Although your comment is a fair one, this critique is tactical/strategic rather than political/ideological. That is, the author assumes you mostly agree with Stallman's end goals, and from there argues for a different set of strategies.
Definitely agree. I just wanted to point out that, even though it often seems otherwise, there are indeed people in the technological community who have deep problems with the FSF philosophies.
Are there? I would believe that there are many who don't care, or many who are dismissive at a rather shallow level. But I'm not aware of having seen a good, intellectual critique of "free" software.
There are many criticisms of the various freedoms embodied by Stallmanism's notion of free software (to borrow a term from the article). A thorough rebuttal of the entire viewpoint requires, IMO:
1. An ardent defense of capitalism and private property.
2. A critique of open source as a superior software development methodology.
You'll find shades of (1) in various defenses of competing open source licenses (e.g. BSD). But also, (1) is a pretty common attitude in software development circles (a majority of the libertarians I know are software people).
(2) is a lot less common in developer crowds, I think in part because when evaluated as a purely factual and categorical claim, it's trivial to prove false. Many of the most successful software projects in the world are open source.
The economic argument against (2) is far more common -- and is made in this thread by sprafa for example.
TBF the moral case against (2) probably really is as rare as you claim (which is a good thing IMO).
But the intersection of (1) and (2) isn't impossible to imagine, and I think there are a lot of developers who get close to this confluence of opinions. Or at least a lot closer than they are to "Stallmanist" freedom.
I don't think (2) is necessary to rebut Stallmanism - development methodology was never really a part of Free Software - but I don't agree that (1) is enough. One can defend capitalism and (physical) private property without defending copyright and patents †. In fact, it could be argued that they're anti-private-property, by preventing one from using one's stuff as one sees fit.
I'm not sure if I'm understanding correctly what you have said, but I think it should be pointed out that GPL absolutely depends on and hangs off of copyright law. It's just as much an expression of the ownership of thought as proprietary software is.
That's true, but the GPL is just a neat tool that Stallman invented to work within the current legislation, it's not an actual component of his philosophy. For example, he supported a change to the laws that would shorten the GPL, as long as it also forced proprietary software to open up after a while[1]. He also specifically said that copyright is "no longer beneficial" and proposed major reforms, including eliminating any restrictions on private sharing of works[2].
Stallman's philosophy is that all software should be Free because the users deserve it, not because the author wishes it to be.
Why would (1) be necessary? GPL software is not consigned to the public domain or ownership automatically transferred to the FSF. It is still the property of the original developer, who are simply distributing and licensing its use only to those who comply with a certain set of conditions.
Proprietary licences will sometimes prohibit resale or modification, for instance. Licences like the GPL do the exact opposite: they allow modification and resale under the condition that these subsequent derivative works are licensed under the same terms (if distributed).
I would have thought being able to decide the conditions under which others can use your private property is an idea the most ardent capitalist would support.
I agree 100% with your last paragraph. I think the issue for many libertarians, however, is this: should thought be considered personal property, thus under legal protection by the state?
It's pretty simple - freedom 0 is the freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose. That includes in a proprietary environment. That includes whatever you want it to include. The other three freedoms then tell you "except in some ways we personally don't like."
They also don't like the FSF much. They have done some things that are a little controversial, like require devs to cede ownership of code so that the FSF can relicense when they want to (mostly to new versions of the GPL).
That's a misrepresentation of what the OpenBSD people were getting at. They had a dispute with Richard Stallman over his deciding to not endorse OpenBSD. That does not mean that they don't like free software. Tellingly, the ports tree has an abundance of free softwares. The idea that they don't like free softwares is disproven by the very thing that they and Stallman had the dispute over.
What are you talking about? You can use the software however you wish. Even "in a proprietary environment" (like you can run LibreOffice in Windows).
What you mean is probably copyleft licensing which is only a subset of free software licenses. Copyleft means that you cannot redistribute the software and its derivatives unless you give the freedoms down the road to your clients/users as well.
However, there are free software licenses that aren't copyleft too.
I honestly don't think that I've ever seen any evidence of that. I'm not saying there aren't, though.
Everyone I've ever seen that disagrees with the FSF either:
- doesn't understand what 'freedom' means in the context of software, thinking only in terms of software developers and not in terms of users, when users are the only ones that actually matter, or
- doesn't understand that free software isn't opposed to making money from software.
free software isn't opposed to making money from software
It's not opposed to trying to make money, but it does mostly prevent actually making money. If software wasn't copyrightable I suspect most desktop software and video games would never have been created. This argument dates back to the 1970s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists
I completely disagree. There are some problems with the free software movement but the fundamental idea behind it is essentially inarguable: proprietary software is anti-user.
To me, it's not about categories (users, companies, developers, etc.). We're all people -- citizens.
The question is: should ideas belong to the category of legally-protected personal property? I'm very aware of the pragmatic arguments in favor of this. However, I (and others) also believe that there are significant ethical arguments in opposition to it.
Thomas Schelling mentions the notion of "incomplete antagonism": you could have partly opposed interests to someone else's but still have ways in which you can cooperate with each other. Other people thinking about trade have suggested that this is almost always the case, even, maybe surprisingly, when people have directly opposed values in some respects (but not others).
When you're buying most things from other people, you might have an "incomplete antagonism" because you may each want to get the best deal you can at the expense of the other person -- driving a hard bargain, so to speak. But you might still appreciate the opportunity to trade and not necessarily resent the other party to the trade (I wish that the vegan sandwich I just bought at LAX had cost me $8 instead of $19, but I'm still grateful that I could buy it at all).
Most attempts to defend proprietary software that aren't based in "romantic authorship" (emphasizing a special moral relationship between creators and their creative works that would make their preferences or interests count in a way that other people's don't) would probably focus on the benefits of trade: proprietary software fails to optimize perfectly for the user's interests and includes some intentional disadvantages for the user, yet many users could willingly accept these limitations because they've been bundled with benefits that the users appreciate, or because they help to incentivize activities the users appreciate (like continued development or support of the software).
This is normally the case for situations where trade can occur: each party may be asked to accept things that aren't that party's most preferred outcome, even deliberately where an alternative that that party prefers is logically conceivable. For example, if you rent a physical object then you might not be able to use it for any purpose, or if you hire someone then they might not be willing to perform any task you ask them to, or if you buy something then you might have to pay for it -- even though if others were making your interests their first priority, none of these limitations would exist. Presumably proprietary software advocates think that "selling software" is mostly akin to selling other things, where private ownership and sales work (fairly well|extremely well|better than any available alternative) for allocating resources, incentivizing productive activities, and increasing people's welfare, and that it's only anti-user in the ways that the costs or restrictions accompanying other kinds of trades are anti-customer.
