Troler

Invited by:
  Blender Dumbass

Free Software fundamentally misses the point. It fails on a practical, ideological, economic, and political level. Let’s examine precisely how (in a slightly different order for the purposes of presentation).
Ideological

Ideologically, Free Software is a bit of a jumbled mess. Let’s begin by reading the following two documents, one after the other: Should Be Free followed by the GNU Manifesto.

In the first, Stallman declares his goal to be the prosperity and freedom of the public in general. These are, of course, loaded terms, so we must read the rest of the document to understand what he means.

First, he goes over the two owner arguments - emotional attachment (which is willingly signed off) and economic gain, an effective threat to stop making software. He speaks out against giving software an owner that controls its development (something he considers to exclusively happen in the case of proprietary software). He also gives an example of a road paid by toll booths at every corner, and complains that it is an obstruction to smooth driving - pointing out that a toll booth does not merely help raise funds. He names three problems from such obstructions applied to software: fewer users, user inability to fix programs, and the inability of developers to build upon the existing work. Furthermore, he talks about wider societal effects (see the section on damaging social cohesion), and mentions that the mechanism via which sharing is restricted isn’t relevant. We end the paper with two quotes of import: “We thus have a paradox: the developer of useful software is entitled to the support of the users, but any attempt to turn this moral obligation into a requirement destroys the basis for the obligation. A developer can either deserve a reward or demand it, but not both.” and “I make the assumption in this paper that a user of software is no less important than an author, or even an author’s employer. In other words, their interests and needs have equal weight, when we decide which course of action is best.”

Keeping this in mind, let us move on to the GNU Manifesto. We must compare and contrast the actions taken to the ideology as it is presented.

First, the software project (GNU itself) is introduced. He explains his personal motivations for sharing GNU (the Golden Rule), as a method of solidarity. However, as the follow-up, there is a proclamation that GNU is not in the public domain, and that modifications are going to be restricted (insofar as it comes to the rules of making further modifications). As the ultimate goal, we have these quotes: “Users will no longer be at the mercy of one programmer or company which owns the sources and is in sole position to make changes.” and “Finally, the overhead of considering who owns the system software and what one is or is not entitled to do with it will be lifted.” The rest of the document speaks to common counter-arguments. Of these, the following quotes are of interest to us:

GNU will remove operating system software from the realm of competition.
“Control over the use of one’s ideas” really constitutes control over other people’s lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult.

How are these two documents separate? One must look into the methods spoken of in the second document. How exactly are the variants becoming un-free enforced? What does this have to do with the former document (after all, as he himself mentions, it’s about creating a copy, it does not remove the original). Let us deconstruct both documents.

The fundamental basis for the GNU worldview is the original emotional argument leveled against owners - emotional attachment to one’s own work. As he says: “I want to make sure that all versions of GNU remain free.” - i.e he wishes to control other people’s lives (as mentioned in the second document), on the basis of personal attachment to GNU - “I made it, I get to make sure all copies are as I want them to be.” In this way, the very core of the GNU philosophy is based upon the same premises as those of proprietary software - i.e on IP. While GNU is happy to condemn copyright and similar laws, it consistently does so while pointing out uses of it by the bad guys - proprietary developers. Meanwhile, the GPL fundamentally relies on copyright law in order to enforce itself - so long as the good people use it in the correct way, it becomes good. Consequently, we must view the dislike of IP law by Free Software to be a sham - something reinforced in ideological discussion by them.

Proponents of Free Software will regularly talk about the “stealing” of projects (there are many examples, for instance, consider this article - the author never says the word “steal”, but the reaction of the community (such as this magazine, but also commenters) is unambiguous; I encourage you to look around and talk to people about these subjects and see what is said, how, and why). While this has further issues and implications in practical terms, this is the section on ideology. What does it mean to “steal” a project, within these discussions? It means making a non-free version of a given project. How can one steal by copying and modifying? If we do not believe in property rights for software (as per the second document), then there is simply no one to steal from. The only fundamental thing becoming proprietary are the modifications made by the new author, as the original variant remains intact. This internal framing reveals a worldview within which the author does have moral rights over their creations (this is unsurprising, given such internal justification is necessary for the GPL to not be resisted). This exact framework is similarly present in the existing documents, as mentioned above, though in less overt terms.

We must then ask the question - does this make people’s lives more or less difficult? After all, if we purport that the GNU worldview includes acceptance of IP, so long as it is used by “the good guys”, perhaps the argument would be that the GNU use is fundamentally positive.

Thankfully, there are plenty of samples of how this use is unhelpful, even in the documents themselves. Now that we are restricting uses, this must be done within the existing legal framework. The GPL is a lengthy document, that is understood neither by lawyers (who do not comprehend programming to a sufficient degree to know what it intends to mean) nor by programmers (who do not know the myriad of special meanings in court). When it comes to regular people - those that GNU is supposed to be serving - they haven’t even a chance. What happened to “Finally, the overhead of considering who owns the system software and what one is or is not entitled to do with it will be lifted.”? Now, all people but the few lawyers that know programming fall into this category.

If you doubt this and believe yourself to be someone that understands the GPL and its variants fully, answer these questions:

To enforce the GPL, should you sue for breach of copyright or contract?
If I modify an AGPL program (e.g to remove a quine), and then share it with a service provider, who runs the software without modification, do they have to share the sources?
What is a quine, and why is it important to the AGPL?

Many more can be said on this topic, but it’s about time to move on. If you would like some more reading consider this post (and others!) by an actual lawyer and programmer, as well as this thread by a free software developer.

Now that the same negative side-effects arise out of the GPL’s use of copyright for restriction of modifications (something that is on its own not ideologically coherent) as they do of proprietary software, when it comes to the users, we must then ask: do the users of GPL deserve this? The answer, similarly, is found in the documents. “We thus have a paradox: the developer of useful software is entitled to the support of the users, but any attempt to turn this moral obligation into a requirement destroys the basis for the obligation. A developer can either deserve a reward or demand it, but not both.” Now that we’ve determined that the GPL causes an obstruction (albeit of a lesser degree than proprietary software), it is not deserved. If it is not deserved, the prior paradox kicks in. In order to justify this, GNU (and the FSF) has two possible paths. They could either make the argument that their approach is better in some other regard. Alternatively, they could double down on ideological aspects of it as-is (e.g accusing people making free software (simply not under the GPL) of being evil). They take the latter approach, since they are similarly failing in the other spheres. For an example, see what an FSF Board member does in terms of contributions (I encourage you to look at the other contributions by him in the GNU software repositories as well).

In short, for internal consistency, GNU and the FSF fundamentally operate primarily on ideological coherence (i.e being a true believer), moreso than any single other attribute. A sort of purity war, where only the upmost is acceptable. Is it any surprise that, ideologically, Free Software has been bleeding out?
Economic and Political

As we have read previously, one of the goals of Free Software is to eliminate competition. GNU was to do this for operating systems, for instance. This largely has not happened.