My capitalist motive requires that the yucky viral non-incremental value of your post be repatriated from my brain and back into yours.

Sorry, I don't follow what you're trying to say.

This is your opinion. I will not even attempt to say it is not a valid opinion: a lot of people I know hold this opinion, and at least in the short term it seems to be a consistent opinion. I think there is an interesting discussion to be had "in the long term", but it is just that: a discussion. However, I am going to assert that it is, in fact, an opinion. The thing you need to understand is that the other side of this particular opinion does not actually care about either "#_advances_open_sourced" or "%_advances_open_sourced": the goal is freedom, not openness, and these are assets that are neither equivalent nor convertible.

To put this into a very simple example: if Apple open sourced every single software component on the iPhone, that would be extremely "open". We would know everything about how the iPhone worked, and we'd have learned a lot as a community about how to build mobile phone operating systems. This would help other people and companies work on mobile phones, and might have positive effects on things entirely unrelated to mobile phones. To the people who care about variables related to "#_advances_open_sourced", this would be a great outcome, and "%_advances_open_sourced" is even 100%: seems great.

But, in such a universe, I will argue that the users of an iPhone are still not "free" because they are unable to take the software running on their iPhone and replace it with modified software based on all of that wonderful open source code. In fact, lest you say "people then shouldn't buy an iPhone", it might be the case that users of any device are not free, because there is absolutely no guarantee in such a universe that any of the numerous devices that are based on this open source software--even if 100% of the software on these devices is itself open source--actually allow users to modify the software running on them (hence, GPL3).

This is the difference between "free" and "open", and in my understanding this is why Stallman makes the points he makes: he doesn't care whether there are more cool and fun toys built out of open components, what he cares about is whether the toys we have restrict our freedom. It might be that a world where we are more free has fewer toys. In my interpretation, Stallman would consider that a "win" for mankind. In his mind, that argument "so don't buy an iPhone" seems to be related to the argument "so don't link against their code", and he wants people to stop: the idea is that if you don't like people restricting freedom, you should actively avoid yourself supporting it.

(So, that's all I really have to say in response. However, if you--or anyone else--finds this kind of stuff interesting, I spent a lot of time a few months ago writing a lot about this subject, and in particular this tradeoff, in a comment thread on Hacker News when FreeBSD deprecated gcc. Of particular highlight, I go into detail on the property that GPL is more a license about binaries and hackability as it applies to end users than about source code and extensibility as it applies to developers, as well as why this causes debates about this subject among a bunch of developers to be problematic, due to the different incentives developers have from end users.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6209724

My biggest issue with gpl/copy left is that it is a _kind_ of freedom obtained by forgoing other freedoms. It isn't a more _free_ platform, it is a more _open_ platform.

If I work on a gpl product I give up important characteristics of ownership in that work. I lose certain freedoms to gain others.

I define freedom as the ability to do as I wish. The gpl restricts that, and thus can't be said to be totally free.

The gpl is an interesting and in many ways compelling philosophy, but it ties you to its philosophy - it doesn't allow you the freedom to follow your own.

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You mention long term value. I think that, like the medicine patent system, copy middle gives us higher long term ecosystem value at the expense of short term value. I should put my assumptions into an economic simulation some time and really model out the question of in which circumstance copy middle vs copy left gives higher long term value.

All freedoms are inherently subjective: freedom from slavery is a restriction on owning other people. This is why this discussion is so hard: the people who have to choose a license are the people who have to give up freedoms for others to be more free. One argument is that the second groups of people (end users) happens to superset the first group of people (developers) and is fundamentally larger. To maximize freedom thereby would have the developers "take the hit" (although again: developers are users, too). This is, in fact, precisely what I spent so much time a few months ago discussing: I encourage you to read what I wrote then, such that I need not repeat myself endlessly here. To be very clear: I directly address your entire concern about relative and subjective freedom in that precious discussion.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6209724

As for your comments on the short vs. long term issues related to "#_advances_open_sourced", I think that is an interesting discussion to have at another time, as it is off-topic today: Stallman, as I have argued, does not care about attempts to maximize "value" in the way you have defined it, whether in the short or long term; instead, he has defined "value" as "freedom", and I imagine (or at least hope) that a future where mankind is living without all the fancy toys we have, but where the things we have we actually own ourselves, with nothing between us and modifying those things in the way we please would be a "win". All attempts to maximize the thing you care about are, to him, probably nothing more than a distraction. Again: that's not to discredit the things you care about; it is only to say that the goals themselves are mere opinions that people have, and that to understand others requires thinking in their terms.

A copyright license is not a case of balancing rights between two people.

The GPL can be described in pure terms of personal rights provided to the recipient of the software. It declare that a user has the right to be left alone when they run, modify or share the program. That naturally include not being harassed by legal or technical measures by whoever provided them with a copy, be that version modified or not.

There is no trade offs between different parties. The right to be left alone, or negative rights as its called by philosophers and political scientists[1], has a long history. It is also not a balancing act. It is simply Classical liberalism.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights

At debate, inasmuch as there was a debate, was the rights you have in work done on top of gpl vs bsd style codebases.

Bsd gives you all of the rights you mentioned that gpl code does and more.

BSD gives the rights for a specific copy. GPL gives that rights for that specific program, and thus exist in all copies.

Copy != program.

If I take Firefox and make it Iceweasel, it is still Firefox but under a few changes. It is still the program that Mozilla developers built, and it is still the result of the hard work they spent.

> So I don't see why you would think that my rubrik for what is best for society is off topic here.

It is off-topic because it assumes that other people share your rubric. It is off-topic because it ignores the real question, which is whether that rubric is even the correct rubric to have. It is off-topic because it has nothing to do with whether Stallman should have said the things that he did. Let's say that someone else showed up, and said "we should be trying to optimize for money in Apple's bank account; instead of GPL, which seems extreme, we can strike a better balance that provides more money into Apple's bank account". Do any of us here care about the amount of money in Apple's bank account?

My contention is that caring about how much software in the world is open source, or how much software in the world exists, or what powers mankind has given access to that software, is an interesting and potentially valid rubric; and, it seems to be at least a major component of your rubric. Sadly, this means you are thereby doomed to spend forever arguing over how to best make tradeoffs to help you optimize for that rubric when dealing with people like Stallman. You will bring up that rubric, and they will seem incompetent to you, because they just don't get it: "they are throwing away so much value".

And they, in turn, will look at you as naive, because you are attempting to optimize for something they don't care about and would be perfectly happy to throw away entirely. Trying to argue whether, in the long term, BSD or GPL (for example; feel free to insert any decision that must be made instead) is good or bad for that specific rubric is entirely irrelevant to them, because even if BSD was amazing for that rubric, and even if GPL was miserable for it, at the end of the discussion the GPL advocate will say "well, that was an interesting waste of time: now where were we on trying to get everyone to use GPL?". You won't succeed in convincing them of anything: you are just wasting time.

Now, maybe, on the other side, I'd make some inroads with you by trying to argue that, in the long term, making things "too free for developers" actually comes around to "bite you in the ass" and that you end up in situations where, for example, all major mobile browsers are now effectively closed source in a world where everything is increasingly moving to mobile-only platforms, and that by having invested so strongly in WebCore (LGPL) instead of Gecko (GPL) we caused that reality by allowing WebKit (BSD) to exist... but this is going to be a really long and really painful argument that has nothing to do with Stallman hating on gcc, and it is not one I feel like I should have to spend my time today arguing. I honestly don't even think these arguments really get anywhere, and tend to just make everyone angry.

> "I have a right to own slaves" is a bad analogy, it doesn't mirror the kinds of trade offs we're discussing here. Slavery is not a case of balancing rights between two people, it is a case of one person's supposed right negating all rights in the other person. It's not very dissimilar from "I have the right to kill."

sigh As you seem to only be quoting the things I am saying in these immediate comment threads, without taking into account the expanded context I've now linked you to twice, I am going to have to consider this conversation a waste of time :/. The extent to which that exact analogy matters in the full argument I asked you to read is clearly "not much" (it was there, and is here, just an example of freedoms being relative; in the full argument I went into extreme detail on exactly how the freedoms here are subject), and yet you seem to only be responding to the teaser summary I laid out in this comment. I should not have to repeat that entire thread here: all I asked you to do was to read that discussion and come back, and I do not understand why that is so hard for you to do :(.