued that that reference was already tongue-in-cheek. “Big and professional”? The GNU operating system mostly didn't even exist at the time – you certainly couldn't obtain a “GNU OS” tape and use that to install GNU on an otherwise empty computer –, but the FSF folks had already taken on board various other large pre-existing software packages such as X11 or TeX and summarily declared that they, too, were part of the GNU operating system. (Which was of course OK – these packages were very liberally licensed already – but it still amounted, in a way, to taking credit for stuff that they basically found lying around in the street.)
In the early 1990s, the “GNU operating system” was “big and professional” only as far as people's claims for what it might eventually at some unspecified point in the future be or do were concerned. For everyone else, GNU was mostly fantasy, and it took the efforts of Linus and his collaborators to make it reality to a point where the FSF could claim that what people could actually download or buy, not from the FSF itself of course but from entirely unrelated outfits like Red Hat or SUSE or Slackware, and install on an otherwise empty computer, was in fact the celebrated GNU operating system, plus a small and insignificant addendum called “Linux” – a fiction that they've kept going for the last three decades or so. (Oh, and let's not forget that according to the FSF at the time, Linux as a kernel for GNU was originally only a compromise, meant to tide us over until that most famous piece of vapourware, HURD, became ready, which would happen Real Soon Now, and GNU would finally come into its own. 30 years later we're not holding our breath.)
The Linux kernel became a part of “the GNU operating system” in the same way that X11 and TeX, among countless other components provided by non-FSF projects and developers, had become a part of it. So somehow today we're supposed to celebrate the FSF for “creating” GNU, even though the amount of code in GNU that was actually written under the auspices of the FSF forms only a minuscule part of the whole, and over its 40-year history the FSF has done precious little towards integrating the various components of “GNU/Linux”, making it installable, and generally turning it into a viable product – in other words, the drudge work. Writing lofty philosophical essays is one thing, and of course the influence of the GPL is not to be disregarded. In the end, however, the drudge work, overwhelmingly contributed by people and companies all over the world with no official connection to the FSF, and certainly very little actual overall leadership or technical direction from the FSF, surely deserves most of the credit for the ongoing success of “GNU/Linux”.
Posted Sep 22, 2023 11:37 UTC (Fri)
by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876)
[Link] (2 responses)
Let me first say that I support the FSF and wish it was more successful than it is because it represents important ideas that more people should be aware of and understand. That said, I am one of the people that thinks that both the primacy of "the GNU Project" in FSF messaging and perhaps RMS himself hold it back. Like others here have said, both did amazing and important things back in the 80's to early 90's. Their success has mostly been eclipsed by other projects and ideas since. Ironically, people that disagree with this, mostly cite the success of these other projects and ideas in their arguments. In this case, we are also downplaying the importance of some of that success.
Git is not just "technically better". It is ideologically and philosophically different from Subversion. It is wildly more popular. It has enabled vast amounts of collaboration that would have otherwise been impossible. It has dramatically changed the world. If those are the kinds of things you are just going to push aside, how do you expect to get taken seriously defending RMS and the FSF?
Getting back to your example, let me ask you, what government anywhere on earth advocates the use of Free Software as the Free Software Foundation would have us understand Free Software as a social policy?
A lot of people who read . First, let's read this essay from Richard Stallman on the differences between Free Software and Open Source and why that matters.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-poi...
So let me ask my question again in the context of that essay. Where is the government policy that insists on freedom as defined by the 4 freedoms of the FSF rather than just the pragmatic values of Open Source?
Let's look at the policy of the US government as an example:
The US government goal here is to be "open" and explicitly to adopt Open Source. In practical terms, most Open Source software is Free Software. Is this a good example of the great success of the FSF? I have read through this and they do not talk about freedom anywhere.
I am not trying to pedantic here other than to properly represent the views of RMS an the FSF itself.
If Open Source software is also Free Software, in the sense that any given example of working software meets both definitions, isn't that a success for the Free Software movement? Does it matter if the government policy talks about "freedom" as long as we have some of that freedom in practice? Isn't advancing the idea and ideals of Open Source a win for Free Software too? Isn't demonstrating the success of Open Source also demonstrating the impact of Free Software? Well, in the words of RMS himself, "Even if the activity is good in and of itself, each contribution you make does a little harm on the side by promoting the open source idea."
Read the section in that essay that says that Open Source and Free Software, while representing a very similar body of technical work, are "rivals for mindshre". Open Source has "philosophical views quite different from those of the free software movement". Read the conclusion of that essay. Really read it.
You say that "Lots of governments have laws saying they should use (and/or invest in) software that can be used, studied, shared and redistributed in modified form". That is a victory for Open Source. It is not necessarily a victory for Free Software.
In my view, looking at the actual software policies of governments that have explicitly embraced Open Source goes a long way to demonstrating that the FSF and RMS made a lot of great contributions a long time ago but that the ideas of Open Source have gone on to greater success without it or him.
Look, my own view is that both Open Source and Free Software refer to practically identical universes of actual software in the real world. In terms of actual software available and the practical value of the software to people like me, it is a distinction without a difference. Certainly, the popularity of Open Source is a win for Free Software in that the more software is Open Source, the less of it is proprietary. But, if I understand everything the man has ever said or done, that is not what Richard Stallman is trying to achieve or why he created the FSF in the first place. He is not trying to create a lot of great software. In the essay I linked to, he argues that access to lots of powerful software can be bad. His goals are not "pragmatic", they are social.
So, getting back to that, while the FSF made a lot of great progress decades ago, they have arguably been losing ground since. In the early days of Linux, there was a lot of mainstream discussion on the nature of software freedom. The FSF and RMS himself featured prominently. Now, when the FSF or RMS comes up, it is more likely to be an argument about how much credit they deserve. These days, supposed free software advocates push the discussion of freedom to the side in favour of claiming credit for the success of popular software that does not really represent the ideals they are advocating at all.
This is not the best example of my point but it sure is an important one. The Linux kernel itself, I would argue, is not a great poster child for the success of "Free Software". It is not a great candidate to be labelled "GNU" software. I know that RMS is the one asking us to label Linux distributions as GNU / Linux but that is a dis-service to that goals of GNU as THE example of what Free Software is supposed to look like. Why did Linus take the "or later versions" out of the GPL that Linux is distributed under? Well, because he disagrees with GPLv3 and its attempts to ensure that covered software is more Free rather than just Open Source. Why does Linux allow binary modules? My answer is that, despite its use of the GPL, Linux as a project is managed according to the ideals of Open Source much more than the ideals of Free Software. That is just the kernel. It is even worse to call Linux distributions GNU / Linux. If GNU was a good term for them, why doesn't the FSF endorse all these examples of the "GNU Operating System". Because the FSF certainly does not ethically support all Linux distributions. Only a very few Linux distributions are deemed Free by the FSF. They are not the Linux distributions that anybody uses either. Even Debian allows binary firmware now. Even Debian is not properly labelled GNU these days it goes against the FSF definition of Free.
RMS himself will not use most of the Linux distributions that he is asking us to call GNU / Linux. They are not Free enough for him. Why then label them with the name GNU? In an effort to claim the success of his competitors as his own success, he is committing exactly the mistake he asks us not to make in his essay. In my view, by his own words, every time Richard Stallman insists on calling Ubuntu GNU / Linux, he "does a little harm on the side by promoting the open source idea". Self-proclaimed advocates of the FSF will use software like Ubuntu themselves and celebrate and support everybody else who adopts it as well.
I am using a Linux computer to type this comment. Is it a GNU / Linux computer? Well, neither the WiFi nor the graphics would work without closed source binary modules that were distributed and installed as an integral part of the OS ( as part of the distribution I selected ). There is lots of entirely proprietary software available in the official distribution repositories and I have some of it installed. My distribution is not composed entirely of Free Software. I do not see how it can be credibly labeled as GNU software without doing massive idealogical damage to that brand, the original goals of the GNU Project, and the social goals that the FSF had when it was started.
The thing is, I actually agree with what Richard Stallman said in his essay. Every time you fail to strongly differentiate between Free Software and Open Source, you make Open Source stronger and the importance of Freedom over convenience and pragmatism a little weaker. It is a shame that even he has started asking us to do it. As I said at the beginning, the perspective of the FSF is important. I wish more people took the time to understand it. I wish more of the people that demand it get more credit would walk the walk and support its ideals.
Without making this even longer, I will leave this data point for what forces are really changing the world. The US government uses GitHub:
They have an Open Source checklist:
For a quick ideological check, what license do they use? Note that "commercial purposes" "without asking permission" is ok.
Posted Sep 22, 2023 17:00 UTC (Fri)
by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784)
[Link]
The most important part of that page is the very first line, which is an informal statement of the consequences of 17 USC § 105:
"As a work of the United States government, this project is in the public domain within the United States."
Since having split domestic/overseas licensing would be a charlie foxtrot, cc-0 is the most sensible choice for US-government-published Open Source software.
Posted Sep 25, 2023 5:22 UTC (Mon)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link]
Hi Jmalcolm. There are lots of clear examples, but the wording of your question is strange. I wonder if you're setting this up so that you have ways to reject pretty much any information given to you. For example, if a government does something that fulfils your three criteria but doesn't call it "free software", or doesn't explicitly mention FSF. Or, I don't know how you'll define "social policy"...
But, assuming it's an honest question...
You've asked three questions:
1. Name a government that advocates the use of free software
Here's a list:
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observ...
2. Show that governments use the FSF's definition
The US Securing Open Source Software Act:
"OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE.—The term ‘open source software’ means software for which the human-readable source code is made available to the public for use, study, re-use, modification, enhancement, and re-distribution."
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/...
"Use" and "modifiy" are repeated (as "re-use" and "enhance"), but the definition is FSF's four freedoms.
For a European example, the Cyber Resilience Act has a recital 10 for "free and open-source software" which says:
"...software, including its source code and modified versions, that is openly shared and freely accessible, usable, modifiable and redistributable..."
Again, that's the four freedoms.
I've never seen a government using a definition based on some other authority, for example, trying to summarise the OSI's Open Source Definition, even when using the name "open source".
3. Show that it's a social policy
The many documents in that first link show that the laws which finance or encourage or require the use of free software do so for digital sovereignty, transparency, or to implement the idea of "public money, public code".
Posted Sep 21, 2023 2:09 UTC (Thu)
by jengelh (guest, #33263)
[Link]
Please, the world has seen software which did a lot less and still called itself an "operating system". ... DOS *cough*
Posted Sep 23, 2023 11:07 UTC (Sat)
by anton (subscriber, #25547)
[Link]
On the contrary, advocates of BSDs give me the impression that they are fine with the BSD-licensed software being extended and the result released as proprietary software, but they complain when this software is being extended and released as copylefted software; I don't know of this attitude is shared by BSD developers, but the "sake of user's freedom" does not appear to be central to their thinking.
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
"Please write free software to do these jobs"
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Where's the GNU answer to PowerShell, or to VS Code?
According to Wikipedia PowerShell is MIT licensed "(but the Windows component remains proprietary)", and Code-OSS and VSCodium is MIT-licensed, too. I.e., free software licenses. That's good enough. If you want a free version of "the Windows component" of PowerShell or the difference between VSCodium and VS Code, yes, AFAIK there is no GNU project for that. Apparently nobody has done that on their own and put it under the GNU umbrella, and GNU apparently spends its own limited resources on other projects.
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
On the 40th anniversary of GNU, why not celebrate the *many* things RMS /did/ accomplish, and give him the credit for that?
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Is that his failure, or ours?
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Wol
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Wol
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
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Wol
Forty years of GNU
The FSF did great work from 1984 to about 1991. We are now in 2023.
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Ok, if you're just going to make stuff up and then argue against your own invented ideas, then I guess I'm no longer needed in this conversation.
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
Linus referenced GNU "just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu"
Forty years of GNU
https://open.gsa.gov/oss-policy/
At this point, even people who see themselves as strong defenders and supporters of Richard Stallman, Free Software, and the Free Software Foundation, mostly run around celebrating the success of Open Source. If even your own warriors are fighting for the other side, it is only a matter of time until you lose completely.
https://github.com/GSA
https://github.com/GSA/open-source-policy/blob/master/Ope...
https://github.com/GSA/open-source-policy/blob/master/LIC...
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
> as the Free Software Foundation would have us understand Free
> Software as a social policy?
Forty years of GNU
Forty years of GNU
what about the BSDs, and various Linux distros?
Were BSD and, say, Alpine Linux (because you mention it as a distribution that leaves out the usual GNU parts) "developed specifically for the sake of users' freedom"? If they were, I have not heard of it.
And the majority of Linux-based systems out there are Android, which have zero or negligible GNU content.
And they also have not been "developed specifically for the sake of users' freedom".