
Free & Proprietary - sant0sk1
http://mattmaroon.com/?p=400
======
sspencer
Stallman's inability to see how damaging his rhetoric is to his cause is
rapidly overshadowing any of his achievements.

I went to HOPE 2006 in NYC a few years ago, and ran into him while heading to
a lecture about Asterix PBX use. As a huge admirer of GNU tools and the
GNU/Linux operating system in particular, it was thrilling to finally get to
meet one my heroes. For about a few seconds.

I shook his hand and somewhat shyly asked him to sign one of the few paper-
based items I had in my bag, a copy of (surprise surprise!) PG's "ANSI Common
Lisp". He refused outright, claiming it was not "free" in its licensing and
printing.

I shit you not. The man is that much of an asshole.

I just goggled at him for a moment, and wandered away in a daze.

Don't get me wrong, I love his ideas. Information wants to be free. But to be
so mindlessly pedantic about little things like what he is signing detracts
from his cause.

~~~
aggieben
To me the great irony is that FSF software isn't really free either - it just
has its own restrictions that it prefers to others'. To me, FSF is synonymous
with "hypocrite", and seems to have sprung directly from Stallman's own
peurile bitterness, and not from anything so noble as what they claim.

Even if you like the FSF stances (and I have no problem with that), I think
it's hard to argue that their idea of "free" is really, truly free as Stallman
likes to pontificate.

 _I shit you not. The man is that much of an asshole._

After years of stories about interactions just like the one you described,
interviews, and countless mailing-list flame fests, this should be perfectly
obvious to anyone.

Let anyone think I'm picking on Stallman because of personality differences,
here's another: Theo de Raadt. He is most definitely an asshole - but at least
he's consistent, focused, and not judgmental.

~~~
bitdiddle
So what's your definition of "free"?

I believe FSF code, as in GPL is free. There are four freedoms that come with
it. The only restriction is that one can't deny others the same freedoms.
You're also free not to use it.

I find it interesting that so many criticize RMS for his character and style.
I find myself very tolerant of people who are very talented programmers. I
think RMS is a pretty decent programmer. Emacs, GCC, ... have added a lot of
value over the years.

~~~
pg
_The only restriction is that one can't deny others the same freedoms._

The GPL is more restrictive than that. If one puts code online and says "do
whatever you want with it," everyone has the same freedom to use it. No one
_can_ deny anyone else the freedom to use it, short of blocking access to the
server.

~~~
andreyf
I think he meant to say "one can't deny others the same freedoms on derivative
works".

~~~
pg
That's a big difference, considering the difference between lawyers'
definitions of "derivative" and everyday usage.

------
LogicHoleFlaw
I feel compelled to say something here. I don't know that I'll be heard over
the din, but so be it.

Stallman and Gates stand at two ends of a particular spectrum. The fundamental
question is about what rights the users of a piece of software should have. On
Gate's end the belief is that the users' right is simply to use the software.
Stallman's belief is that the users' right is to use, redistribute, and modify
that software. Modern copyright law falls in line with the proprietary side.
The GPL is a hack leveraging that same law to guarantee that the users of
software governed by it, or software derived from the same, retain the rights
of use, distribution, and modification so long as they also abide by the GPL
under which they recieved that software. The key point of the GPL is that it
restricts recipients of the software from distributing derived works under
licenses which restrict the rights of the users more than does the GPL. That
is the key point of contention. It is a recursive conditional grant of license
dependent upon propagating those rights with derived works.

The key point of proprietary software is that the copyright holder retains the
exclusive rights of distribution and creation of derivative works. Copyright
law grants broad powers to the author to restrict recipients of software from
redistributing it or deriving new software from it. That's the mechanism by
which copyright law operates. The intention of the law is to create a
framework which encourages the creation of new works by securing those
exclusive rights to the author. That exclusivity is not a natural right, but
is a statutory one granted by Congress under the powers given it in the
Constitution. Developers of proprietary software generally use those rights to
ensure that they recieve payment in exchange for the use of the software.
Developers of software released under the GPL use those exclusive rights to
ensure that all future users of their software retain those same rights.

Disagreement over what the rights of the author are and what are the rights of
the user generates the friction on this Gates <-> Stallman continuum. Most
people fall somewhere in-between those two extremes. Stallman believes that it
is a moral imperative to ensure that all users everywhere retain what he sees
as fundamental rights. Gates believes that it is imperative that the authors
retain the power to define what rights they grant to the users.

Is Stallman extreme? Absolutely. Is Gates extreme? Absolutely. But both of
them are self-consistent and stand as useful measuring sticks by which to
measure different approaches to copyright. Stallman may be an ass, but he's an
extremely principled one. Gates may be a robber baron, but he exemplifies the
power which is wielded via exclusive copyrights, and he stands to do a great
amount of good in his philanthropical efforts. Both of them are talented
technical minds who have pursued their goals passionately. Both of them have
had a huge impact on the modern software landscape. Which of them is right?
Personally I think that one needs to measure the results of their efforts to
decide. And that's a very subjective and touchy subject which I won't go into
here. You'll have to decide for yourself what approach is right for you as a
developer of software. I think it's great that the choice is there to make.

Please note that all I'm writing about now is philosophy. I'm not going to
touch practical implications yet.

If I have made a factual error, please respond and correct me.

------
andreyf
_It's hard to argue that the man who was the world’s richest for decades could
have somehow done better for himself or his shareholders, or the world at
large._

Easy - if he had pushed Microsoft to release an open standard instead of .doc,
.xls, et cetra, he would have done better for the world at large by leaving a
competitive market for office products.

Another - if he had insisted IE6 were standards-compliant and open source, he
could have saved companies in web development a whole lot of time and money,
and done a lot more good for the world at large.

In the long run, this would also have been great for MS shareholders, as the
short-term gains of dominating the office and web browser markets are offset
by the long-term damage to the MS brand.

~~~
mattmaroon
Lol. There aren't short term gains for dominating Office. There are billions
of dollars per year for decades. Creating a competitive market would be the
worst thing he could have done for himself and his shareholders (though
probably a good thing for the world).

~~~
andreyf
_Creating a competitive market would be the worst thing he could have done for
himself and his shareholders (though probably a good thing for the world)._

That would be a great argument for legally enforcing (certain) software be
F/OSS...

~~~
mattmaroon
Well, maybe enforcing that once a proprietary standard creates a huge market
and then nearly monopolizes it. I'm certainly not arguing in favor of
monopolies.

------
davidw
> The market and the individuals who comprise it, rather than Richard
> Stallman, should decide, as they have in the past, which software people
> use.

Yes, although there's a footnote there: in winner take all markets, the
externalities can drive people to feel 'forced' into choices. You can buy a
car from whoever you want, pretty much - they're all interchangeable. But try
living in the corporate world without .doc. It is finally starting to become
feasible, but it's a tough, uphill battle.

That makes people frustrated.

~~~
drewcrawford
The reason .doc is ubiquitous is because, at one point, MS had the best
product and it was adopted by the market. There was no coercion--it was a
choice between MS Word or a vastly inferior product.

Today, things are different. There are many wonderful office suites. But it's
no good saying that we should restructure the pie as if office suites were new
instead of old--Office is ahead because OO and iWork and whoever else were
_years_ late to the game. If they continue to be superior, they'll gain market
share in spite of MS's best efforts.

~~~
bitdiddle
.doc a best product. Sorry no way. Word to this day cannot produce anything
near as good as Tex. I daily watch long email threads of collaborators
struggling to share .doc files written with different versions of Word on
different platforms.

~~~
evgen
TeX may have had superior output, but its input methods have always sucked. At
the period of time when word came to dominate there were no wysiwyg TeX tools
and it was a real pain to include figures and images. Output formatting
mattered if you were submitting a conference paper, but the other 99.999% of
the population cared more about being able to get simple tasks done easily.

~~~
bitdiddle
perhaps, one builds up a set of neat macros and using emacs it's quite
workable. For mathematics, Word still can't touch it. Word is also all about
constantly needing the next $500 version. It's not clear also that they ever
got this wysiwyg thing correct. It seems to change the fonts all the time in
arbitrary ways. Sorry, I'd rather memorize a bunch of tags and use emacs.

------
rplevy
Matt, I want to focus on the part of your argument that FOSS is related to
Communism. First, let's define our terms. Hopefully this is not a false
accusation, but it seems like you are using "Communism" in the way that
conservative politicians and radio hosts use it, i.e. as a straw man political
system that is assumed to be restrictive and contrary to free Democratic
ideals.

Communism is too loaded of a word, but I think for our purposes "democratic
socialism" is a suitable replacement. Democratic Socialism, successfully
practiced throughout the world, and very compatible with the goals of many
progressive Democrats in the US.

I will contrast Democratic Socialism with Market Liberalism. Market Liberalism
is the idea that markets should be unrestricted and do not need to be
regulated because they regulate themselves. However there seems to be a
consensus among economists that this rosy rhetoric is just not true. The
failure of this model may ultimately make the failure of European Communism
look like child's play.

I think if I had to define the primary difference between Market Liberalism
and Democratic Socialism it would the idea that society should be able guide
and shape itself intentionally. This guidance is accomplished by making the
structure of society be programmable by the people (instead of the structure
being determined by blind market forces).

Market Liberals want to put the future in the hands of complex systems that
are not directly related to any human values or guidance. That is the primary
difference I think.

Their childish definition of freedom as being able to "do whatever you want"
is simply a fairy tale. Freedom has more to with defining the constraints of
government, via democratic process, such that the citizenry are maximally
empowered, and minimally hampered.

The Market Liberals have no concept of the citizen or duty to cultivate
community, the group-level. They only believe in the individual, the selfish
gene/meme. They believe in a grossly misguided notion that markets optimize
and automatically generate solutions, so that we don't need to choose our own
direction as a society. It doesn't take a PhD economist to know how wrong this
is. Computer scientists should also know how wrong the market liberalist model
is-- optimization does not come for free! At least not in any reasonable
amount of time. And as far as government is concerned there is such a thing as
"too late".

So, Democratic Socialism does have a relationship to FOSS, though not a
necessary one. FOSS shares a philosophy that works well with notions ranging
from cooperativist economies (Libertarian Socialism) to Marxism, to plain old
vanilla regulated capitalism. The philosophy of government that it clashes
with is this permissive "let the market be free" philosophy, in which people
can "do whatever they want". The reality of that system is not freedom for
people but oppression of the weak by the strong, the gated fortress lifestyle,
and gridlock on innovation due to the lower bandwidth of information exchange.

------
drewcrawford
This is a fantastic essay. I appreciate Stallman's work, but I find myself
much more aligned with the likes of the OSI or Apache Foundation than the FSF.
It is refreshing to see Stallman's philosophy intelligently challenged.

One rather large supporting argument the author overlooked: Stallman/FSF have
appeared to largely reverse their stance on open standards; his/their views on
OOXML and C# are incomprehensible to me. We could argue the technical
advantages of ODF vs. OOXML all day, but the total sum of the philosophical
difference between the two is zero.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
I believe that the FSF's stance on the OOXML standard is that the standard is
so unwieldy, obfuscated, and incomplete that it is infeasible for any group
but Microsoft to implement it, and that that deliberate infeasibility is
sufficient reason to exclude OOXML from being ratified as an ISO standard.

------
Jem
This probably isn't appropriate for posting here, but I'm out of ideas...

Does anyone have a contact email for mattmarroon.com? There's an infected
iframe distributing malware in his Twitter Revisited post but I can't find a
way to get in touch with him (no published emails and his whois is protected).

~~~
ptm
you could use his startup contact form -
<http://www.draftmix.com/help/contact_us>

~~~
Jem
Thanks!

------
pingswept
The point about all else being equal, Matt would choose the free over the
proprietary is a good one-- that's more or less how I feel as well.

Matt, if you're listening: do you pirate a lot of software? (I don't mean this
as an accusation; I'm genuinely curious. If I had to guess, I'd guess no, but
who knows? (Uh, you do). I also realize that there's a reasonably good chance
that you won't want to answer "Yes, I pirate all of Adobe's products," or
whatever, in public, even if it's true.)

Most people I know don't mind pirating software and don't think about DRM
until it stops them from doing what they want. I think that's one reason that
free software has, in many cases, failed to beat proprietary software.

------
rw
This Matt fellow needs to lay off the vitriolic rhetoric if he wants to be
taken seriously by those he criticizes.

------
axod
I agree with most of this, but certainly not the line "It’s driven the
computer revolution, which is the most significant shift in technology"

Microsoft in my view completely stifled any innovation for ages with their
monopoly and unethical business practices. We went backwards in some cases. If
it weren't for microsoft I think a lot more innovation would have happened in
computing.

Thankfully that's all changed now.

~~~
mattmaroon
Do you agree that an order of magnitude fewer people would be using PCs? (I'm
assuming that all proprietary OS monopolies are equal, since if MS were never
born its possible Mac or IBM would have achieved what Microsoft has.) I don't
see how 10% of the developers we have now, even in an all open-source world,
could have created anything like what currently exists.

~~~
axod
No we'd more likely be using GEM or DR-DOS which were both years ahead of what
ms was offering.

------
bayareaguy
Focusing on touchy-feely stuff like whether some software is better because
their spokesperson is a genius/is a kook/made money selling
software/popularized the editor millions use/wants to help some people with
their riches/doesn't wash their hair because they are afraid of getting soap
in their eyes/etc is fun but not really satisfying.

Matt, I think there is some merit to your argument but you fail to take into
account the fact that many of the applications you think are superior also
have long histories relative to their relatively unencumbered counterparts.

If I look for new proprietary software, I don't tend to see many examples that
are as superior to open source software in the same way I might say Microsoft
Office is to Open Office. More often I tend to see proprietary software left
in the dust as in the case of Apache vs IIS unless I look for niches.

Can you cite any good examples of well-known new proprietary software that is
clearly superior then their open source alternatives?

Note I say "open source" and not "free".

~~~
mattmaroon
Photoshop, and GIMP has been around for a very long time.

~~~
bayareaguy
Wikipedia says Photoshop has its origin in code from University of Michigan
written around 1987 wheras GIMP was started as a student project at UCB around
1994. That gives it a 7 year head start.

~~~
mattmaroon
I'm not sure I see your point with the age thing. Is it relevant whether or
not an open source project of a given age is better than a proprietary one of
the same age? The economics of proprietary software ensure that there will
generally be older versions in nearly every niche (especially consumer
facing).

Also, if GIMP can't catch up in 14 years, will it ever? That's basically
infinity in the software industry.

~~~
bayareaguy
_Is it relevant whether or not an open source project of a given age is better
than a proprietary one of the same age?_

We all know initial conditions are very important. Once a community adapts to
the rules of a given open source or proprietary application it rarely decides
to change even when the alternative may be superior in some way.

 _Also, if GIMP can't catch up in 14 years, will it ever? That's basically
infinity in the software industry._

GIMP is already superior to Photoshop in at least one significant way: you can
give copies of it to your family, friends, students or whoever without
breaking any laws. Of course if you're a design pro who uses Photoshop because
it has features GIMP lacks then that may not matter to you.

However both those topics are besides the point. My main issue with your essay
lies in the statement

 _It’s obvious that up to this point, proprietary software has created a
vibrant ecosystem and immense profits that probably would not have existed
were all software open source._

That's not at all obvious. What is obvious to me is that some proprietary
companies have made obscene profits by preventing fair competition to keep
prices artificially high and stop people from switching to lower cost or free
alternatives.

~~~
mattmaroon
"What is obvious to me is that some proprietary companies have made obscene
profits by preventing fair competition to keep prices artificially high and
stop people from switching to lower cost or free alternatives."

Vendor lock-in is not new, and not exclusive to software by any means. It's an
ages old tactic, and one that's been considered fair game forever. A
corporation out to make profits is foolish to not use it where possible.

You can't ever stop someone from switching to cheaper or free alternatives.
You can only make your product so good (if only through legacy support) that
the cost of switching is higher than the cost of buying your product. This,
again, is neither new nor unfair.

Abusing near-monopolies (which MS did) is unfair, but has nothing to do with
proprietary vs. free. It's perfectly possible to have proprietary software
without that. It's like the difference between drinking sensibly and drinking
and driving.

~~~
bayareaguy
You may personally think vendor lock-in is a fair tactic but if you bother to
do a little research you'll find some significant court decisions opposing
that view (including the one against MS).

Still, I'm a little confused that you see no relationship between monopolies
and licensing given that MS was convicted of abusing its monopoly to dictate
licensing terms to OEMs.

~~~
mattmaroon
I'm certainly not saying that Microsoft played entirely by the books. They
clearly didn't. They went well beyond standard vendor lock-in. Things like
lock-in that are considered fair game in a competitive market are not when a
monopoly is involved.

I just don't think it's fair to blame proprietary software for Microsoft's
sins.

~~~
bayareaguy
Microsoft is not the only sinner, they are just the most publicized one. The
profit made by Microsoft and the others in the Software Top 100 -
<http://www.softwaretop100.org/list.php?page=1> is probably several times
higher than it would be if not for lock-in and other anti-competitive
practices. Those unfair profits are effectively a hardware tax which transfer
wealth away from the consumers and businesses who would have presumably spent
it on their own interests.

------
andreyf
_It's obvious that up to this point, proprietary software has created a
vibrant ecosystem and immense profits that probably would not have existed
were all software open source. It's driven the computer revolution, which is
the most significant shift in technology and user behavior in living memory._

I would argue that open source technology has been a much more "vibrant
ecosystem", and that open source software is creating a much more "significant
shift in technology" than proprietary software is.

I don't think it's reasonable to say anything about what the world would be
like "if all software were open source", or how that would happen.

~~~
tokipin
i think the idea is that $$ is a huge incentive

------
sayrer
I don't think this post is a good way to frame the argument. In particular,
it's pretty hyperbolic when it comes to the effectiveness of Gates'
philanthropic efforts. Like, what kind of madman would oppose the greatest
giving campaign the world has ever seen?

America's earlier robber barons showed similar changes of heart. It seems
incredibly misguided to frame an abusive monopoly as a triumph of laissez
faire economics. Adam Smith would not approve.

~~~
mattmaroon
I was more saying that you shouldn't attack Gates FOR his philanthropy, as
Stallman does. Not that his giving makes his business practices or proprietary
software immune to criticism.

~~~
bitdiddle
I agree that one shouldn't attack Gates FOR his philanthropy, but one should
look closely at that foundation before forming judgments one way or the other.
There are lots of questions about it with respect to his views on drug patents
and one can legitimately question the investments. After all, the Perkins
institute for the blind was founded by a drug dealer.

Moreover I didn't read the RMS as attacking the foundation.

I was put off by the tone of many of the blogs pieces about the RMS article.
I've never seen RMS as "bitter" about MS. I think it was good timing on his
part during this little love fest at Gates' retirement to point out that MS
has not done much for computing science. RMS has given programmers a lot, much
of it for free (as in beer and as in freedom). The only thing he seemed to be
bitter about is the Linux versus Gnu/Linux thing.

I suppose this reflects my age, I felt the same way about the Arc bashing when
it was released. RMS walks the talk, say what you want about him but you know
where he stands. I wish we all had a similar regard for the US constitution.

------
brent
"... so I appreciate the benefits of free software as much as anyone.

But at home I use some proprietary technologies too. Windows and OSX can be
found on the computers there, because they’re still both much more user-
friendly than the free alternatives for everyday use, and they have a far more
vibrant ecosystem of developers and applications."

Obviously you don't appreciate the benefits as much as anyone.

------
henning
Irony: Matt uses Wordpress, free software that owes its success to the
proprietary software from Six Apart starting to really suck.

~~~
aston
Where's the irony? Matt thinks proprietary software has its place, and he
likes free (as in beer) software.

~~~
henning
Where is the awesome proprietary software that has smashed Wordpress to pieces
which he referred to? His analysis about relative quality is off the mark.
Looking at Photoshop and ignoring Emacs, gcc, gdb, git, Apache, and all the
other great free software isn't fair.

~~~
dkasper
From the article: "There are lots of great open-source projects out there,
especially in the development world." I think that covers Emacs, gcc, gdb, and
git at least...

He's not ignoring the great free software, he's pointing out that only using
free software means that you give up using proprietary software in the cases
where it is better.

~~~
sophist
Proprietary software is never better.

~~~
mattmaroon
Depends on your definition of better. The fact that Adobe's revenues were over
$3 billion would indicate that quite a few people would define "better" in
such a way that Photoshop is better than GIMP.

~~~
Mistone
photoshop is better than GIMP. paint.net is a great free alternative but
windows only. in relation cheap is better than expensive, and any alternative
that challenges a monopoly or overpriced incumbent can be a very good business
to start and a product/service that many people will happily try out.

