Comment by akagusu
6 months ago
> Open source loses this war because proprietary devices are streamlined.
"Open source" didn't loose because it didn't fight anything. It was exactly "Open source" that enabled Google to dominate the smartphone landscape.
FSF and many other have been warning us for decades that Android been open source didn't matter because firmware, play store and many other components of Android were proprietary.
People gave a shit to them and now do you want to blame them for the results?
The diversity of projects were not and are not the problem. The problem is people that do nothing and only criticize.
> It was exactly "Open source" that enabled Google to dominate the smartphone landscape.
The financial interest may have preferred a licensing model, but either way, it was the financial interest that actually built a ton of this software. Linux isn't unpopular with businesses because of its license model. It is healthy because it found ways to plug into financial interest.
The FSF will always push licensing models while ignoring financial interest, basically abandoning users and businesses. There are how many billion smartphone users on Earth, and the FSF expects volunteer programmers and volunteer donations recruited on one of the worst websites I have ever seen to carry the load? Give me a break.
This is the one big flaw I've seen in Stallman's philosophy on software. He's been thoroughly proven right I think about the dangers of closed-source (unmodifiable) software to user freedom. But I think his insistence that Free Software also needs to be freely redistributable with no payment to the author in order to be Free has greatly limited the resources available to build such software.
The FSF will argue "you can totally sell Free Software"[1], which ignores the fact that without any restrictions on distribution/copying, the fair market value of said Free Software rapidly drops to ~$0. It's not a viable business model. Companies have built alternate business models around soliciting donations, or selling support or non-free add-ons to Free software, but selling Free Software itself (at least as the FSF defines it) doesn't actually work in practice. (You can do it obviously, but it's effectively just a different way of soliciting donations at that point; the fair market value of the software is ~$0.)
[1]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
> It's not a viable business model.
> You can do it obviously, but it's effectively just a different way of soliciting donations at that point; the fair market value of the software is ~$0
It is a viable business model. At XWiki SAS¹, they do this for their "Pro apps" [1] which are paid extensions for XWiki targeted to businesses and that are free software (under the LGPLv2 license) with license checks.
Businesses won't bother removing the license checks, it's easy enough to pay, and far easier than donating.
It is not XWiki SAS's only business strategy nor the one that brings the most money, but still, that's not a possibility to discard too fast.
You can also find paid open source Android apps on the Play store, and people (individuals!) will totally pay for them even if you can have them for free from F-Droid, like OsmAnd+ [2] or Conversations [3].
[1] https://store.xwiki.com/
[2] https://osmand.net/
[3] https://conversations.im/
¹ I work for them
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We should have terms and rigorous standards for software that is proprietary but not otherwise restrictive of user freedom. Most (weighing by how commonly it's used) software is either traditional, abusive, proprietary software like Windows or Google'd Android or is fully free like Linux. But, there is a large library of software that isn't under a free license, but doesn't attempt to abuse the user into being more profitable beyond any initial sale. Examples include the Nvidia drivers on Linux (but not Windows), Jetbrains IDEs, many game engines (I'm thinking of Unreal here), and most commercial software in the 90s and 2000s. The defining feature of this is that 1) it is not under a free license; and 2) aside from basic license checks in some cases and bugs, it never does anything against the interests of the users. Having well-defined standards and terms in this area could encourage more of such software, for product designers that appreciate the promise of free software but are not convinced by its revenue options.
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Most people have no interest in redistributing software, they only want to use it.
PREACH. Sorry. I felt heard and seen!