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The Myth of Openness

In a world of technology openness is often treated as an imperative, something that has to be preserved or promoted as something inherently good. I’ve been a long time believer in this idea myself, but as I watch the evolution of technology I’m beginning to question its value and underpinnings. What exactly is it that makes openness worthy of a pedestal it’s often being put on?

I see two main reasons commonly being put forth:

1. The moral argument assumes a moral imperative to openness, or more precisely to the “freedom” that is seen underpinning it. Restrictions are seen as “immoral”.

2. The utilitarian argument is that openness facilitates a more vibrant marketplace and greater innovation.

The “Freedom” Myth

Both of these arguments, as well as common discourse on openness, seem to connote openness to freedom. If it is real freedom we’re talking about I would have no problem with these arguments and with the prioritization of openness. I doubt this is the case though. The word “freedom” seems to mean different things in different contexts. In a more colloquial sense it could simply refer to a lack of restrictions, but not necessarily to a state of being free, a state of not having basic moral rights violated.

Most technologies which proponents of openness would consider “closed” or restrictive would easily fall into the category where freedom (or lack of it) is being talked about colloquially. If you buy an iPhone do you really have your moral rights violated by the restrictions you agreed to upon purchasing it? Do you really become a mere slave, a minion in the Apple’s grand dystopian empire?

When real freedom is confused with a mere description of a lack of restrictions (even agreed upon restrictions) it is easy to color any and all restrictions as in some way “evil”, and therefore their opposite as an imperative.

Unfortunately, there are entire philosophies which do not believe this confusion to be a mistake, but rather encourage it wholeheartedly. For one thing there is a liberal tendency to describe freedom in a “positive” sense, describing freedoms *to* things, such as the “freedom to share”, “freedom to make copies”, “freedom to modify the source” and of course “right to free healthcare”, and the latest one “freedom of access (to the internet)”. This way of thinking tends to simply turn popular values into entitlements converted into “moral rights” or “freedoms”. Something that has become too important for too many people is all of a sudden, on that basis alone, considered a human right.

Sitting squarely within that camp is the Free Software movement with its “four freedoms”. If any software developer dares to offer software under terms which restrict any of these “four freedoms” the developer is seen as doing something immoral. If a user dares to agree to such terms when buying or downloading software the user is seen as “giving up freedom”, usually “for convenience”.

As might already be evident from my tone I wholeheartedly disagree with such philosophies. They tend to route around, and even actively attack, the idea of freedom of choice. If our moral imperative is to have a certain ability or thing that we’re all supposedly entitled to have by right then we are also saying that those who would provide such a thing have no choice, but to provide it.

This actually applies perfectly to the Free Software movement. The “four freedoms” espoused in the Free Software Philosophy are being put as a moral imperative over the freedom of a developer to choose the terms under which he would offer his work. Not only that, it also provides a moral imperative over user’s freedom to choose which terms to agree with. If the “four freedoms” are a moral imperative then everything that violates them should be eradicated.

It is this complete bypassing of the freedom of choice that makes such “freedom” philosophies suspect. Look at what they are targeting: agreements, specific kinds of agreements. They simply try to regulate what people may agree or disagree to. “Freedom of access to the internet” or “right to free healthcare” target disagreement with providing certain services for free. Free Software Foundation’s “four freedoms” like “freedom to share” target the users and developers ability to agree not to share. Why should such agreements be proclaimed as immoral? Why does the freedom to share trump the freedom to choose how you live your life?

I don’t believe my freedom is so much about the lack of restrictions as much as it is about my ability to make my own choices. Every choice is, after all, a choice of a restriction. If you choose to spend time on one activity you are effectively restricting yourself from spending time on another activity (supposing you cannot multitask between them). If you choose one item with one set of functions over another item with another you are effectively limiting yourself from the set of functions provided by the item you did not choose. If you choose to spend a thousand dollars on a fancy new laptop instead of on a new fridge you are again effectively restricting yourself from buying a fridge. The universe is full of restrictions. It is why we call them the “laws of nature”, and not “freedoms of nature”. Good luck butting against the fabric of the universe itself!

Just as much as I should be free to make any of these choices a developer should be free to choose the terms under which he is willing to offer his work, however restrictive or permissive they may be. I can choose not to agree or I can choose to agree and get what he’s offering.

That said, this isn’t to say there is no such thing as unreasonable terms. There certainly are, but if there are too unreasonable then, provided no government steps in to force certain (anti)market conditions, nobody will agree, and the unreasonable offer will fail.

Innovation Does Not Depend on Openness

As the technology continues to evolve we are seeing both “open” less restrictive ecosystems, and the more closed ecosystems thrive. On one hand we have the “open web”, and the Linux operating systems dominating the server, supercomputer and embedded markets. On the other hand we have “walled gardens” such as gaming consoles, Apple’s iOS devices, and various appliances.

My point in all of this is that neither of these two ways should take priority over either. There is no inherent advantage to being open or less restrictive, nor to being closed or more restrictive. So long as it is individuals making the choice of their own free will what really matters is whether we are advancing the technology industry, whether we are innovating, and whether we are providing a better user experience.

This leads me to the second reason people often put forth for prioritizing openness so much; that it fosters more innovation. I don’t really think this is necessarily the case. Not even freedom fosters innovation, it merely allows for it to happen, but as I’ve tried to point out above, what we’re talking about here when talking about openness and lack of restrictions isn’t even really freedom. If individuals are able to choose for themselves the freedom is still present. If they choose a platform that restricts some choices *within the confines of that platform*, that doesn’t mean they were not and are not free to choose another platform, or perhaps use multiple platforms at once in multiple different contexts.

I think saying that it is the open nature of a platform that causes innovation is like saying that a specific design of a car causes more innovation. This can actually be true, but this only means that the “openness” of a product is just one of its features. This puts openness on equal footing to any other particular product characteristic that may or may not be more conducive to innovation among its users. It certainly doesn’t mean that without openness innovation cannot and just does not happen.

What really drives innovation are needs and urges, which can manifest themselves in all kinds of environments, however structured they may be. There may be pressing problems that need solving or they may be a simple human desire to create something great, or it may be a competitive pressure from another company that motivates the need to create something better or lose business.

Once we get down to business of innovating, this innovation can happen through competition, cooperation or both, and it can just as well happen in closed environments according to the vision of a single person or a board, or it may happen in an open environment according to the consensus or network effect of a loose knit community. The important thing is that there is something that is creating at least one of these two basic building blocks of innovation: needs and urges (or desires).

If openness is so instrumental to innovation then how come that the poster company for a “closed mindset”, Apple, has been among the most innovative companies in the industry? If openness is such a key to innovation then how come Linux is still embarrassingly bad at certain tasks that the rest of the world finds completely basic (such as the multimedia stack)?

The worshipping of openness, and the moralizing of certain kinds of voluntary social structures over others is not only not conducive to innovation, it can actually stifle it. Free Software movement is a good, albeit perhaps extreme example. The point of the movement, as his founder and leaders will be very quick to point out, is absolutely not the innovativeness, quality or performance of the software that it produces. Instead it is the so called “freedom” of software users, according to a definition which apparently does not like the freedom of the user to choose what to agree or disagree with. Free Software advocates actively discourage the user or support of software that is actually more innovative, better performing and more satisfying towards users needs, if such software is offered under the terms they deem to be “wrong”.

That said, there certainly is a lot of Free Open Source Software which is very innovative, advanced, and provides a good user experience, but this is by far not a rule. There are some places where the open approach and the underlying social structures thrive, and others where they fail miserably.

What this points to is not that openness = innovation, but merely that openness can be one of the ways towards innovation, but not the only one. This is a far cry from a pedestal it is sometimes put on.

Therefore, openness is not paramount. Both the moral and utilitarian underpinnings for its sacredness fail under scrutiny. Neither is it the most “moral” way forward nor is it the most expedient way towards progress. It represents just one set of methods that sometimes works well and other times not, just like a multitude of other methods.

Dethroning The Myth

The values that I believe deserve far more attention, and should dethrone the myth of openness are these:

1. Freedom of choice. It is the most fundamental freedom, and it is a freedom to choose of one’s own free will. This does not refer to the guarantee of many choices. The multiplicity of choices is not the point. Multiplicity is a good thing, but it should not be forced. It should arise through the free choice of the individuals in the market. If we desire more choice than exists, we should build alternatives and foster competition, not moralize against those who choose differently.

2. User experience, quality, excellence, performance, advancement, providing true value. What we are trying for in the world of technology is to perpetually empower people to live happier and more fulfilling lives, to provide opportunities that were not possible before, and to do things better, cheaper and faster, but also with more meaning. Technology is about evolving and making our world better.

Whatever we do I believe it should not violate these two principles, and I do not posit this as a moral imperative at all, but rather as a mere proposition, or even simply a recognition of what actually works. Give me the freedom to choose, and a vision of something great, and we’re gonna be getting somewhere. Whichever method you choose to achieve these dreams are your right. You might want to open everything up, take a more networked and spontaneous approach, and see the magic unfold, or you might want to build a more rigid structure (ala Apple) based on your uncompromising vision of how the result should be. So long as those who participate do so voluntarily, I say go for it.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/silentcoder AJ Venter

    Your own article debunks itself on the moral argument. The very last paragraph you say:
    “ That said, this isn’t to say there is no such thing as unreasonable terms. There certainly are, but if there are too unreasonable then, provided no government steps in to force certain (anti)market conditions, nobody will agree, and the unreasonable offer will fail.”

    Right there – see. A government  has stepped in and forced anti-market conditions through a legally enforced monopoly right called “copyright”. If all source code was public domain by default, or software copyright terms were reasonable to the value-chain of software (about 2 years) as suggested by the Pirate Party in Europe then there would be no need for a Free Software Foundation. The GPL uses copyright to circumvent itself, if copyright was truly reasonable or better yet abholished in favor of a better system of reimbursement then perhaps we wouldn’t need it.

    Either way you sound like a typical American Libertarian and the real Libertarians from around the world can only stare in wonder at the stupidity that hijacked our philosophy. Capitalism is inherently anti-libertarian. True freedom can only exist in a state of true equality and economic inequality is just as much a destruction to freedom and a promotion of power-abuse as political inequality is.

    I believe in cooperations over corporations. Worker-owned businesses with no managers, where profits are shared according to your contribution (in time NOT investment). So the Engineer still earns more than the tea-lady (meaning you don’t have the communist lack-of-incentive problem) but there are no middle-men and managers siphoning off. More-over the profits actually go to the PRODUCERS, not to people who make absolutely no contribution back to the system (as in – just about EVERYBODY who gets rich in capitalism, investors and bond traders etc.). 
    Mutualism works. Everything else inevitably leads to exploitation (and yes having a “manager” at work IS exploitation) quite frankly the basic rights of employees in modern free countries are LESS than what was required to be given to slaves in ancient cultures !  Far, far less. 
    Freedom ? Without equality of means and equality of power there is no freedom. The only way to get there is direct contributive-democracy (every community represented by somebody whose ONLY mandate is to relay their votes up the chain – and who is instantly recalled if he EVER goes against their wishes even once) and mutualist cooperations.
    The Joseph Proudhom kind of Libertarianism. Which is very inherently and wonderfully socialist -but not state socialism, community socialism without anybody having power. State socialism tends to fail, To imagine the only other solution is unrestricted corporate exploitation of people and natural resources is stupid however.
    Non-state socialism as practiced in Libertarian and Anarchist communities around the world (and historically) is a much better solution. Go read up on the Catalonia Anarchism sometime.
     

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    • memenode

      The problem I see is that the Free Software movement, for instance, doesn’t just say “let’s undo the effects of copyright”. Their “four freedoms” provide a would-be “moral code” of their own which, as explained, actually stands in contrast to freedom of choice and fails as a moral philosophy.

      In other words, if you had the way of the FSF, “four freedoms” would simply become the new default copyright or worse. Following Richard Stallman’s uncompromising view of it he would make any terms which don’t adhere to the “four freedoms” philosophy illegal. He said so himself on multiple occasions (that “proprietary software should be illegal”).

      The paragraph you mention simply acknowledges the ability of the government to change the conditions in a way that stunts the ability of the market to work in filtering out the types of agreements which are widely considered unreasonable, but that doesn’t really debunk my argument with regards to morality. My argument is simply that the actual terms, regardless of whether they are expressed through a copyright license or a private contract, are not a moral imperative. The only valid moral imperative is for there to be voluntary agreement to these terms, which is to say, you bought the software and agreed to the terms of your own free will. So long as you were free to choose what the terms were doesn’t matter. If you chose them, your freedom is intact.

      If you’re curious, I explored the effect of “intellectual property” laws in a couple of articles on another site: here and here. It’s just a too big topic to fit in the scope of this article.

      As for libertarianism. If you’re curious, I’m a voluntaryist and an anarcho-capitalist, but I have some respect for mutualism in so far as it promotes the kind of society you envision as arising in a voluntary manner (and it has to if you’re serious about there not being a state). I think that anarcho-capitalist communities and businesses could very well exist side by side to the mutualist ones. We’re simply talking about different types of contracts being made between different people.

      It would be a mistake to see me as promoting corporations and corporatism though. Capitalism as we know it is a perversion, and “corporation” is actually a state creation. It is simply a merger of corporate and state power, not free market capitalism.

      Anyway, I believe George Donnely is a prominent mutualist AND voluntaryis. He’s a co-founder of the We Won’t Fly campaign. You can look him up at georgedonnelly.com. You might find his thoughts interesting.

      Regards

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      • http://www.facebook.com/silentcoder AJ Venter

        That’s just not true.
        The only allowable restriction on freedom is to protect the rights of others. The FSF says people have the RIGHT to do those four things, so it’s sensible to restrict other people’s ability to deny them that right.
        And your “choice to participate” argument is false – because nobody offers proprietary software to some people, and then lets anybody choose anything else (except to not use the software at all).
        RMS has solid arguments that incredible social harm is done by proprietary software, and the RIAA cases for example are feeding of that very harm, preventing recognizable and obvious social harm IS a valid restriction on freedom.

        The law restricts my ability to walk into your house and take your TV – because it’s says you have a right to your own property and prevents me from taking that right away. 
        RMS has said, and I agree, that when something runs on MY property (my computer) I have certain RIGHTS about it, to ensure my safety and prevent the abuse of my property – and that the law OUGHT to restrict other people’s ability to deny me that right.
        This is just sensible consumer protection – it’s as much a basic protection of rights as the one that says “free speech doesn’t mean you can write 1.5Kg on a bag of flour if it only contains 500 grams”.

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        • memenode

          > That’s just not true.

          What exactly in what I said is not true?

          > And your “choice to participate” argument is false – because nobody offers proprietary software to some people, and then lets anybody choose anything else (except to not use the software at all).

          That sounds really confusing. Letting people to not use that software at all IS letting them choose anything else. What’s the difference? If you think a developer should offer both FOSS and non-FOSS choices you’re denying the developer the right to make his own choice in what to offer.

          > RMS has solid arguments that incredible social harm is done by proprietary software, and the RIAA cases for example are feeding of that very harm, preventing recognizable and obvious social harm IS a valid restriction on freedom.

          That’s copyright at work, not just “proprietary software”. RIAA itself would not exist if it wasn’t for copyright. As for this “social harm”, that’s so vague as to be next to meaningless. What “social harm” is greater than the harm to one’s freedom to choose how to live your life so long as it doesn’t deny another one the same freedom (and choosing proprietary software certainly doesn’t).

          > RMS has said, and I agree, that when something runs on MY property (my computer) I have certain RIGHTS about it, to ensure my safety and prevent the abuse of my property – and that the law OUGHT to restrict other people’s ability to deny me that right.

          When it is you who agree to certain restrictions then it is YOU who are denying some “right” to yourself. The reason why you can even make that choice to begin with is because of your property rights. If a particular contracts effectively makes a particular purchase into more of a renting arrangement than an acquisition of property then so be it. If you chose to agree nobody took any freedom away from you.

          It’s really ridiculous to me how people claim their freedom has been violated after they themselves agree to a certain restriction. It’s irresponsible, childish, dishonest and dangerous, because it such people who end up being the real fuel for oppression.

          It’s like someone telling you they’ll give you 10 bucks to jump into a pool of cold water, you agreeing and jumping, and then accusing the person who now gave you 10 bucks for pushing you into the pool and making you wet. You didn’t have to jump! It was your choice that you did! Don’t now come around and literally LIE that someone forced you into something when that simply didn’t happen.

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          • http://www.facebook.com/silentcoder AJ Venter

            Okay… you obviously haven’t actually READ anything Stallman wrote except the four freedoms – everything you say has been answered and fully debunked. The social harm quantified and measured.

            Your ignorance is not a failure of the free software foundation, but of your own understanding.

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          • memenode

            You’re wrong there, I’ve read through the entire GNU.org and FSF.org back in the days, read a lot of Stallman’s interviews and articles elsewhere, watched a bunch of his speeches, attending one live, talked to him, and even wrote a number of articles supporting the Free Software philosophy all of which are still available and public on Libervis.com and Nuxified.org (my own sites). If you need proof just go to these sites and look for older articles.

            What I realized later on is that a lot of the social harm you’re talking about is due to a problem that is far more fundamental than proprietary software licenses or source code availability and has to do with the structure of our social system as it is. Most of it comes down to the “intellectual property” regime (which couldn’t exist without a government, in a true free market).

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    • Craig

      “I believe in cooperations over corporations. Worker-owned businesses with no managers, where profits are shared according to your contribution (in time NOT investment). So the Engineer still earns more than the tea-lady (meaning you don’t have the communist lack-of-incentive problem) but there are no middle-men and managers siphoning off. More-over the profits actually go to the PRODUCERS, not to people who make absolutely no contribution back to the system (as in – just about EVERYBODY who gets rich in capitalism, investors and bond traders etc.). ”
       
      Managers siphoning off?  I’ve worked as, and under, team leads in both house construction and software projects and in both cases the team was far more effective with someone coordinating.  Someone who helps keep track of the overall vision, communicating with customers, looking ahead for unexpected roadblocks… it’s difficult to say that there isn’t value being added.
      Sure, there are ineffective managers, much as their are ineffective engineers.  But let’s not whole sale write off classes of workers that are required in large complex systems that make up corporations today.  If you feel a small non-corporate environment is more efficient, then you have the freedom (As this article supports) to do that and reap the rewards, whatever they are.

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      • http://www.facebook.com/silentcoder AJ Venter

        > it’s difficult to say that there isn’t value being added.

        And impossible to say that the value added could exceed the insult to human dignity.
        Even then – the higher you go up the chain  -the less actual contribution to production is made, but the higher the authority.
        Enter the Peter Principle and other research mathematically proving that promotion systems in hierarchies *always* promote the worst characteristics (one study proved that you would see a 15% increase in productivity if you promoted by randomly drawing names from a hat over any other method in use currently) – and the very idea of hierarchical structure falls apart.

        All those FOSS projects have shared visions and coordination – and none of them have authority or managers. Only people whose views are particularly respected on the grounds of the quality of their work – all of whom can be instantly and completely ignored if people don’t like their suggestion.
        > If you feel a small non-corporate environment is more efficient
        I never said small. Mutualist cooperations with thousands of members exist in the world today. The largest fabric manufacturer in the USA is a worker-owned collective with no management structure at all. This isn’t about what makes more business sense anyway.
        Human rights first – financing it SECOND. 
        Finally – your very statement begs the question. You say “classes of workers needed in large corporations”. When I already PROVED that large businesses CAN be run successfully without workers being “classed” at all.
        When the entire FOSS ecosystem is built around exactly that. True some of the people involved have a boss with a job somewhere, they may even be working on FOSS projects as part of that job – but the FOSS project NEVER has a boss. Some people give leadership – but it’s a leadership purely out of respect earned by contribution and is instantly revoked. A brand new contributor WILL oust Torvalds on an issue if more people agree with his proposal. Torvalds has no actual authority, no power even of coordination – he is simply a respected voice, and that is the only thing ANYBODY can be- yet there is motivation, every kernel contributor dreams of being a respected voice one day. They all work hard to get there, and when they do – they are fully aware that they haven’t earned a status, they have merely been recognized for their work so far, that recognition goes away in an hour if they don’t keep up the quality.
        In the end, even the most respected voices write more code than they “manage”, in the end it’s only producers who benefit.
        That’s how it SHOULD be.

        Ultimately here is the big thing you’re missing. A 3000 member corporation will see about 50% of it’s nett income paid to executives, another 40% goes to middle management and only 10% to cover all the employees who do the actual work. In a 3000 member cooperation, 100% of that nett income gets divided among the workers, even if that total income really IS smaller than it would be in a corporation, each of those 3000 people have a much higher quality of life than a corporation could pay for, and none of them EVER have to say “yes boss”. 
        Ultimately – that beats every argument you’ve made, and every argument you possibly COULD make.
         
         

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  • oh my

    1. Freedom of choice.
    You’re gave example of an iphone before and this is just counter example of freedom. You have no choice and you’re being closed in stupid apple’s ecosytem. The openness gives you a freedom of choice. What stops you to use this or another software?
    2. User experience, quality, excellence, performance, advancement, providing true value.
    This one is great. Just compare Linux to os x and windows. Linux gives you much better performance, it’s far more advanced (os x and windows doesn’t scale…), provides you true value – you have thousands of applications to choose from for free. Linux has very high quality, so you don’t have to worry about viruses too much. The user experience is something you never get on os x or windows. You have plenty of DE’s to choose from and KDE’s the most advanced DE.
    Btw. you have just shown you have no idea what openness is about.

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    • memenode

      Are you forced to buy an iPhone? If not then you have the freedom of choice. Some people WANT what iPhone offers and do not mind the limitations that it comes with, and I believe they should have the right to make that choice, and conversely then Apple and other companies should have the right to provide that choice. 

      Once you choose something of your own free will it ceases to be a violation of your freedom. At best, if the restrictions you chose are beginning to feel too restrictive, you made a mistake on your own and should ditch the thing and choose wisely next time.

      That’s what I mean when I speak of freedom of choice.

      As for the #2, I accept that different people might have different ideas on what the best user experience, quality, performance and overall value is. If Linux is the best for you then that is what you should use. If it ever happens that you are using Linux just because you would feel guilty using something proprietary THEN you are compromising on this second goal, because you would be feeling guilty over a fake moral imperative.

      Regards

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      • Jose_X

        Hey, I think the main problem here is how people with significant levers (eg, large property rights protected by government and which give significant advantage in future business and income generation) are seen by those without those levers as being too exploitative of that leverage.

        A strong lever means that you go into combat with a tank against someone with a sword. And when you win, you get their swords as well to add to your arsenal. It also means you use your leverage to amass those who will support you against those you don’t like. Now, you might not use an actual tank except as a backup to the backup, but you likely still use leverage to deny significant access and pressure out of existence what/who you don’t support or find to be a threat.

        I believe in a government that is democratic and has checks and balances. Capitalism, in the US at least (from the 2007-8 gamefest, iirc, I remember you live in Europe though I can’t remember which nation — greetings, btw!) supports strong private entities but with limits. We can do better, definitely, and we can surely do much worse.

        There are good reasons why some groups accumulate responsibilities and acceptance in a market, but I’m guessing a popular view is that a few skills (business, trader, marketing) and past success and inheritance carries too much weight against the desire and “needs” by those not wielding it to have a more accessible playing field.

        The FSF stands for helping those with less access and few levers to have more access and leverage. You may not agree with all details, but they value user and citizen rights, especially when the government “of the people” is going to aim its guns into your house to force you to comply with various laws and some contracts. I find it hard to support a view that doesn’t recognize this FSF goal.

        Without copyright, much proprietary software would be reversed engineer and people would team up and wait for hacks. It’s the government enforced copyright restrictions that the GPL “fights” and fights so according to law: a voluntary agreement among individuals to support these copyleft/share-alike licenses and reject proprietary ones — where the full force of copyright law and the government are used to deny you access while they happily gain access over all public domain and BSD style copyrighted works.

        BTW, note that having freedom to chose means having freedom to violate an agreement, especially if you think the odds were stacked up against you. Are you supporting or denying that freedom? And what would you suggest should be how contracts be “enforced”? Reputation is a fair measure. Are you suggesting some sort of force be used against those having second thoughts?

        In practice, we need a civil system to pressure contracts to be met while at the same time avoiding as much violence as possible and not supporting nearly as much those with already large levers, especially since chances are they are no where near paying their taxes for the use of government forces to defend their large holdings (a continual tax on all wealth is one of the few ways to meet this obligation). Yesterdays’ wealth and access buys you an ongoing head start. That is unfair to most people.

        In short (as goes the FSF), the FSF has, among other things, contributed to the public a license with terms, at least for copyrightable material, that helps give the average person leverage against those who, for their own reasons, want to use public material but then want to use the government to fight against anyone who wants to try and access their proprietary material under different terms. With copyright law behind them, there is a lot of unfair leverage proprietary platforms can achieve. This is very problematic to a citizenry and to competition at least as concerns government use and software requirements. I don’t see anything wrong with a democratically passed law that requires openness among those doing X or Y business leveraging the taxpayers representative. Note that many people support the creators of works who sell scarce items without any need for copyright law. Most major corporations use their levers to amass these monopolies to use in the market place against everyone else.

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        • memenode

          Hello Jose, long time no see. :) You’re quite long winded as usual, so to balance out I’ll try to be brief. :P

          I have no problem with FSF and FOSS licensing as an alternative set of terms to create an alternative ecosystem. I am also not a supporter of copyright, nor do I support corporate use of government power to gain unfair advantages. I also believe a lot of the levers you talk about that powerful corporations have, are earned unfairly, though government force, and not just market action.

          What I am targeting here is the moral imperative that many Free Software purists (including Stallman) hold, and which is quite widespread in these circles. I think it’s dangerous for the same reason as I think it’s dangerous for a corporation to use government to gain advantages.

          This is also the same reason why I disagree with you that a government should mandate openness. All of these are just examples of locking in one particular set of choices by force.

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    • Craig

      “2. User experience, quality, excellence, performance, advancement, providing true value.
      This one is great. Just compare Linux to os x and windows. Linux gives you much better performance, it’s far more advanced (os x and windows doesn’t scale…), provides you true value – you have thousands of applications to choose from for free. Linux has very high quality, so you don’t have to worry about viruses too much. The user experience is something you never get on os x or windows. You have plenty of DE’s to choose from and KDE’s the most advanced DE.  Btw. you have just shown you have no idea what openness is about.“


      I use linux pretty much exclusively and like it.  But the first thing I think of when I think efficiency is usability design and not CPU/memory usage (although that’s nice too).  Sure there are tonnes of apps to pick from but the list of usability problems I make note of in even the most popular software is extensive, and the logging of those issues is largely unappreciated by the developers.  We are only just now getting into the era of usability (which is fair enough) but even the current versions of systems like Ubuntu lack an attractive backup/restore solution *installed by default* or a way to roll back the change that just borked your system.

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      • Jose_X

        The main headwind against open source and all other platforms is the status quo and network effects. If people stopped writing apps for Apple platforms and for Microsoft Windows, the open source alternatives (eg, Ubuntu) would benefit greatly. It would quickly become the hot platform with the hot apps you can’t find elsewhere. I’d like to get to the tipping point. I wish open source apps would more frequently support open platforms that respect them and shun closed platforms that don’t. There is surely a fight for the mind share of developers.
        Open source offers many developers a lot (especially as open business models gain more popularity and leverage.. difficult when NDA agreements, other contracts, network effects, hesitancy, and trade secrets to established protocols stand in the way). Open source offers users a whole lot extra.. and is in fact a major reason many proprietary vendors have had to open up more to compete (as well as to leverage a community of skilled individuals who supports those who share).

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        • memenode

          People write apps for Apple because this is more profitable, and because more people use Apple’s products.

          The only way you can change that is by making competing open source ecosystems more profitable and more popular. The only one who is managing to do that was Google with Android, but they too use a combination of closed and open.

          So you can talk about what the ideal is, and how many benefits you think open source offers for developers, it would appear that they’re not the benefits these developers seek.

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  • Fish R. Cynic

    Oblique fud.  Nice rant.  A closed market capitalist by your choice of verbage.
    What follows is a disjointed response due to time constraints etc.
    Also note that Apple does not “compete” in the “software” market.  It sells devices some which
    are software expandable and some that are not.
    Please define which moral system you live by, ie it appears you believe that you own what you
    you pay for { for your sake you really should read the Eula you choose to agree to.}
    Innovation is driven by laziness, in all cases it is simply to provide a quicker, not necessarily
    better, way to perform a task, The value derived is by marketing the product to others and
    hawking it for all you can get.  The key is marketing, the purpose of which is to subvert the
    freedom of choice into one choice, so a good ad campaign for a poor product is often chosen
    over a poor ad campaign for a good product.
    You are an I person of the me generation and that is your choice. Unfortunately in this world
    the I’s use groups for there own purposes (note no “moral” judgement) but due to the ever
    evolving social networks these groups are evolving into entities themselves.  A prime example
    of this are multinational corporations who have no vested interest in humanity other than as a
    source of income to appease its shareholders.
    (Note multi-million dollar donations are marketing again no moral judgement.)
    The I’s are rapidly becoming Us of the we generation, and mob mentality what it is,
    good luck with your freedom of choice. As a shareholder we all like a good monopoly,
    as a consumer we want choice and that is why companies market their own competing
    products to maintain the illusion.
    Life is full of choices including the right not to choose. Unfortunately marketing, lobbying etc.
    effectively remove the right not to choose in engineering legal social constraints which then
    have to be adhered to.
    Maybe the openness you are scared of is transparency.
    For example to a consumer:
    Apple sells devices.  You choose to buy or not. After purchase you choose to use or not.
    Microsoft sells software. This relies on someone else’s devices. If it doesn’t work
    its always someone else’s fault not Microsoft hence Windows compatible drivers etc.
    Consumer retail license one device usage.
    Open Source software -   This relies on someone else’s devices. If it doesn’t work
    its your choice to fix it yourself (as long as you adhere to the licensing)
    or don’t use it.  If it works use it on as many devices you want.
    This is real freedom of choice.
    All software sellers would prefer to sell the service of the application rather that the
    software package itself as this effectively prevents consumer ownership of the product.
    Beware the cloud.

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    • memenode

      If ad campaigns and marketing restrict your freedom to choose then your post does the same to me. You are simply advertising Open Source. Am I to say you are forcing me, through your words alone, to use Open Source only?

      I think you can see that kind of argument doesn’t quite work out.

      And no, I do not fear transparency. I wholeheartedly welcome it. I actually have no specific preference for open or closed, and more often than not I will choose open. The point is that whether it is open or closed is not what matters to freedom. What matters is that you are free to choose.

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      • Jose_X

        An earlier posting covered how much proprietary companies rely on taxpayer government to enforce their market position (by supporting laws that favor investors with large quantities of existing wealth). A government can help lower the overall level of violence while trying to maximize freedoms (so I support such a government over anarchy, for example), but it must work for the majority. Getting that to happen means to pass rules that lower the power past leverage can have in preserving that leverage over all future competition by influencing laws in ways not generally deemed reasonable by a majority of informed citizens.

        [Note that new titans of industry oftentimes benefit from past laws, so I generally am criticizing a system of influence in place, rather than specific laws passed by a current successful business. The point is to support consumers, citizens, and small investors and businesses to a greater extent than is currently the case -- ie, closer to per capita rather than per past earned government backed "dollar".]

        I don’t shun marketing either. It doesn’t make you do anything, but it can certainly lie, confuse, misrepresent, etc. I just wish the laws were more fair so that money would not so easily be able to use advertising to harm consumers and markets. Most people (you, me, ..) are experts in very few things and so, absent enough checks and balances, can easily be “herded” to create a network effect that makes life very difficult in the future for competition and other potential checks and balances.

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        • memenode

          More laws will make things worse. Every law a government makes inevitably gives someone an advantage, and puts someone else at a disadvantage, because all a law can do is forbid or mandate something by force.

          As for making laws that serve the majority, that’s what I call the “tyranny of the majority” (and am not the only one). What if proprietary software users and companies were the majority (and they pretty much are). Would you still support them making the law?

          No, you wouldn’t, and shouldn’t. Laws are not a silver bullet.

           

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  • freeweaver

    “1. Freedom of choice. It is the most fundamental freedom, and it is a freedom to choose of one’s own free will. This does not refer to the guarantee of many choices. The multiplicity of choices is not the point. Multiplicity is a good thing, but it should not be forced. It should arise through the free choice of the individuals in the market. If we desire more choice than exists, we should build alternatives and foster competition, not moralize against those who choose differently.”
    In the most part, you have made some good points however, you are assuming there is no motive for large companies to manipulate peoples perception of choice.  For instance, If you choose IOS as your platform for freedom,  you get to choose from ONLY that platforms choices.  In effect, the wealth of choices elsewhere, some of which may be better suited to you and what you want to achieve, will not be known to you.  I think they call it tunnel vision.  And as far as I know, a tunnel is not open like the sky is.  In fact,  Its very enclosed and only feels ok if you want to go in the direction it takes you.  Yes, IOS and its infrastructure has its place,  but when it gets so big that it can literally manipulate  the chioces on other platforms, such as the web (think video tag HTML 5) then they are infringing on my right to choose.  And this is the problem us freedom advocates have. It is not that these platforms exist but, more that they inevitably try to control choices of other people that do not want to be in their tunnel.
    This is not freedom of choice, is it?
    I think you might also be making the same mistake i have in the past were you assume that things will stay the same as there are. That we will still have freedom to choose as we currently do.  This is not the case!  It is without question that should Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, and all the other charmers, get into the position where they can control the web for there benefit,  we will see some very restrictive policies put in place.
    Please, if you haven’t already,  you might find it very interesting to watch a few Eben Moglen speeches.  Do a Yacy search for them.
     
     

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    • memenode

      Of course large companies wish to manipulate the perception of their products. That’s what branding and marketing is largely about. This, however, does not so much limit your freedom to choose as it perhaps limits your perception of what choices exist. This works only on people who don’t bother to do their own research and buy things only based on what ads tell them. I think the responsibility here falls as much on users and their willingness to stay informed (and basically care about what they’re getting themselves into) as it is the responsibility of companies to stay truthful in their advertising.

      And speaking of truthfulness, I will agree that when a company outright lies in their ads or creates a perception that is defacto not consistent with the truth, that they are effectively trying to commit fraud. I do not support that.

      As for changing policies. The fact is that due to the proliferation of draconian copyright policies and continued hijacking of government power by the corporations our freedoms in general have already been severely compromised. Whenever a corporation uses government power to create favorable conditions they are overstepping the bounds of moral behavior, and I’m afraid ALL of them do so. That’s the corporatist system we are deeply intertwined with. It is not quite a free market.

      This doesn’t, however, change the fact that if you go to an Apple Store, for instance, and buy something from them, sign the agreement, that either you or Apple did anything immoral. You were free to decide whether to do that or not, and therefore your freedom in that specific case was not violated.

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      • freeweaver

        @memenode
        It seems you haven’t addressed the main concern I pointed at.  The fact that these companies, the ones we are all referring to, are so big as to manipulate EVERYONES choices. Not just the ignorant.
        In fact, it is because there will always be a majority ignorant to the development of computers and the corresponding technology that companies are able to push through policies which inhibit the development of  alternatives to the proprietory model.
        This is not the fault of those that don’t know, as they are busy looking at the things they are interested in. Other important issues which plague us in the  real world.  Like for instance, Codex alimentarius and it’s genocidal  food directives.

        The issue of freedom to choose has never been about which model is best for your everyday digital needs.  Its about stopping one software/hardware model, based on lockin tech from manipulating a market of unknowing individuals.  Which in turn limits everyone’s ability to do things how they choose.  And the only way I can reason to do this, is to provide an alternative for free.
        If you were once a free software advocate, I would suggest you have moved in a very worrying direction.  One where you assume that all the problems of copyright and its restrictive nature, is the fault of the ignorant.  That seems a little elitist, doesn’t it?  I mean, its very much the opinion of those trying to implement draconian restrictions isn’t it?
         
         
         
         

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        • memenode

          I think I actually did address that. These companies are corporations who are intertwined with state power so like I already said they do try to use government power to their advantage, which is using government violence to manipulate market conditions and therefore the choices that are available within it.

          I’m in no disagreement over that fact. What I attack here is simply the idea that a different kind of a license or contract to the ones approved by the FSF is somehow morally wrong. That’s simply not true. That’s not where the issue is. The real problem is this intertwining of government and corporate power. If THAT didn’t exist they would NOT be able to manipulate markets and restrict alternative models.

          If you haven’t figure it by now from the above, I AM anti-copyright. I want to see it abolished. It is the part of the real problem. It’s not specific licenses or specific kinds of terms, nor is it the availability of the source code or not. It is the copyright law, and other laws which provide some set of corporations certain advantages they didn’t earn through the market.

          The reason I ceased being a Free Software advocate is precisely this; seeing that the problem runs far deeper than what license you choose or whether there is source code. The Free Software movement is hacking the branches, but it is not striking at the root of the problem. On top of that it is spreading a dangerous exclusionary and potentially tyrannical meme of its own by promoting a false moral imperative. Not only is it doing very little to solve the fundamental cause of the problem, but it’s creating a problem of its own.

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          • Jose_X

            Share-alike license fight copyright law and levers exploited through copyright law.
            When enough leverage exists through copyleft/share-alike licenses, copyright law is much more likely to become much fairer and also more people will be much more vocal about seeing such change.
            Are you aware of all of the people who have voluntarily chosen to contribute their work to the public (as is essentially the case) by using the FSF’s primary product, the GPL license (at least as “voluntarily” as someone chooses proprietary software)? How can you say that doesn’t help the problem? It creates an infrastructure of people aware of the law and who shun the current abusive system? It’s people sharing legally and voluntarily each others’ contribution rather than feeling pressured to succumb to “piracy” as the tool for sharing information and to more easily contribute to society.
            Again I’ll say that the FSF’s GPL license fights against those who support the current law allowing some to take the works of those who want to collaborate and use it to advantage in the market place without sharing their own work back. Don’t you support fairness? How can you support a firm’s legal right to use the government to punish those sharing their work in unauthorized fashion yet not support those who make it easier to grant and to gain authorization legally?
            Software is very crucial to society. It is very complex. Participation by a large group requires rules of the road. Open source provides that in ways not approached by proprietary firms. Open source empowers many while proprietary systems are a fight to monopolize and control all the rules. Network effects are real and so is the leverage of copyright law (backed by strong military). Also real is the harm that exists in supporting few to have many secrets and control in important areas of society.
            I am sure much more can be done by them and by anyone, but I don’t see why you would penalize the FSF for not doing everything humanly possible for us (and they do more than just the GPL and host much new open source), as the required work to fix the laws is in fact a collective responsibility we all share and don’t fall solely on their shoulders.
            Maybe you meant to say that you support the FSF but wish X or Y were being done in addition.
            With all due respect, every year or so I read a piece you put out (and maybe you write much more that I don’t read) that again supports the rights of people to close things up, while criticizing the FSF’s approach and words. While you say this, you claim you really support openness.

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          • Jose_X

            >> While you say this, you claim you really support openness.

            Too bad I can’t hit the “redo button” as it took a mere second for me to regret having ended that comment inaccurately as I did.

            I think one can support the FSF without supporting everything one may have heard their President or anyone else say or might wish. We all have our own distinct opinions and variations of a theme.

            Anyway, I think you are fighting efforts to restrict options, but you should keep in mind that current law being exploited daily by these large firms restrict the rights of others. They restrict the right (and remove incentives) to reverse engineer to come up with higher quality products and which are less secretive products usable against users’ future best interests.

            When you criticize the FSF and fail to do justice for what they are fighting and consider existing restrictions they fight, you might have a better chance to make the news lines (at least in the FOSS world). It’s dangerous!! ;-)

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          • memenode

            I support the right of every individual to choose for himself, including both the right of people to “close things up” or “open things up” equally (provided they are theirs to close or open up to begin with. This is a fundamental freedom, and it sucks that you and so many other people seem to have some kind of a problem with it. Everyone wants their opinion to be forced on others. Why is it such a problem if someone chooses something different than you?

            I no longer support the FSF because they put the moral imperative where it doesn’t belong. The only difference then between FSF and some corporation or a government is that their version is a bit more open, a bit more free, but it’s still a choice that they want to force upon others if they ever got a chance to.

            Now, I agree not everyone supporting FSF wants such things, and in so far as it is simply an effort to work within the system to ease things up a little I’m fine with it, but it is not enough for me to cast myself as a de-facto FSF supporter. If I did, then I would give legitimacy to a set of ideas I find dangerous.

            I mean, communists can do some great things. Does that mean I should align myself with communism? Absolutely not, because as good as the things some communists do are, their ideas are too dangerous for me to identify with them.

            I have to emphasize though that when it comes to software, I am not suddenly pro-closed and anti-open. I believe both to be equally valid choices. Please keep that in mind, because I have a feeling you’re seeing me as some kind of an enemy now just because I don’t want to accept openness and Free Software as “the only way”.

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  • ricegf

    Interesting, but not really fair to put words into advocates’ mouths just because you don’t like them. I’ve read quite a bit of rms, and never heard him advocate “eradicating” non-free products by any means other than educating users about the importance of controlling their own computing experience.

    Having experienced the negative consequences of vendor-controlled products, I’ve concluded he is right – and so I prefer to purchase products that respect the user’s freedom.  It really is just that simple, your verbal gymnastics notwithstanding.

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    • memenode

      RMS has stated on multiple occasions that “proprietary software should be illegal”. I do not wish to put the words into his or anyone elses mouth, but I think that this does speak of a goal of eradicating the choice of agreements which don’t adhere to the “four freedoms”.

      That’s what moral imperatives in general do. If something is a moral imperative then anything that violates it is automatically immoral, and this for human beings typically means that anything that violates it should be eradicated. This is why it’s so dangerous to put moral imperatives where they don’t belong.

      It is not wrong to offer or use Free Software (by whichever definition), but it is not wrong to offer or use software which is not either. Your preference, either way, is just fine.

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  • tadeas

    [quote]
    I see two main reasons commonly being put forth:
    1. The moral argument assumes a moral imperative to openness, or more precisely to the “freedom” that is seen underpinning it. Restrictions are seen as “immoral”.
    2. The utilitarian argument is that openness facilitates a more vibrant marketplace and greater innovation.
    [/quote]
    Sorry, but you obviously don’t get what we mean by openness or freedom. I suggest you check fsf.org to get some background and read about some practical advantages (or disadvantages) of open source (with enough eyes all bugs are shallow etc.).

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    • memenode

      I did. I used to be an uncompromising Free Software purist. :)

      Practical advantages would fall under the utilitarian argument. If we can’t put all of them under “greater innovation” then fair enough. Add “more efficient development model”, “better security” etc. to the list. They all still fall under the utilitarian argument though.

      I agree to some of the alleged open source advantages, but I don’t think they apply in absolutely all cases.

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  • biq

    I think that freedom of choice in software is available… because of open software. I will not elaborate this opinion, just think about it yourself. The methaphoric point is that if someone have a key from a golden door he will it be tempted to lock it sooner or later.
     

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    • memenode

      Obviously, the availability of various open source software adds to the pool of available choices and puts competitive pressure on others. This is great, and I support that. It is still quite possible for there to be many options in the market none of which are open source though, and this would be fine too.

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      • Jose_X

        You support the right of proprietary companies to lean on copyright law and the US military to force people not to share digital copies or reverse engineer?
        You criticize a group that makes it much easier to collaborate and give consumers and more investors leverage in a legal fashion?

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        • memenode

          What kind of a BS rhetoric is this? What does US Military have to do with any of it?

          If you agree not to share, of your own free will, then you made a restriction on yourself that the other person is holding you to. If you break the contract you should pay the damages or whatever the contract stipulated, because that too was something you agreed to.

          I in no way, however, support someone forcing you to agree to the terms that forbid sharing. If you don’t want such restrictions, don’t agree to them!

          What I criticize are the very specific dangerous ideas that this group is promoting, and which don’t even stand to scientific scrutiny. If you want to make that into some kind of a declaration of war on that group that’s your delusion to take. Otherwise you might want to understand that staunchly opposing one thing a group does doesn’t mean opposing absolutely everything they do, but this doesn’t mean I’m gonna carry their banner either.

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  • Andy

    I enjoyed your article and thought it was well balanced. Everyone uses both closed systems all the time, though they might not realise it. Where are the “open” cars, refrigerators etc? Why do people decry Apple but happily purchase a Ford? Most of the world is closed.

    As you suggest, forcing everyone to use open systems is not freedom at all! I choose to use Linux and FOSS whenever I can, but I don’t feel guilty if I choose to use proprietary software sometimes.

    Andy

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    • Jose_X

      Cars are not intangible information (as is software). What analogy were you trying to make?
      I don’t donate cars on a daily basis, but I do “donate” information all the time. This can be done because of the fundamental difference between information content and material products.

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      • memenode

        Almost all devices, including cars, have some kind of software in them, so that software matters.

        Also, there are such things as schematics and blueprints of physical items. Not a lot of fuss is raised about the unavailability of these for physical devices either.

        So the analogy he makes is quite valid in so far as information IS involved.

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  • IsThisAtroll

    Now, as I understand it this article is based mainly on two arguments. That innovation is a product of capitalism (whits is a valid point).
    Capitalism can drive innovation, except for when one or a consortium of players reach a form of monopoly. This is always bad for the consumer and stifles innovation (take the cable networks).
    The problem whit exp Apple is that it locks consumers and entrepreneurs into a system whit a lot of hassle if you ever want to leave that ecosystem, just look at iTunes and the 30% app tax. If Apple had a 90% market share whit no competitor, what would stop them from demanding 50% or 60% app tax from developers.
    Oh and while we are talking about Apple, to you’re second accusation:
    closed and open businesses thrive, and none is preferable.    
    Where would Apple be whiteout open source. in world where open source didn’t exist where would that leave you’re grate Apple. where would OSX be without freeBSD, samba,X.org  and so on, where would the iphone, ipad, ipod touch be without OpenGL and webkit.
    more importantly where would the Internet be without OpenSource.

    There is one thing i do see you’re point that closed source is “Evil” (les moral). There is no shame in going the old of selling software and there is a balance in all things, but with that said, there is a good feeling of giving you’re work to the world, and sharing is sort of more moral in the sens that it’s better for others if you do, trying to make a better is more moral than always looking out for number one always.

    Most of you’re points about software is a bout that last 30% of software, which I would argue is more about design then coding.
    User experience is one of the places where floss software has lagged behind.
    But I’ll point to Ubuntu as a flagship project that is leading design into Floss territory this last couple of years, and if you get the chance look at gnome 3, you can say a lot about gnome 3, but it’s not ugly.

    So I hope I’ve enlightened you or anyone that takes heed to this blog post, I argue open is better and should be encouraged where possible.

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    • memenode

      “Capitalism” as we know it is perverted and is more correctly called “corporatism”. It is the merger of state and corporate power. Instead of having to gain advantages by solely serving their customers most corporations also seek advantages through lobbying and effectively trying to buy government’s violent power. This leads to oligopolies and monopolies.
      This is why advocate capitalism as separate from the state, or completely absent of state, but that was beyond the scope of the article.

      As for the ecosystem lock in and hassle of getting out, I think developers should be the last ones not to know what the deal is before getting into it. A lot of them apparently choose that trade off because of the benefits that this ecosystem offers. And again, they’re free to make that choice.
      Same goes for the users. They tend to be a little more ignorant, but ignorance is hardly an excuse. We shouldn’t deny people the freedom to choose just because they sometimes make arguably stupid choices.

      Also, you’re right about a lot of closed systems being dependent on some open systems. I think this simply has to do with which method is better for what purpose. I suppose this is why Mac OS X, iOS and Android are effectively a blend of both closed and open. Still, Apple is largely a closed ecosystem and a closed culture, and I think this had a lot to do with the final user experience they are able to provide.

      Take for instance the problems Android Market is facing regarding the low quality of apps, spammy apps etc. compared to Apple’s App Store. This is openness vs. a closed system in action. Google is more open, but that also means more crap. Apple is very strict about what they approve, but the result is an arguably nicer and higher quality selection of apps.

      Sometimes open is better, other times closed seems to be better. That said, I have no problem with your choice of encouraging openness where possible, so long as it is not falsely advertised as a moral imperative or something that is *always* the best choice no matter what.

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      • Jose_X

        >> I suppose this is why Mac OS X, iOS and Android are effectively a blend of both closed and open.

        So you criticize the FSF’s very lax license terms, yet support these large companies using all sorts of levers against competitors, developers, and consumers?

        If copyleft licenses “took over” and proprietary was hard to develop on a competitive basis, would you say:

        “I suppose this is why Red Hat Linux, Ubuntu and FooBarLinux are effectively almost entirely open.”

        >> Google is more open, but that also means more crap.

        I’ll take the assumed validity of this statement at face value.

        Now, what makes you think this has any more to do with the source code issue than with the difference in service provided by the hosting firm (Apple vs Google) at this point in time in keeping out more options of a particular nature (like the “crap”)?

        Apple/Jobs has a history of being selective in many respects, for better of worse. If Jobs took over Google and was forced to remain somewhat open source for a while, he would likely start adding more restrictions immediately.

        Of course, I am fairly sure you support the freedom of people to write crap and have it be presentable to the world. You also support third parties writing reviews and software to help more easily categorize software (wheat and chaff) and third parties to provide fee services for their clientele to provide cohesiveness and a filter.

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        • memenode

          I didn’t even criticize license terms in this article nor anywhere in this thread. I’m criticizing the idea that this type of license terms is the only moral type, and that other choices are immoral.

          In so far as these levers include the use of government or any other type of coercion I don’t support these big companies using them. I don’t support the FSF or anyone else using these levers either.

          I’m not sure what’s your second point.

           

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  • Roland

    You should have started this article with Stallman’s 4 freedoms. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html. You should consider a career in either marketing or propaganda.
     

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    • memenode

      Why should I have started with them? 

      Marketing and propaganda are forms of communication, and like in all forms of communication honesty is paramount. I realize a lot of marketeers break this rule, but whatever your sentiment towards this article, I guarantee you that it is written as an honest expression of what I know and believe. You are free to agree or disagree.

      Regards

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  • ali65

    Openness is not a myth and freedom is not a myth. Trying to say that is act of anti-freedom.
    Closeness has its own and absolutely not immoral place in the word and openness has it too.
    When individuals or companies invest their money in product, they have the right and it is moral not to openly share it with everyone, and use the secrecy for their own advantage.
    But when my government invest in products which are not open, it is hard to believe it can be moral.

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    • memenode

      I didn’t say that openness or freedom were myths, but referred to myths that are about them. Openness exists and there is such a thing as true freedom, but there are also lots of myths about them.

      With the rest I agree, except the thing about government investing, which is a very hairy issue. Government itself is immoral in my view.

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  • rabinnh

    I love open source, and I contribute some of my work.  On the other hand, I am a software engineer, and my family has to eat.
    I agree with the post’s argument about the Free Software.  I support it as a matter of choice, but I do feel that any time I work on proprietary software I am viewed as “impure” by the Open Source community.
    If I work for hours or years on a project, and the “community” as “a right” to the fruits of my labor, isn’t that the definition of at worst a slave and at best a forced laborer in a communistic society?
     

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    • memenode

      That’s indeed what you get with moral imperatives such as this. Someone’s freedom is actually severely violated, all in the name of “freedom”. What you are saying is an excellent example of why “freedom” according to the Free Software movement is a fake.

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      • Jose_X

        >> If I work for hours or years on a project, and the “community” as “a right” to the fruits of my labor, isn’t that the definition of at worst a slave and at best a forced laborer in a communistic society?

        >> That’s indeed what you get with moral imperatives such as this.

        [Mostly addressing the sw dev:]
        Why.. the GPL doesn’t affect anyone if the person don’t use GPL code in the first place.

        And who says that GPL means you can’t make money?

        I and most working folks on the planet perform a service for a living and don’t make any royalty on the fruits of our labor. I know people who make a living teaching and writing GPL software as well as those or others who make money customizing open source solutions for people willing to pay for this time and expertise.

        So the GPL doesn’t attack very much at all if you don’t leverage it. And if you do, it can actually be a way to broaden your reach and quality of product and improve your brand to potentially more easily make a living specifically on that software.

        I suppose it’s fair game to use GPL software yet criticize the license’s (anti-closeness) restrictions.

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        • memenode

          You’re gravely missing the point. It wasn’t about GPL being against making money. It was about the idea that someone has a moral obligation to release under a Free Software license regardless of whether he wants to or not, essentially making that developer into a slave to someone’s wishes.

          It is not always going to be the best choice for the developer, and often it might be one he can’t make money on, but if you say he’s morally obliged to make that choice anyway, you’re imposing your will on him.

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  • Wayne Borean

     
    It’s obvious you’ve spent a lot of time thinking of this. It’s also obvious that you don’t know a lot about Apple and how they work.

    Apple is one of the biggest Open Source companies around. They contribute heavily to a variety of projects, without which Apple could not successfully operate. Their entire software stack is based on open source tools which allows Apple to leverage thousands of programmers that they don’t have to directly employ.
    Over 90% of the most successful Open Source projects use a license recognized as Free by the Free Software Foundation.  I’m saying over 90% because I don’t have time to go dig for the exact numbers right now. There are sociological reasons that Free Software licenses are more successful in the Open Source marketplace than other Open Source software licenses. In particular the ‘Copyleft’ licenses are attractive to programmers because the guarantee programmers a ‘Payment’ for use of their software.
    Open pays off big time. There’s this little thing called the ‘Network Effect’ that you’ve ignored. The network effect first became noticeable when our early ancestors evolved enhanced speech capabilities (see the work being done by anthropologists in Africa) which allowed them to communicate better than the large carnivores that hunted them. This allowed them to communicate survival skills, weapons making techniques, crop growing, etc. Recently Archaeologists have been amazed at the evidence of how widely trade was carried out in the Bronze age by groups such as the Beaker Peoples. Again, the network effect was responsible for a general rise in standard of living for the entire human population. The same thing happened when writing was invented, when the printing press was invented, when the telegraph and radio was invented. Why should things be any different in the 21st century when we invent new technologies to communicate in an open manner?
    All widely driven scientific advances have come in times of openness. Consider the Royal Society, which was the first attempt to vet scientific investigations, and ended up driving them faster and further than they’d ever been driven before?
    The internet and it’s underlying technologies, which have evolved so quickly that none of the commercial competitors have been able to compete, except in very limited areas (i.e. by monopolizing the market – Apple/ITunes by signing agreements with the labels which limited their abilities to deal with anyone else for years for example).
    How about Libre Office which since it forked from Open Office has seen one release, and is near to a second. Or Ubuntu with it’s 6 month release cycle. Microsoft is unable to keep up.
    The abandonment of closed academic publications because feedback is too slow for science to develop.
    The dangers of closed science (thalidomide anyone?)

    Or for that matter, what happened to the band One Soul Thrust. Their manager thought he’d found evidence that they’d been massively pirated. If he’d put the evidence on the table, and asked for advice, he would have learned that he’d been duped by a fake ad that some less than scrupulous sites use to grab your credit card number. Instead he published his claims, and when I debunked it, we had a real donnybrook. I ended up calling in Torrent Freak to intermediate, and they showed that I was right, there was no pirating involved. I hadn’t seen his evidence, I just knew that there weren’t any torrents, and thought he was playing some game of his own. I hadn’t considered that possibly he didn’t know about some of the slimier net denizens.
    CRIA Watches Massive Music Piracy Crisis Devastate Unknown Band
    And god knows there are some pretty slimy people on the net.
    Wayne
     

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    • memenode

      I mentioned the network effect in the article:

      “Once we get down to business of innovating, this innovation can happen through competition, cooperation or both, and it can just as well happen in closed environments according to the vision of a single person or a board, or it may happen in an open environment according to the consensus or network effect of a loose knit community. The important thing is that there is something that is creating at least one of these two basic building blocks of innovation: needs and urges (or desires).”

      I’m not opposed to openness nor Free Open Source Software. I’m opposed to treating it as a moral imperative (a very dangerous thing because it leads to the forceful regulation of individual choices), and to the idea that innovation can happen ONLY through openness. Instead of it being the primary thing I think it is just one of the ways towards innovation, even if it is good for innovation more often than not. When we look at what drives innovation openness becomes only a facilitating feature, not the fundamental condition. The real drivers are needs and desires.
      Even if Apple depends on Open Source I think it would still be a mistake to say they don’t crucially depend on the closed part of their strategy as well. It is my dream for Apple to make Mac OS X open source, but I also very much realize what kind of a risk this may be to their business and their whole identity. There’s also an App Store as an example. People tend to lambast Apple for being so controlling towards what gets in, but it does allow them to create a unique tiered experience. 

      And I think a lot of this Apple experience owes to the closed parts of Apple’s strategy. They want to be the ones to shape the Apple experience so they don’t want others to rain on that parade. There is a specific vision of how things should look, feel and function like, and the multiplicity, disagreements, forks etc. which come with openness are not conducive to that. I see no problem with that, except where they use the government force to exert more control than they should or need to.

      Apple isn’t the only example of how a closed strategy, at least as a part of the overall strategy, can result in a better user experience. There’s also Android, perhaps Windows 7, and even Ubuntu in some ways. It would appear that there are things with which a more closed, centralized approach works better than an open bazaar-like approach which ruins the idea that innovation is *always* tied to openness in all things. 

      And obviously, I say this is fine, so long as I am free to choose what I prefer. If I really dislike anything that is developed according to the vision of a single person or company then I wont be supporting or buying that stuff. I wont moralize against it though, so long as no force is used to compel people to make a particular choice.

       

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      • Jose_X

        How can you be fine with Apple using copyright and patent law to stifle both competition and many users’ desire (wish for freedom) to use information they come across?
        There is no such thing as complete freedom, but you seem to be fine with Apple’s restrictions and abuse of government yet caution against the much less restrictive approach taken by the FSF.

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        • memenode

          Again, in so far as Apple uses laws to *force* people to choose something (in which case it’s not really a choice) I do NOT support that. But if it is YOU who chooses to agree to certain restrictions then obviously you do not have as much of a desire to share. So what’s the problem?

          I’ve clarified myself enough in other posts. I don’t support “government abuse”, and said restrictions are fine only when someone agrees to them. What I target about FSF is specifically where they moralize against people freely making choices different from those they prescribe.

          If you have so much of  a problem with people choosing differently than you then I have nothing more to say to you.

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  • Hans Bezemer

    This is so stupid that I don’t know where to start. Freedom can be defined as the “ability to do”. It’s pretty obvious I “can’t do” certain things if it’s closed source. It’s pretty clear that the ability to stand on the shoulder of giants enables people to disregard the details, but to go on after that. It has been an established principle in the scientific world for centuries. The current IP properties laws have been based on the principle that people won’t invest resources when they can’t get any revenues on that. Needless to say that nowadays IP laws do exactly the opposite. IT technology is different in that respect that you don’t need large investments in order to make something useful. Distribution and production of items is almost zero cost. This defies certain principles our forefathers couldn’t understand, let alone lay down in law.

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    • memenode

      If freedom is just an ability then why not just call it an “ability”? Also, what then is “power” if it doesn’t refer to abilities? 

      Also, I never defended IP laws nor do I believe in them.  I do believe in agreements, and the right of any individual to make them. If someone will provide something only under certain conditions you have to agree with if you want to get it, nobody should stand in the way nor call this somehow “immoral”. Sometimes conditions will be less restrictive, sometimes more, and sometimes there will be none. Individuals should determine for themselves what to agree with. Calling some agreements immoral and others “freedom” is what’s stupid. It’s just assuming your values must be shared by everyone else.

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