
We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom - alxsanchez
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/whats-our-next-fight
======
kardashev
From the comments it doesn't look like many read the article. Here's the tldr:

Free software won. Yay! However, what about hardware, infrastructure, and
services? Oops. All those things have been become increasingly centralized.
Centralization has diminished our privacy, and therefore our liberty. Time to
put restrictions on corporations so we can have liberty again.

\-------------------------------------------------------

Now the only part I disagree with is the last part. Laws and regulations got
us into this mess in the first place. These companies are huge because they
can sue or prevent others from competing through laws and regulations. Guess
who lobbies to create these laws in the first place? (It's not the little guy)
The biggest problem is Intellectual Property (IP). Because of it we have DRM
and many companies have very literal monopolies (enforced by government) on
things. Apple has a patent on rounded rectangles for heaven's sake.

What we need is a decentralization of power, and a turn towards distributed
systems. The best way to do that will be to eliminate IP. That will take some
time, but we should do it gradually. By allowing people to "copy" it will
create competition and weaken the monopoly-like position many of these
companies hold. Power will fragment and decentralize. That should be the goal.

~~~
Ace17
The simple use of the term "IP" goes against your goal. All these things we
call "IP" are mostly unrelated to the notion of "property" itself ; they're
related to temporary government-enforced monopolies.

This simplistic view as a "property", which is a very familiar notion for most
of us, confuses people into thinking that they could, and should be able to
"own", for example, a joke, an idea for a business, or any kind of idea, the
same way they can today own their car or their house.

The law is way more complicated than that, and by default, ideas can't be
owned (and for that matter, can't be "stolen" either). I don't think we want
this to change. However, it might be desirable to get this into peoples' mind.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> The simple use of the term "IP" goes against your goal. All these things we
> call "IP" are mostly unrelated to the notion of "property" itself ; they're
> related to temporary government-enforced monopolies.

It also lumps together many unrelated things. There is no big trouble with
trademarks. Copyright itself isn't even a problem, the problem there is DRM.
But software patents are unredeemable. They aren't all the same.

~~~
jordigh
There's also a bunch of other mostly unrelated stuff that gets called
intellectual property, such as regional designations (e.g. "designed in
California") and ship hull designs, which receive their own special treatment:

[https://www.quora.com/Why-were-boat-hull-designs-
specificall...](https://www.quora.com/Why-were-boat-hull-designs-specifically-
protected-by-the-DMCA)

Each of these "intellectual properties" has its own special nuances and
treatments, and often completely different laws. You have to demonstrate
originality to copyright something, but you can trademark the most unoriginal
things. You have to demonstrate that something has a function before you can
patent it, but you can copyright the most useless things. You need to
demonstrate that something really was created where you want to regionally
designate it, but you don't need to prove anything to trademark it.

Lumping them all together is like saying programming, literature, mathematics,
and theatre are all the same just because they all happen to have some sort of
abstraction to them.

~~~
Ace17
Dude! programming, literature, mathematics and theatre are all "text stuff"!

------
gaius
_Apple 's OS X, which wouldn't be what it is if Linux hadn't already been the
leading _nix OS.*

Well that isn't true. NeXTStep was built on the 68k from 4.3BSD which
originated on the VAX. It has no lineage in common with Linux, and in fact
pre-dates it. And OSX now is _by far_ the most popular workstation Unix.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Unix_history-
simple.svg](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Unix_history-simple.svg)

~~~
MrTonyD
Well, since I worked on the team moving NeXTstep to the i386 family at NeXT, I
can say with certainty that Linux played no role at all. We had copies of ATT
UNIX and BSD UNIX which had portions already running on Intel (so we didn't
have to completely reinvent the wheel.) There was some discussion about which
UNIX we should be using on Intel in order to move it all to Mach - but the
easy path was to build on some earlier work with the existing BSD port to i386
(in particular, memory management had been done in one of the ports, and using
that as a starting point was very helpful.) As for GNU - we spent an
incredible amount of time fixing bugs in both the C and C++ compilers. Really,
GNU wasn't really considered "production worthy" before the NeXT project - and
it was more of a toy until we fixed it. Steve was committed to using GNU to
try to to compete with Apple based on low cost open source. As a programmer,
it wasn't open source that helped us, - we were fixing and helping open
source. I've always found it ironic that the open source community ignores the
role of the rich and powerful in allowing them to succeed. (Ironically, I was
later involved with the team at Oracle that converted Linux from a toy into a
functioning kernel. It was missing many system calls and a lot of
functionality. Speaking as a kernel engineer, Linux was almost useless. Larry
decided to use Linux as a way to price compete against Microsoft - shouldn't
be too surprising since Larry and Steve were good friends and shared ideas. I
wrote the original white paper for Larry analyzing the state of the Linux
kernel.)

~~~
ktRolster
_Ironically, I was later involved with the team at Oracle that converted Linux
from a toy into a functioning kernel._

Seriously?

~~~
MrTonyD
It's easy to forget the early days of Linux. If you go back and read the
articles of the time they often pointed out that Linux made a good print
server. But that was about all it could do - get lpr-style requests and talk
to a printer driver. I did a test port of Oracle to Linux and wrote up a white
paper for Larry. Larry was trying to figure out how to get Bill to kill
important features in SQLServer. So Larry and Scott and IBM and HP had a
couple of floors of kernel engineers at Redwood Shores fixing Linux and
submitting the changes until Bill agreed to make SQL Server work more poorly
stop competing so aggressively. But by that time we had already submitted
enough to make Linux into a functioning product.

~~~
varjag
Curious what other things, aside from GNU and Linux, you fixed in passing on
your corporate assignments.

~~~
MrTonyD
I'm just a geek who grew up in Silicon Valley. I soldered and wire wrapped
chips I picked up from Haltek/Halted and the sales offices of local chip
manufacturers, and taught myself programming using switches to enter binary
codes (before I bought a broken teletype and fixed it - paper tape was a huge
improvement after using switches to program.)

------
legulere
I think the problem is that the FSF's definition of freedom still stems from a
time where everybody being a programmer was seen as a realistic and achievable
goal.

The actual situation is that we have two groups that care about different
things: Users and developers.

Users' biggest concern is that the software helps them achieve what they want
to do. They care about restrictions like DRM if it hinders them in doing what
they want to do. The only way free software can help here is that other people
(developers) can remove those restrictions. Proprietary software can easily
offer the same freedoms for users.

~~~
bad_user
> _Users ' biggest concern is that the software helps them achieve what they
> want to do._

There are two problems with this assertion: (1) users often don't know what
_they want to do_ or what they'll want to do in the future and (2) users don't
have the education to understand the freedoms provided by open source / free
software or lack thereof.

The situation is similar with automobiles. Until now at least people had the
freedom to change the oil or filters by themselves or even do technical
repairs. The worst that could happen is a void warranty, which is limited
anyway. And people that don't have the technical know-how, such as myself, can
go into any repair shop. Doesn't have to be an "official representative" of my
car's brand. This in turn keeps prices down. I mean, I can tell you that for
my Peugeot, where I live, the prices for both service and components for my
car at the local representative are at least 2x or 3x bigger than at
alternative and quite respectable repair shops.

Let me put it another way. A proprietary software package doesn't even
guarantee that it will still be around and developed in 10 years from now. An
open-source software on the other hand might not be maintained in 10 years
from now, but people (like a government agency) can always fund further
development, if they really, really need it alive. Open source never dies.

> _They care about restrictions like DRM..._

Again, users don't care about DRM. Because they don't understand it. If they
did, they would reject DRM-enabled products.

~~~
dasil003
I'm with you except the very last assertion:

> _Again, users don 't care about DRM. Because they don't understand it. If
> they did, they would reject DRM-enabled products._

I understand DRM in great detail (as CTO of a streaming film company), and
though I would in principal like to reject it, I have no basis to do so except
illegal piracy. Theoretically if all the customers stood up and boycotted DRM
we could have an effect, but in practice that would mean not being able to see
the latest premium content for some period of time. Are people really going to
give up their Game of Thrones to strong arm the industry? I can't foresee any
universe where that would happen regardless of the users' understanding and
savviness.

 _edit: it 's amazing how this provokes a flurry of replies, none of which
address my point at all. I am not making any positive claims about DRM. I am
simply asking: how are you going to mobilize customers to boycott DRM?_

~~~
legulere
DRM doesn't prevent privacy, it only professionalizes it. At some point the
data is decrypted and crackers will take the data from there. You can only
make copying harder, but not impossible. Pretty soon after release everything
lands on the pirate bay.

The only people that are hindered are legitimate costumers. The playback might
not work, because the monitor/projector because it doesn't support HDCP. With
movies on Blurays they can't make copies for backups/to play the movie without
a disc spinning/to play the movie on a device without a bluray drive. My
sister cuts music pieces together for dancing, you can't do that with drm'd
music. Pirating media often is hassle-free compared to the legal way.

The problem for customers is that compared to buying analog media or digital
media without DRM you are restricted to simple playback and also in certified
settings (certain programs, devices etc.). With streamed media the issue is
not as bad, as you can compare it more to renting, but there are also issues
(e.g. I need crappy silverlight to use amazon prime video in Safari).

My hope is that movie and series content owners will wake up the same way as
music studios and book publishers. Selling music without DRM didn't hurt the
music industry. Selling ebooks only with DRM led to the strong market position
of Amazon with the Kindle.

~~~
tremon
_The only people that are hindered are legitimate costumers._

No, also third parties that have nothing to do with the content industry. At
work, we have massive 60" touchscreen in all our conference rooms, and we use
them daily for presentations/meetings. Those presentations are regularly
interrupted by 20 seconds of black screen.

The problem? HDCP handshake incompatibility between the newest batch of
laptops and the TVs.

------
dTal
This is a great article, if a little slapdash on the details. I don't agree
with the notion that we're "losing"; the reason is neatly exemplified by the
HN front page:

    
    
      3. FreeBSD 10.3 officially supported on Microsoft Azure (microsoft.com)
      138 points by tachion 6 hours ago | flag | 77 comments  
    
      10. Microsoft Edge WebGL engine open-sourced (github.com)
      308 points by aroman 13 hours ago | flag | 80 comments
    
      24. How the Windows Subsystem for Linux Redirects Syscalls (microsoft.com)
      330 points by jackhammons 20 hours ago | flag | 243 comments
    

_Microsoft_. _Open-sourced_. Time travel from even 5 years ago and that HN
front page would blow your mind. Industry-wide, it's more and more common now
for "free" to be the default. Heck, complain about Android all you like, but
for all that, the OS itself is miles more free than Windows. We actually owe
this dire forking situation to the freedom Android affords - imagine if every
fly-by-night laptop manufacturer felt comfortable rolling their own custom
branded Windows with proprietary interface components.

I don't argue for complacency. We need to up our game with things like GPL
compliance and reclaim the concept of a "distro", but on phones this time. But
taking the long view, we're definitely "winning".

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
FWIW, this is not the article's actual title. The actual title is "What's Our
Next Fight?"

~~~
dTal
Thanks, reworded.

------
massysett
"So what's our next fight?"

I don't have a next fight. If I'm going to fight for something, it's going to
be something a whole lot more important than computer software. Free software
is here to stay. Success has occurred. I'm not going to grope around for
another fight. Instead I'm going to harness my software freedoms to write
software that does what I need it to do.

~~~
bo1024
One point I took away from the article was to look around and think more
deeply about what issues today are just important as freedom in computing was
during the ascension of Linux.

To me, a big one is ownership: who really owns/controls the things we
purchase?

As for free software, consider that desktop computers are rapidly becoming
less and less relevant to consumers at large, on average, yet they are also
becoming one of the last holdouts of free software. Of the devices being
produced and sold today, what fraction are free and what fraction are locked
down? How do you expect that to change tomorrow?

~~~
kazinator
Desktop computers are extremely relevant to people who do anything more than
passively consume entertainment and participate on social networks. Mobile
touch screen devices are next to useless for creating content.

Also, speaking of desktops, don't forget laptops.

~~~
bo1024
I totally agree, but despite this, I still think desktops' general-population
relevance is declining. I also think that laptops unfortunately are trending
toward less freedom as compared to desktops.

------
Hydraulix989
I'm pretty disappointed. If anything Silicon Valley really screwed up by
achieving the exact OPPOSITE of what the FOSS movement was striving for.

The commercialization of software has resulted in these walled gardens of
proprietary software, closed data, closed formats, etc.

It's a sad day, for example, when a large percentage of the population
actually believes that Facebook is the Internet.

~~~
kazinator
Give those people some credit! They happen to be also well aware that the Web
is the Internet, and that Wi-Fi is also the Internet.

------
lmm
We lost Linux. The big thing about Linux was that you could swap out pieces of
it for better ones if you wanted. "Linux is about choice" \- vi or emacs, KDE
or Gnome and so on.

OSX doesn't have that. Android doesn't have that. And in these days of
systemd, Linux doesn't even have that any more.

~~~
astrodust
If you hate systemd that much make your own distribution with blackjackd and
hookersd instead.

~~~
lmm
I did. But I can't stop the systemd folk making every program hard-depend on
systemd. So I already can't use e.g. gnome (unless I wanted to maintain my own
fork of an old version - am I supposed to maintain every single piece of
software I use?)

------
the8472
I think what's contributing to the whole hourglass thing is that browsers do
not play nicely with native/low-level primitives. It's bascially yet another
waist above the OS waist (browser APIs) and the IP waist (HTTP).

Develop a nice decentralized solution? Maybe it involves some UDP multicast?
Forget the browser.

Want to have two devices on the network talk to each other? Bounce it through
a cloud provider.

Want to use "everything is a file"-files? The browser's interaction with the
filesystem is incredibly clumsy.

So if you wanted to use the full strength of linux/any other lower layers,
this would hamper adoption.

~~~
sievebrain
The browser is a terrible app platform that 'won' primarily because the
incredibly minimal levels of holistic design in it meant everyone could agree
on it, because doing so gave power to nobody in particular. The downside of
that approach is, well, it's just a mishmash of things that don't work well or
fit together properly.

It's not even really decentralised. From the birth of the web it was driven by
Netscape, then Microsoft, then MozCorp, then Apple for a while, and now
Google, with bits of Opera thrown in occasionally. There has always been at
least one dominating browser maker adding whatever random features they
thought would be cool at the time.

~~~
digi_owl
There was also the case that admins routinely blocked all ports on the company
firewall, except for 80 (http). Thus funneling anything and everything through
the browser became the easiest way.

------
api
Free <> Freedom

Since everything in OSS has to be free, there is no economic model. Eventually
things _with_ an economic model supersede or embrace/extend open ecosystems
because they have the resources to do so. They also have the resources to
address user experience, which is the most important thing unless your target
audience consists of only hackers. (Even then it still matters.) Good UX is an
_immense_ amount of work, and it's the sort of work that devs tend not to find
fun and therefore must be paid to do.

Until and unless there is an economic model for free-as-in-freedom,
surveillance-ware and closed models will continue to dominate.

~~~
thescriptkiddie
Redhat et al. have shown us that it is entirely possible to make money off of
free software. Google et al. have shown us that free software trumps
proprietary, even if there is no money to be made from it. The business model
of selling licenses to proprietary software is a relic of a long-gone era at
this point. Even Microsoft is giving away Windows 10 for "free".

~~~
api
It's possible to make money off free software in B2B with services, support,
SaaS, proprietary value adds, etc. That's how RedHat and many other enterprise
vendors with OSS offerings make money. This only works for selling to
corporations. End users don't pay for that kind of thing.

I am not aware of anyone making money in free software in B2C other than
through surveillance, ads, or other ways of "monetizing the user." This is how
Google, Facebook, and others who produce free software in B2C areas make
money.

From a freedom POV, B2C is what matters. I assume that since we're talking
about free-as-in-freedom we're interested in getting beyond surveillance as a
business model.

------
nxzero
As someone that deeply cares about tech & freedom, truly feel most techies
fail to see that that majority of the world does not see freedom as a
priority.

While I do not know the answer, I do believe it's possible to find one.

Focus on building relationships first, then tech.

~~~
chillingeffect
It goes all the way back to lifestyle.

For most people, freedom means something like, "My partner and I will work our
whole entire lives doing things we don't really like, possibly be out of debt
by retirement, at which point our kids will be in debt. Then we can travel the
world and spend the rest on our healthcare." The fact that they can do that
seems good enough for them. They always think if they work a little harder
they will get ahead.

For others, freedom means something like, "I will further the betterment of
humanity. I will work until my house is paid off and then expand and enjoy the
gift of existence."

For the elite, the perspective is, "I've got a six-sigma edge. It enables me
to put a in few months of light, clever work a year and not have to kowtow to
anybody, all while living in devastating luxury. It requires leveraging all
available resources, such as plundering the environment, the Constitution, the
well-being of others, but it keeps me on top."

The elites are the ones convincing all the mainstreamers to forward their
potential to their own causes. "Spend all your time on facebook. Consume.
Compete. Upgrade. Fear." Linux people are caught in the middle, because they
tried to make tools to help the mainstreamers, but didn't quite get there yet
and the elites got a hold on it.

I believe the real answer is waking people up to the reality of how their
desires are being manipulated to trap themselves in debt and desire.
Basically, the message of Adbusters. Stop feeding Hollywood. Stop eating out
all the time. Slow food. Do things IRL. Eat together. Fix old cars instead of
constantly tweaking designs. Stop responding to dopamine rushes.

I went out to lunch with an admin at my company the other day. Her family
doesn't have laundry machines in their home, but they're going to Las Vegas
for a vacation. Why give away all that time and money to others?

~~~
Grishnakh
>For most people, freedom means something like, "My partner and I will work
our whole entire lives doing things we don't really like, possibly be out of
debt by retirement, at which point our kids will be in debt. Then we can
travel the world and spend the rest on our healthcare." The fact that they can
do that seems good enough for them.

Well it's better than what we had before. 5-15 centuries ago, freedom meant
something like, "My family will toil all day long, with no vacation, for our
whole entire lives in some feudal lord's fields doing backbreaking work in
exchange for getting to live in a crappy shack with dirt floors and have some
crappy low-nutrition food and not getting murdered by robbers. Our kids will
work for the same lord or his heirs. Travel is just a fantasy."

------
Esau
I think that if you are concerned about freedom, then you need to use an OS
that is not controlled a commercial entity. OS X, iOS, Windows, Android,
ChromeOS, and Ubuntu all have issues; even though some of them are open
source.

~~~
franciscop
Putting Windows and Ubuntu in the same "commercial" bag is very miguiding...

~~~
Esau
Oh really? I seem to recall Ubuntu sending people's search results to Amazon.
Why did they do that? They are a corporation and, thus, more concerned about
money than freedom.

My comment stands.

~~~
rpdillon
To be fair, that was a default, but you can change it, or avoid it entirely by
not installing the launcher developed by Canonical. Which was always both the
strength and Achilles' Heel of Linux compared to other desktop OSes. For
people that never install Unity (Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Gnome), it's simply
not an issue.

This is quite a bit different than, for example, the situation with Windows
10.

~~~
dandelion_lover
>This is quite a bit different than, for example, the situation with Windows
10.

The situation is different; but the direction is the same.

~~~
franciscop
But the direction are the opposite:

1\. Canonical makes no money.

2\. They introduce a "bad" feature to try to make money.

3\. Users outrage so canonical makes it easy to cancel.

4\. Users are still not happy so Canonical turns it off by default.

vs

1\. Microsoft makes s __*loads of money from various sources.

2\. They show an annoying popup urging users to upgrade to W10 (to make more
money? to reduce support?).

3\. They start forcing it by "closing is accepting".

4\. They just start forcing it (according to many reports) so the users start
creating tools to stop it.

~~~
dandelion_lover
The difference is that the users of Windows have no choice. Microsoft takes
advantage of the situation. Canonical has no such advantage, but they surely
would like to, according to this precedent.

~~~
hvis
That is too weak a precedent to be making a strong accusation like this.

It was one misstep. They have done, and continue to do, a lot of things right.

------
bluejekyll
I wish he would have gone more into the design of the kernel and significant
changes that are going to be needed to take advantage of the NVRAM based
systems that are coming very soon. The I/O design needs to be completely
overhauled.

It's probably going to be a great time to rewrite and resign portions of
Linux, but I honestly don't think the community will be capable of doing a
major architectural change. Kernel modules have been a great step towards
modular design, and this needs to be pushed everywhere so that more changes
can be isolated in the development process.

I've been a huge Linux (and GNU, most of what this article is about really is
GNU, not Linux) user since being introduced to it in 1996, but as much as I
love it, I do wonder if there are new options that will reveal themselves in
the next few years that will better answer some of the modern hardware
advancements. Linux is a beast of a system now, with a lot of technical debt
and a hard to penetrate C code base, I hope it can evolve where it needs to,
but I think it will require huge commitments from the community.

~~~
sievebrain
Could you elaborate on the changes for the NVRAM devices that you'd like to
see?

My understanding is that the 3D XPoint type devices are just exposed as a
regular mmapped device and provide storage which is still a fair bit slower
than DRAM, but a lot faster than SSDs.

~~~
bluejekyll
It's mainly around IO scheduling in the kernel against other processes.

This is a good intro paper on some issues:
[https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~luisceze/publications/novos...](https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~luisceze/publications/novos-
hotos2011.pdf)

This discussion is relevant too:

[https://lwn.net/Articles/547903/](https://lwn.net/Articles/547903/)

Those are both a few years, old, but I haven't seen discussion as to the
progress made around scheduling when the disks start performing as fast as the
CPU load operations.

Again, I was just pointing out that I wish that article got into more details
around that, b/c I don't know the state of the world, but have some concerns
in this particular area and the ability for the kernel to be able to
accommodate new scheduling techniques to better utilize the much faster disk
access.

------
Pica_soO
The battle is for the heads, and the future battlefield are the minds of
tomorrow. The defeating blow is that Microsoft owns now minecraft - the first
experience of the hacker culture a kid could have today where tech has become
magic. This "Do-it-yourself" could have educated a million freedom demanding,
because limits not accepting citizens. Now its hugged to death.

------
zanny
Meanwhile, Windows is still pretty much the only desktop OS for 99% of people,
Nvidia has stolen large-scale compute with a holistically proprietary CUDA,
and Google has hijacked the ecosystem and culture with Android and ChromeOS
(the former by having vendors use the incredibly destructive model of forking
the kernel and stuffing it with binary blobs rendering it stuck to that
version on whatever device you have, and the later replacing userspace with
Google's web properties exclusively).

> So it's hard for a generative OS to support whole stacks of hardware below
> and software above.

Is only true _because_ of how Google broke Linux. If we had gotten all these
garbage phone vendors to upstream open drivers rather than shove proprietary
bullshit into every Android handset, Cyanogenmod would not be the only group
even remotely capable of keeping up with legions of arbitrary kernels with
tons of broken proprietary bits littering the market.

This post is more about the mindshare effect Facebook and Google properties
have on people, but there is actually and honestly nothing we can do about
that at this point. No killer feature or guarantee of privacy or distributed
solution is going to break the network effect of Facebook or Twitter now. As
long as we keep the social network alternatives like ostatus and diaspora
alive and we can claw long and hard to pull some users there just to keep them
afloat we can't really expect to do more.

But we can do a lot more on the hardware front. We are still crippled by
proprietary firmwares everywhere[1], rampant with backdoors, and there is no
mindshare there to worry about - all it takes is a concerted effort and focus
and within several hardware generations we can reverse this dire course, and
the consumers do not even need to notice it happening. But if we can get at
least _some_ viable computing platform without _any_ trade secreted
proprietary freedom-crippled bits that could be spying on you, stealing your
info, or just not operating how you want, we could at least sit in our silo
and preach from a hardened rather than rickety tower of ethics.

[1]
[http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/discussion/2016-April/01...](http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/discussion/2016-April/010912.html)

PS: Considering this is about the Linux anniversary on Linux Journal, it is
worth mentioning the gross negligence in enforcing the GPL with Linux has
contributed a lot to the ability for corporate market dominators to seize
control. All those Nvidia CUDA servers depend on the passivity in addressing
Nvidia's proprietary kernel modules, and all those Android phones depend on
the apathy of Linux developers to ever go after the hardware manufacturers for
obviously and blatantly violating the GPL on almost every Android handset by
forking the kernel, integrating proprietary driver software, and then going so
far as to modify the free parts in some ways incompatible with upstream to
make it work _with_ the proprietary parts. The day Linux GPL enforcement is a
thing is one step closer to curtailing the power abuses by many of these large
enterprises over their users because that is actually a straightforward way to
_do_ it.

~~~
sievebrain
I think the Linux community has always massively underestimated how
destructive the no-stable-API policy has been.

The result of not being willing to commit to a driver API has been that
Android devices - by far the most massive deployment of Linux kernels ever -
are a wasteland of out of date, exploit-ridden kernels that can't be patched
because of the monolithic driver model. Windows has a single kernel and all
driver vendors play nicely within it. You can upgrade Windows _separately_ to
upgrading your PC, and you get the updates when Microsoft pushes them out.
This takes a lot of effort by Microsoft, but it works.

Android devices, on the other hand, can't do that because Google can't provide
shared kernel builds. Everyone has to do it themselves. And as noted above,
this did not lead to a utopia of shared and open drivers, it just led to Linux
users having out of date operating systems.

~~~
zanny
> Google can't provide shared kernel builds. Everyone has to do it themselves.

Somehow, desktop Linux manages to ship one kernel per architecture (x86, ARM,
MIPS, etc) and manages to support almost all hardware out there, _and_ manages
to keep their kernel up to date.

Yes, Linux is actively hostile to proprietary third party shipped binary
drivers. I'd call that a feature more than a detriment, because we _want_ open
drivers, if for no other reason than it prevents panned obsolescence of
hardware and lets you keep your computers working even when the original OEMs
refuse to. It gives you control over your hardware in a way you cannot get
with proprietary drivers.

Though it is worth mentioning DKMS exists, works, and in practice if any
Android OEM wanted to they could recompile via DKMS their blob crap every
kernel update and ship the kernel + drivers combined as they have been doing
for years no problem, just with updated kernels. They don't, and that is
absolutely not the fault of Linux itself, its because OEMs don't care and as
long as users keep buying their hardware while they continue to violate the
GPL and deny users power over their own devices they will get away with it.

------
throw2016
A tad premature one thinks and who is the we? Linux has been incubating a
monster within its midst that goes by the name Redhat. This is the cathedral
that was born in the bazaar with $2 billion in revenues, tight ties to the
freedom loving US security industry and wielding massive influence thanks to
its the ability to fund developers and projects to get things its way. If your
fundamental altruistic principles depend on a commercial organizations
goodwill your position is already comprised.

A cathedral is primarily concerned with self preservation and it will be naive
to ignore how money drives decisions in the real world. A lot of the freedom
that got Linux here and Redhat itself to its billion dollar revenues are now
being slowly plucked away to entrench Redhat's continued dominance but this is
not Redhat's fault. Any organization that got that big would do the same and
it's the open source world's failure to anticipate and account for the
disproportionate influence something like this would wield.

Even today most Linux organizations are industry bodies with no voice for the
users, and in many circles there is open contempt for users nevermind its
their commitment though some pretty dismal software that got you in a position
that you can choose to ignore them in the first place. A project without users
has no reason to exist.

As for Android how is it Linux? You can't run Linux on your Android phones.
The GPU, hardware and drivers is locked down so tightly it makes Microsoft and
Intel look like Stallman's soulmate when compared to Arm and its vendor
ecosystem. And Google too, Android was designed to work around the GPL. Using
Android to beat the Linux drum is galling and self defeating.

What we have is thousands of companies benefiting from Open source to build
multiple billion empires. 20 years later there is not a single resource that
tell you all the companies using open source and how they support it or give
back. There is no transparency, pressure or even the felt need to give back.
The newer lot of developers do not seem to even care about GPL though that
could just be the audience here. Gloating about winning in the context seems
misplaced even if it were true. It was never about winning but about choice.

------
shmerl
Linux has surely advanced, and in some areas clearly won. Not everywhere
though. Desktop usage and gaming are still an uphill battle against incumbent
monopolists.

I agree with the rest. Decentralization of services and usage of FOSS for them
is critical for freedom as well. Consider what a major mess instant messaging
still is. Despite all the years of innovation it's a horrible mix of non
interoperable walled gardens (unlike e-mail). How can this mess be fixed and
"next Facebook" be avoided exactly? Decentralized social networks exist, but
they are still in infancy, and making them grow is not trivial.

But of course it goes beyond all that. More importantly, consider advancement
of society towards some non too distant technological future. Do we want to
see a grim cyberpunk like domination of governments+megacorporations meld
which controls everyone's life through access to augmentations and technology
of everyday things, or we want to preserve free society while still having
advanced technology?

~~~
giancarlostoro
Something like Jabber that everyone can adopt. With multiple open source
clients like Pidgin, adding support to those clients would be a huge first
step, then adding support for open source IM clients for mobile would also
increase the range for something like Matrix or Jabber. Maybe a new player
will come into town. It would be nice to be able to host an email server on a
$5 a month DigitalOcean server, I can host IRC, and Mumble, alongside PHP and
MySQL powered websites on DO for that amount, but a mail server is too much
apparently.

~~~
shmerl
_> Something like Jabber that everyone can adopt._

XMPP already exists. It's an IETF standard even. But how can the lock-in
mentality be worked around exactly?

Making something new and better is good. But it doesn't seem to be the only
issue.

~~~
giancarlostoro
Most people give up on XMPP because of the XML side, maybe something like
Matrix. I think the lock-in mentality could be worked around if we had open
and public servers kind of how IRC has them that would be defaults in some of
the clients, but the option should obviously remain to pick a server. Pidgin
would reach many platforms, and other clients that already support multiple
platforms.

------
ovt
I page through, knowing already that there's a problem, to see what he's
thinking in terms of solutions.

At the bottom I catch a reference to ProjectVRM. I follow the link and what I
find is all bloggy and vague. If there's anything concrete in there, it's not
brought together in front of the new visitor.

------
aminok
I see a lot of promise in distributed Turing Complete blockchains like
Ethereum giving a nonproprietary and decentralized alternative to centralized
services. There is a positive feedback loop where the more smart contracts are
uploaded to the blockchain, the more useful it becomes, and the more people
upload their programs to it to utilize that functionality. All of these smart
contracts necessarily make their code accessible to the public, in being
hosted on a public blockchain, and are copyleft, since there's no way enforce
IP law on their use.

It could conceivably neutralize the forces that enable big government and big
business.

------
officialchicken
Like everyone, I want more freedom, not less: the battle should begin with a
sane GPL version 4. See the MIT, BSD and LGPL licenses which provide more
freedom over GPL3.

~~~
jpetso
There's no benefit from making the GPL into something like the LGPL or
MIT/BSD. If you prefer those licenses, they're already available to be used
instead. The GPL stands for a specific kind of freedom and should continue to
stand for the same, maybe with tweaks but definitely in the same spirit.

If it continues to go out of fashion then that's a different issue, but
watering it down doesn't help to further the causes that the FSF set out to
achieve with it.

~~~
dragonwriter
> If it continues to go out of fashion then that's a different issue, but
> watering it down doesn't help to further the causes that the FSF set out to
> achieve with it.

If it continues to go out of fashion, that means that it is not an effective
means of furthering the cause ths FSF set out to achieve for it.

One can agree with what the FSF overtly claims its goals to be, without
believing that the current form of the GPL is particularly an effective method
at achieving those goals in the current environment (one might even believe
that the basic approach of the GPL _was_ the most effective approach for an
earlier time with different circumstances, without believing that it is
effective now.)

It may be the case that _compelling_ very specific rules for software freedom
if a package is used isn't actually the most effective way, in practice, of
_promoting_ software freedom.

------
tacos
We're also a lot older now and many realize the "us versus them" thing wasn't
helpful. Shame the article opens with such a flattering retelling of a wonky
strategy.

It was always the data, not the code. Try and find an open dataset for any
interesting machine learning problem and you'll realize that while "freedom"
was busy doing things like setting back the use of precompiled headers in GCC
a decade and making it virtually impossible for an artist to get a copy of
ffmpeg that handles all the file formats she needs, the real value remains the
data.

We don't need 15 open source PDF viewers. We need open access to the papers.
And even hippie scientists at Berkeley seem unwilling to share those for some
reason. So odd given the heritage.

I don't care much about Google's half-baked machine learning library. Give me
the 128k neural output from the 250TB of voice queries if you wanna be "open"
and advance machine learning. Unsurprisingly they've got that locked up tight.
But culturally you can make the argument that's very much "ours" just like
government-funded research papers are.

Given interesting data, nerds will ALWAYS find a way to read it. Focusing on
code was a bit of a mistake; that's cheap and you get it for free. And the gap
between open software licenses and Creative Commons licensing always seemed
odd.

~~~
grive
Focusing on code was not a mistake. It was a necessary preliminary step.

It's easy to say in hindsight, but that openness was not at all seen as a
viable option for a lot of people in the industry back in the day.

Now that this has been solved (mostly), it is now necessary to take back
control on the data. Thus, this article.

~~~
tacos
[https://creativecommons.org/about/history/](https://creativecommons.org/about/history/)

