Purism's PureOS To Explore OSTree/Flatpak, Wants To Develop An "Ethical App Store"

[Michael_S]

LLVM, bullet library, etc all are nice examples where this developer freedom did exactly help out both ends. Not possible with GPL

Yes and no. I can get LLVM directly from the LLVM sites and GCC (a GPL project) from GCC sites. But let's say some other person, group, or company incorporates LLVM or GPL into their own project and release that project. With the LLVM the rights that second party has to provide me are zero. With the GPL I get all of the same rights from GCC derivatives as I got from the original project.

So I think it's misleading to say Apache/BSD/MIT is simply 'more free'. It's more free for the immediate recipient only. The GPL, LGPL, EPL, and MPL offer less freedom but they offer it transitively to all future recipients.

You are leaving out that some Projects simply wont exist with GPL. I am still using foobar2000 (closed source and cost free) through wine, handily beats other music players. I am using Sublime (one-time cost) an am seriously considering buying clion.
OS clearly doesnt work for everything, coding is just a small part. If an App is research-sensitive then the one doing the research is faced with copycats just being able to cobble everything up in a ball of mud without adding anything useful (or breaking things). For a concrete example you can take gpsp, where this happened an the author that did all the hard work is regretting developing it in the open (https://github.com/notaz/gpsp/blob/master/readme.txt).

To be clear, I'm anti authoritarian. So while I would prefer if everyone used GPL, I'm not advocating it be forced on anyone.

But with respect to research, I think the modern world has turned the patent and copyright system on its ear. The upstart innovator working on his own gets sued into oblivion by nonsense lawsuits that he (or she) doesn't have the legal fees to fight. In the 21st century intellectual property laws do the exact opposite of their original purpose, they defend entrenched corporate interests against smaller innovators.

What you seem to talk about is entitlement for using every cost-free (especially when it comes to a luxury as gaming, and wth do you need to buy apps on a phone?), ignoring that there are multiple reasons to keep your code closed (or closed until you are comfortable releasing it). Calling those authors "unethical" ain't exactly helping.
I would too prefer everything being open source (but not necessarily GPL), but I don't see why exceptional software aint worth buying or has to be strictly open-source.

I didn't say anyone automatically has a right to everyone else's source code. I said their lives would be easier if they had it. It would be a nice thing, beneficial to the great majority of people with less income than technology industry professionals. Even ignoring games, and going for things like simple computers, smart phones, and so forth.

The unethical part of proprietary software is that you're denying the end user the right to tinker with your product. I can't sell a hammer, a song, a toaster, or a shirt and then restrict what the buyer does with it. So why can I sell a bunch of bits and then tell them what they can't do with it? They bought it, they own it. They can't pass it off to someone else as their own product instead of mine, but they should be able to do whatever the hell they want with it. But reverse engineering proprietary software is illegal. Or at least, sharing what you've reverse engineered.

And again, proprietary software is also unethical because of planned obsolescence. Junkyards and recycling centers are full of computers, wireless routers, smart phones, consoles, and Internet of Shit *ahem* Things devices that are intentionally useless after the original vendor ended product support.

Now don't get me wrong, I work on proprietary software for my day job. I can't find anyone to pay me anywhere near as much to work on open source code (under any license, not just GPL). I have kids and I would like to retire some day, I need the money. And I use proprietary software products too, as far as I can tell the only fully free smart phones are Replicant devices and those are marginally less useful than carrying around a Matchbox car in your pocket. So I'm contributing to the same tragedy of the commons.

But I think copyleft software is the best way to go for society.

[discordian]

Yes and no. I can get LLVM directly from the LLVM sites and GCC (a GPL project) from GCC sites. But let's say some other person, group, or company incorporates LLVM or GPL into their own project and release that project. With the LLVM the rights that second party has to provide me are zero. With the GPL I get all of the same rights from GCC derivatives as I got from the original project.

So I think it's misleading to say Apache/BSD/MIT is simply 'more free'. It's more free for the immediate recipient only. The GPL, LGPL, EPL, and MPL offer less freedom but they offer it transitively to all future recipients.

Its debatable what the word "free" means then, but more to the point:

If you ship a system with GCC you will have to provide the buyers an option to compile and replace GCC on your system. This gets rather absurd if your device is safety critical, cause you just added a backdoor to breaking it.
BTW GCC already has the option of plugins, which allow a second party to improve the code without giving anything back.

And about giving back:
Either the additions are simple, then heck, someone else can them to upstream,
or they are significant at which point I would assume the author some rights to profit from it.

To be clear, I'm anti authoritarian. So while I would prefer if everyone used GPL, I'm not advocating it be forced on anyone.

I would prefer if everyone uses MIT/BSD, if anyone does not want to offer his work in return then he doesn't have to.

But with respect to research, I think the modern world has turned the patent and copyright system on its ear. The upstart innovator working on his own gets sued into oblivion by nonsense lawsuits that he (or she) doesn't have the legal fees to fight. In the 21st century intellectual property laws do the exact opposite of their original purpose, they defend entrenched corporate interests against smaller innovators.

Yes sure, but its easy to so say "be nice and fair" than write that in law.

I didn't say anyone automatically has a right to everyone else's source code. I said their lives would be easier if they had it. It would be a nice thing, beneficial to the great majority of people with less income than technology industry professionals. Even ignoring games, and going for things like simple computers, smart phones, and so forth.

The unethical part of proprietary software is that you're denying the end user the right to tinker with your product. I can't sell a hammer, a song, a toaster, or a shirt and then restrict what the buyer does with it. So why can I sell a bunch of bits and then tell them what they can't do with it? They bought it, they own it. They can't pass it off to someone else as their own product instead of mine, but they should be able to do whatever the hell they want with it. But reverse engineering proprietary software is illegal. Or at least, sharing what you've reverse engineered.

Again, doe not really help calling them unethical, especially since the "ethical" developers apparently don't have a replacement.

And again, proprietary software is also unethical because of planned obsolescence. Junkyards and recycling centers are full of computers, wireless routers, smart phones, consoles, and Internet of Shit *ahem* Things devices that are intentionally useless after the original vendor ended product support.

In terms of electronics, moores law has a good effect on this.

Now don't get me wrong, I work on proprietary software for my day job. I can't find anyone to pay me anywhere near as much to work on open source code (under any license, not just GPL). I have kids and I would like to retire some day, I need the money. And I use proprietary software products too, as far as I can tell the only fully free smart phones are Replicant devices and those are marginally less useful than carrying around a Matchbox car in your pocket. So I'm contributing to the same tragedy of the commons.

But I think copyleft software is the best way to go for society.

Complicated, huh?
Whatever is necessary to get society in a better place, I don' t think software weights in heavily.

[DMJC]

All I want is no F****N ads. I want NONE. I want adblock on the mobile browser, I want to disable all auto playing videos at the browser level, and I want any apps installed to be ad free. My Samsung Galaxy S5 is a dystopian hellhole of ads. I want my librem5 to be completely clean. I actually think that being completely ad free is where an open source phone will completely crap all over the closed source alternatives. The IOS browser is garbage because of the ads and lack of real adblocking. Android is completely screwed because of all the garbage adware on their store. The Samsung tv remote app for example is a spammy piece of garbage on the S5.

[grok]

I don't like or want to create an user account and an email. This identifies you unless maybe you take special measures (like setting up virtual debit cards with one time use codes, etc.). But well they get your IMEI, your MAC and all hardware details I guess. I don't want to care about that. If you go through systems like this to use your software, it's like you show your papers to your computer, every day.

Some stores sell you DRM free files already, like iTunes and GOG and so it would be even better to pay for stuff without a user account, you don't need my name and address to deliver a download. And probably dual licensing can be applied to games.

[brrrrttttt]

I would prefer if everyone uses MIT/BSD, if anyone does not want to offer his work in return then he doesn't have to.

As (presumably) free software types, we'd be in a MUCH worse position if all GPL projects had instead been licensed as MIT/BSD. So many great improvements never would have been shared.

[Michael_S]

Its debatable what the word "free" means then, but more to the point:

Freedom is always defined by what the user can't do. Your freedom to swing your fist exists but ends at my face. etc... etc.... Even the MIT/Apache/BSD license takes away the user's freedom to ask for a warranty or relicense the software under their own name and then sue the original developers for copyright infringement. Those two cases are absurd, but the point stands - freedom is defined by setting limits.

If you ship a system with GCC you will have to provide the buyers an option to compile and replace GCC on your system. This gets rather absurd if your device is safety critical, cause you just added a backdoor to breaking it.
BTW GCC already has the option of plugins, which allow a second party to improve the code without giving anything back.

Most "security through code obscurity" software systems end up being less secure and more straightforward to hack than systems that have the source code freely available for public audit. Remember Microsoft Windows, for example? Internet Explorer?

And with respect to GCC a proprietary plugin annoys me but even then it's not too bad, because the end user still gets GCC and any improvements you made to GCC that don't fit into a plugin. So the core stays open. With LLVM, the second party can add changes or plugins, release the whole product in a bundle, and give the user no source code.

In terms of electronics, moores law has a good effect on this.

Moore's Law does weigh in, but planned obsolescence rapidly accelerates the problem. In the US, many of the smartphone device manufacturers lock down their devices and some of the carriers - I know Verizon for one - lock the phones to their network, and it's exceedingly difficult for users to take their existing phone to a new carrier even if the new carrier uses the same CDMA or GSM technology as the old one. I buy unlocked phones, but most shoppers aren't even aware that the option exists or what it means.

So if you want to go from Sprint to Verizon or vice versa and you can't afford a top end device, you might get a Samsung Galaxy J7 V for $240 or a number of other Samsung or LG other phones costing that price or less that have equal or lower specs to a Samsung Galaxy S3 from spring 2012. If all of this proprietary, digital-rights-management junk was gone then $70 for a used Samsung Galaxy S3 or even the S3 you might still own would be fine instead of spending $170 for something inferior or $240 for something equivalent.

Edit: For another example, I have three streaming devices hooked up to my television because not all of the services allow content from each other. My Playstation can't play my Kodi and Tivo content. My Tivo can't play my Playstation and Kodi content. My Kodi box can't play my Playstation and Tivo content. If it were up to me, I'd just keep the Kodi box and sell off the other two. But my wife likes the Tivo and my kids like the Playstation. If there was no digital rights management, I could run it all through the Playstation (since it's the most powerful of the three devices).

Complicated, huh?
Whatever is necessary to get society in a better place, I don' t think software weights in heavily.

I don't think it's a top priority, but I think it's a piece of the puzzle.

[discordian]

Freedom is always defined by what the user can't do. Your freedom to swing your fist exists but ends at my face. etc... etc.... Even the MIT/Apache/BSD license takes away the user's freedom to ask for a warranty or relicense the software under their own name and then sue the original developers for copyright infringement. Those two cases are absurd, but the point stands - freedom is defined by setting limits.

The problem is that there is no clear (juristical) definition on whats your own work and whats a derivative. Picking even a single GPL3 library for a really remote piece of a big software suite will impose restrictions on everything.

Most "security through code obscurity" software systems end up being less secure and more straightforward to hack than systems that have the source code freely available for public audit. Remember Microsoft Windows, for example? Internet Explorer?

I wasn't talking about security, but safety.
What do your think happens legally when a customer "tweaked" a device you sold them and a factory burned down with a few fatals? Now you have to prove the burned ashes contain some code that the customer updated? Not feasible.
Safety is pretty much a known configuration of hard-software that has been tested for months or years.

And with respect to GCC a proprietary plugin annoys me but even then it's not too bad, because the end user still gets GCC and any improvements you made to GCC that don't fit into a plugin. So the core stays open. With LLVM, the second party can add changes or plugins, release the whole product in a bundle, and give the user no source code.

Yes and I dont see why I would have a problem with that. Either the work they done is worth something, or its not and having to open it up might result in this work never to be made in the first place.
You talking about a ideal world, where everyone if willingly using GPL, but you could aswell archive the same thing with everyone using MIT and releasing their sources.
IMHO realistically the later is better as often its not a matter of companies not wanting to upstream the changes to used software, but fear that the could get fined for not released their own work as well (because it uses some library). Or just release it after a few years like Id did with their engines.

Moore's Law does weigh in, but planned obsolescence rapidly accelerates the problem. In the US, many of the smartphone device manufacturers lock down their devices and some of the carriers - I know Verizon for one - lock the phones to their network, and it's exceedingly difficult for users to take their existing phone to a new carrier even if the new carrier uses the same CDMA or GSM technology as the old one. I buy unlocked phones, but most shoppers aren't even aware that the option exists or what it means.

So if you want to go from Sprint to Verizon or vice versa and you can't afford a top end device, you might get a Samsung Galaxy J7 V for $240 or a number of other Samsung or LG other phones costing that price or less that have equal or lower specs to a Samsung Galaxy S3 from spring 2012. If all of this proprietary, digital-rights-management junk was gone then $70 for a used Samsung Galaxy S3 or even the S3 you might still own would be fine instead of spending $170 for something inferior or $240 for something equivalent.

Cant talk about the US but here in Europe this is essentially a ploy to blind you with lower initial cost and then get the money back by locking you to a expensive contract.
You can get a unlocked version aswell, bigger initial price but cheaper in the long run. your pick.
Its no DRM btw, but a local access lock on your phone.

Edit: For another example, I have three streaming devices hooked up to my television because not all of the services allow content from each other. My Playstation can't play my Kodi and Tivo content. My Tivo can't play my Playstation and Kodi content. My Kodi box can't play my Playstation and Tivo content. If it were up to me, I'd just keep the Kodi box and sell off the other two. But my wife likes the Tivo and my kids like the Playstation. If there was no digital rights management, I could run it all through the Playstation (since it's the most powerful of the three devices).

Annoying but unrelated (sounds more like different formats not even sure its DRM?)

I don't think it's a top priority, but I think it's a piece of the puzzle.

I think having those issues is a strong sign of being in the better parts of the world.

[discordian]

As (presumably) free software types, we'd be in a MUCH worse position if all GPL projects had instead been licensed as MIT/BSD. So many great improvements never would have been shared.

Speak for yourself, I regret having licensed some of my hobbyist work as (L)GPL - as it made it harder for other hobbyists to add then into their projects or having to reinvent the wheel. I probably would use (L)GPL if I had financial interest.

[oiaohm]

And that's not even covering open vs closed source, they dont map directly to GPL and commercial.
Yeah, he did - he stopped developing OS.
downstream did nothing but add non-working stuff, but preach their stuff in forums. The result was that users just repeatedly slam him for being slow or not listening to their wishes.

I do support for the wine project. winehq.org. I can state that this problem is normal. Just look at wine staging and many other items before it.

People have a fairly tail dream of open source. Being forked by maintainers and other people is unfortunately normal. Lets take wine we had distributions adding custom patches to wine that the upstream project knew was totally broken to support pulseaudio. Only option to deal with this nightmare was have people who could build and provide binaries directly. Wine had to change from MIT license to LGPL because code-weavers who support wine was suffering from a commercial competitor taking wine modify it and giving nothing back.

So yes you start a open source project if you don't want unfair usage expect to of a GPL protected work expect to have to deal with https://www.softwarefreedom.org/ to have them send out DCMA taken down notices on binary forks being provide without source.

Open source does not get you away from software theft.

Main objective of open source is if the lead developer disappears or quits someone else can pick it up. What has happened with gpsp. https://github.com/libretro/gpsp/

Reality with open source spitting the dummy that someone forking project is not going to change anything. Also quit with open source does not change much all it means is at least one of the fork takes over.

It you are not willing to share maintainer-ship with others starting open source project can be a really bad idea. Really the first developer behind gpsp did not have a thick enough skin to be a open source developer lead and the fact I see no other people added with maintainership rights either first developer was after too much control and unwilling to split the workload or there was something else wrong in the community. It more likely that the project in his eyes his personal project so unwilling to share.

Really instead of threatening to quit due to being forked better would be been putting on a notice for more developers with commit rights to develop faster.

Also have a few support people like me who don't code who job is to deal with the forums and other head aches. Split the workload should be the plan once open source project gets a following...

[L_A_G]

When did I ever gave the impression of being a stallman follower again?

The fact that you had to talk about "unethical" app stores when the "full" GPL, which is pretty much Stallman's baby and the license of choice for his followers, is the only license known to have compatibility issues with app store licenses.

Also when you ship by apple app store for example you have to agree to extra terms on your binaries license that they decided. So what is ethical about the store you are selling your product in decided the terms you product will be sold under to customers. A store trying to alter device warranty would not be on right.

You do know that "full" GPL is a pretty draconian license? There's been a lot of talk over the years about how it's incompatible with the Apple App Store license after VLC ran into issues with that, but that license works just fine with just about every other open source license, including the lGPL which VLC changed to (much to the chagrin on the Stallman types).

...

You'd probably have a point if we were talking about a company with a genuinely dominant market position like Microsoft did in the 90s and early 2000s, but with iOS you know what you're getting into and you're pretty much spoiled for choice if you think this is unacceptable. Personally this is a big part of the reason why despite having used Apple laptops as my main mobile desktops for about a decade at this point, I've never owned an iPhone or iPad.

My stance on matters like this is that as long as I'm not forced into something that I consider unacceptable, I'm still fine with it existing and other people being fine with it.