Comment by akst
11 hours ago
I think the free software model underestimates how much people dislike being compelled to operate on other peoples terms when it comes to exercising discrete with their intellectual property. Even if they get "free" software.
The suggestion free software is free is intellectually dishonest, I don't think free software is really free, the nature of it is very controlling towards those who decide to depend it. I publish most of the code I do for small side projects publicly, but I would never use free software if I arbitrary forgo to my ability to make the decision for myself. It deprives contributions of dignity, any suggestion a contribution comes from a willingness to share is undermined by the fact they are compelled to do so.
There's a reason why their interpretation of free is prefaced by a bunch of precondition, because it's a force framing that is odds with what people actually understand to be free.
It's free as in freedom/libre - liberty.
Someone with authoritarian viewpoint is of course going to chafe against principles of liberty, and that is how it should be. Same is true in software.
But it literally isn't that, as an author in depending on it you reduce your liberty. The software is free, those dependent on are not free.
You could argue well it's free to users, but there's a level of survivorship bias due to the fact this is confined to the software people will publish under this license.
Edit: Back to "free software losing" is unsurprising given the above. All the benefit to the user are ultimately irrelevant to the growth of software when doesn't come from users, it comes from people weighing up if they want to forgo this ability to exercise control over software they made. And the portion of users who actually care are negligible to the point it has zero incentive to the software provider. The one exception I would say is, the "Free" softwares model works well for public goods like shared infrastructure like database software and such, but for end user software it is insane licensing model.
> Someone with authoritarian viewpoint is of course going to chafe against principles of liberty, and that is how it should be
Do you even hear yourself. This is the rhetoric why no one takes this seriously. Your suggesting my desire not to be deprived of my own personal liberty and act on my own terms (without causing harm to anyone else) is somehow authoritarian? It's such a narcissistic / manipulative entitled framing, to suggest this embodies anything resembling liberty.