Hi everybody,
I want to explain my critique why I think that -- in my view -- FSFE differs from FSF, and this is bad.
The sense of copyleft is to keep and increase the freedom using software. The way to do this is to exclude the possibility of making software scarce (freedom is inherited). These principles are introduced and explained in GNU Manifesto.
GPL says that it is allowed to take a fee for distributing free software, however this is only a means to balance some expenditure -- not the goal!
Press release about founding of the FSFE says that free software has the goal to make money with it. This is exactly the opposite of the spirit of GPL and GNU Manifesto! This is because making money presuppose making things scarce. If you have free software which is inherently not scarce, you have to make other things around free software scarce in order to be able to sell free software or the things around. And this is exactly what Eric Raymond in his propaganda says (see the magic cauldron: http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/magic-cauldron/).
Free software and freedom in general cannot survive on an island. All other things around free software have to be free as far as possible. Therefore we have a special license for documentation (FDL) etc. Other examples are support - we help people to use free software, however no for the purpose of making money!
A fee is ok, but "making money" in Raymond style is against the spirit of GNU Manifesto.
Last point is the slogan "equal chances for people and economy" on the web site. I can't understand the message. Equal chances between what and what? Between people and people? Between economy and economy? Between people and economy? The first is ok (but not really good: equal chances is not the same as freedom). The second doesn't make sense (economy is one 'entity' so there is no 'between'). And the third is crazy, because people never have same chances as 'economy'.
Increasing freedom for people always implies reducing the opportunity for economy to make things scarce. Freedom finds its borders where the freedom of others is touched. Making things artificially scarce by companies touches freedom of the people. This has clearly explained by RMS in GNU Manifesto.
As RMS said: We should more talk about freedom. And not of making money, I add.
Ciao, Stefan
On Wed, 2 May 2001, Stefan Meretz wrote:
Hi everybody,
I want to explain my critique why I think that -- in my view -- FSFE differs from FSF, and this is bad.
The sense of copyleft is to keep and increase the freedom using software. The way to do this is to exclude the possibility of making software scarce (freedom is inherited). These principles are introduced and explained in GNU Manifesto.
GPL says that it is allowed to take a fee for distributing free software, however this is only a means to balance some expenditure -- not the goal!
Hello Stefan,
Although I think there is some merit in being critical towards ourselves regarding "GNU purity", I think we also have to keep in mind that the European landscape may ask for a different kind of politics than the American soil over which FSF-US reigns. Where in the US it is most of the times recommended and deal in extremes if you want people to think in your direction, in my view Europeans tend to prefer the middle road.
Making money off free software shouldn't be FSFE's mission statement. But I think that in the European context there is no issue of losing a sense of direction if we mention that Free Software also _does_ make economical sense in a lot of situations. Acknowledging that doesn't mean that all of a sudden we are "ESR Pragmatists". For me it means that we believe that economy is a system built around the exchange of resources and that the potential of such a system is a function of the amount of freedom contained within. The economic benefits are a result of freedom, not the goal.
Cheers, Pi
Hello Stefan,
On Wed, May 02, 2001 at 10:06:13AM +0200, Stefan Meretz wrote:
I want to explain my critique why I think that -- in my view -- FSFE differs from FSF, and this is bad.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. We from the core team need all your feedback to make sure that we are understood in what we are doing.
Press release about founding of the FSFE says that free software has the goal to make money with it.
I do not remember the excact sentences you are refering to. AFAIR there as been no passage about this in the press release. Georg was quoted in the Berliner Zeitung (a German newspaper) with something along these lines: "We want to encourage people to earn as much money with Free Software as they can."
This is exactly the opposite of the spirit of GPL and GNU Manifesto! This is because making money presuppose making things scarce. If you have free software which is inherently not scarce, you have to make other things around free software scarce in order to be able to sell free software or the things around.
There are certain values associated with Free Software. Responsible business as I (personally) see it is a form of sharing work. We want to have business which honors our values and our freedom. As long as business is doing this it is giving people a fair offer which customers are free to accept or leave.
To make it short: freedom and business are not directly excluding itself. And of course it is okay to try to make a profitable business as long as your are indeed doing it in the responsible way and honoring our freedom regarding software.
A fee is ok, but "making money" in Raymond style is against the spirit of GNU Manifesto.
The FSF and RMS are indeed encouraging commercial Free Software. (Some quotes below: http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html
| Please don't use ``commercial'' as a synonym for ``non-free''. That | confuses two entirely different issues.
| A program is commercial if it is developed as a business activity.
| Free commercial software is a contribution to our community, so we | should encourage it.
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/selling.html
| Actually we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge | as much as they wish or can.
| So if you are redistributing copies of free software, you might as | well charge a substantial fee and make some money. Redistributing | free software is a good and legitimate activity; if you do it, you | might as well make a profit from it.
| Strictly speaking, ``selling'' means trading goods for money. | Selling a copy of a free program is legitimate, and we encourage it.
| However, when people think of ``selling software'', they usually | imagine doing it the way most companies do it: making the software | proprietary rather than free. | | So unless you're going to draw distinctions carefully, the way this | article does, we suggest it is better to avoid using the term | ``selling software'' and choose some other wording instead. For | example, you could say ``distributing free software for a | fee''--that is unambiguous. )
Last point is the slogan "equal chances for people and economy" on the web site. I can't understand the message.
This was our first attempt in finding a slogan. We meanwhile realise that the slogan and the message is not understood the way it was intented. Therefore we will come up with a better one. Suggestions are welcome.
Bernhard
|| On Wed, 2 May 2001 11:15:35 +0200 || Bernhard Reiter bernhard@intevation.de wrote:
br> ... br> The FSF and RMS are indeed encouraging commercial Free Software. br> (Some quotes below: br> http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html br> http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/selling.html br> ...
I agree with Bernhard here. There is only two small things I'd like to add:
1. We (meaning the FSF and FSF Europe) very deliberately speak of Free Software in the "freedom, not free beer" way. We would speak of "Free Software as in freedom AND free beer" otherwise.
2. One of the freedoms that is very important is the freedom to make a living off good work. Personally I believe Free Software is good work.
As Pim van Riezen stated quite correctly: the central goal of Free Software is freedom, not money. But there is nothing bad or unethical about making money with Free Software.
Regards, Georg
Hi,
On Wed, May 02, 2001 at 12:19:09PM +0200, Georg C. F. Greve wrote:
- We (meaning the FSF and FSF Europe) very deliberately speak of Free Software in the "freedom, not free beer" way. We would speak of "Free Software as in freedom AND free beer" otherwise.
With this you say that you (meaning the FSF and FSF Europe) don't care about the commercial world and that you have no intention to make any statement that touches the political implementations of Free Software in an the realm of economics.
Of course you can restrict yourself to this postition but you should accept that others try to take this postition and try to develop new and more political thoughts based on it and the idea of Free Software.
- One of the freedoms that is very important is the freedom to make a living off good work. Personally I believe Free Software is good work.
This can be only a derived freedom. First has to come the freedom for the individual to live a good and comfortable life free of danger. It may be possible to achieve this freedom by means of selling your time and power for money. But this does not mean that making money is the only or the preferd way to reach this freedom. I'd dare to say that there are better ways to reach it and that one is shown by the removal of Free Software from the sphere of capitalistic utilization.
As Pim van Riezen stated quite correctly: the central goal of Free Software is freedom, not money. But there is nothing bad or unethical about making money with Free Software.
That's your postition which of course can be questioned. Since you don't question the goal of making money you of course can't ask any ethical questions about the status of Free Software concering commerce.
Regards Lutz
Hello Lutz!
- We (meaning the FSF and FSF Europe) very deliberately speak of Free Software in the "freedom, not free beer" way. We would
speak of "Free Software as in freedom AND free beer" otherwise.
With this you say that you (meaning the FSF and FSF Europe) don't care about the commercial world and that you have no intention to make any statement that touches the political implementations of Free Software in an the realm of economics.
Well, AFAIK the previous statement is allways used to show people the real meaning of the word free; outside that context we could derive your argument, but I don't think anybody in the free software movement is unaware of the economic impact it has.
Of course you can restrict yourself to this postition but you should accept that others try to take this postition and try to develop new and more political thoughts based on it and the idea of Free Software.
I think that you're right in some way, but look at GPL carefully: as it gives people the freedom to make money with GPL'd software, it protects people "against" it as well, because any pre-existing GPL'd software can be provided or downloaded for free, if anyone is willing to, as anyone has the freedom to copy and/or modify it.
- One of the freedoms that is very important is the freedom to
make a living off good work. Personally I believe Free Software is good work.
This can be only a derived freedom. First has to come the freedom for the individual to live a good and comfortable life free of danger. It may be possible to achieve this freedom by means of selling your time and power for money. But this does not mean that making money is the only or the preferd way to reach this freedom. I'd dare to say that there are better ways to reach it and that one is shown by the removal of Free Software from the sphere of capitalistic utilization.
Of course, we could talk about social structures, capitalism, comunism and all other flavors lot of time... but, I don't think free software has anything to do with it. A capitalist system can be free, and a comunist system can be non-free; as they can be the other way.
IMHO, the fact is that currently most people has to live from his work, and programming free software is as good as any other profession. Do you have you car repaired for free? Can you travel around the world fo free? No. Why? Because all people that are helping you in those matters, need to live. And in today days, the "compensation" for that "help", the help a programmer gives his contractor when developing a free software the contractor *needs*, is money.
Maybe one day we'll go back to good/work "swithching" (sorry; don't know the exact english word for spanish 'trueque'); or maybe someone will invent a better system; but I think free software we'll be as good as now it is.
As Pim van Riezen stated quite correctly: the central goal of Free Software is freedom, not money. But there is nothing bad or unethical about making money with Free Software.
That's your postition which of course can be questioned. Since you don't question the goal of making money you of course can't ask any ethical questions about the status of Free Software concering commerce.
Making money is making your live go on, at least today. Changing that system, if you'd like to do so, is not a matter of freedom, and is something free software doesn't try to do.
Anyway, free software is changing big corporations slowly...
Regards,
Eneko Lacunza Enlar/RgBa : Where all begins
...
enlar@iname.com http://www.euskalnet.net/enlar
Hello, Stefan Meretz,
you wrote:
GPL says that it is allowed to take a fee for distributing free software, however this is only a means to balance some expenditure -- not the goal!
Here I agree.
However this fee must be nontrivial in order to compensate for the big lot of work which is necessary to produce the free software.
When I, as a Free Software programmer, ask my clients to pay such a significant fee, they sometimes say that the GPL only allows for a nominal fee - which is not true.
This is why we always stress that Free Software can be commercial.
We would prefer if it would not be necessary to make money at all, but In the world as it is right now we cannot survive without a monetary compensation for our work.
If you have free software which is inherently not scarce, you have to make other things around free software scarce in order to be able to sell free software or the things around. [...]
We so not make anything scarce - just the opposite.
Good programming services are inherently scarce.
Non-free software is artificially made scarce. It cannot be copied without loss of legality.
Initially, Free Software is scarce as well: It is written specifically on the demands of the user. Once it is released, it becomes less and less scarce because it can be copied without loss.
In the spirit of Free Software, nothing is made artificially scarce.
A fee is ok, but "making money" in Raymond style is against the spirit of GNU Manifesto.
It is not, as others have pointed out. The spirit of the GNU Manifesto is about freedom and has nothing to do with money.
Increasing freedom for people always implies reducing the opportunity for economy to make things scarce. Freedom finds its borders where the freedom of others is touched. Making things artificially scarce by companies touches freedom of the people. This has clearly explained by RMS in GNU Manifesto.
Exacly. Thus instead of _making_ things scarce we search for opportunities for economy where things _are_ scarce.
Hope this helps to clear things up a bit
Peter