>but those freedoms don't actually mean shit to the average end user. only programmers care if they have access to the source code, and most people aren't programmers.
I agree. But the solution is not to reject freedom for programmers. The solution is to embrace freedom for the end user *as well*.
On forums and social media, digital signatures and hashes that make sure posts can't be surreptitiously edited or deleted. Browser extensions and/or clients that periodically check threads using different IPs to detect shadowbanning automatically. Or decentralised forums where such things are impossible from the start.
In general, not needing to make an account for things unless absolutely necessary.
This sort of software is what I would really call "free as in speech".
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Cc: @mattskala
After 26 years of such disaster (don't forget that "open source" was only a thing since 1998), things are looking disastrous - but that's the expected outcome.
The post also puts Linux first and refers to GNU as a "pile of tools", even though tools are only part of GNU and those tools are organized and proceeds to miss the point and get thing very wrong so much that I stopped reading.
The article champions the usage of pushover licenses or making software proprietary by not licensing and making it "All Rights Reserved" and of course boringcactus has psyopped themselves and doesn't even realize that pushover licenses gives freedom and power to only the developers - who then usually proceed to exercise the given power to make the software proprietary and deny freedom to the users.
Although many users may not care about having access to the source code right at this moment in time, they *should* have it, as later there is a very real possibility that they'll like something to be changed and doing that sanely would require sending the source code to a programmer, or becoming a programmer (not very difficult for certain changes even) - which clearly is impossible to do if the user doesn't have the source.
In my opinion, even braindead windows useds like boringcactus shouldn't be denied access to source code, even if they've gone so far to write an article where they're pretty much begging for mistreatment.
Access to the source code is only one of the four freedoms anyway.
>There should be an extension to the four freedoms for stuff like this, is what I'm saying.
The four freedom are enough for users and programmers alike to exercise their freedoms - "extending" them by adding restrictions would be a step back rather than a step forward.
Programmers should not use pushover licenses for nontrivial works, but even then there's no wrong done if you publish a work under a free license - although the benefit to humanity usually ends up cancelling out to 0 (or rarely goes into the negative), as while people can use it in freedom, businesses can attack humanity by proprietarizing it and usually do if the software is any good.
Despite how boringcactus complains, the GPLv3-or-later does an excellent job at ensuring that both the programmers *and* the users get freedom, as neither the users nor the programmers can make the software proprietary and therefore prevent the execution of the 4 freedoms - although the AGPLv3-or-later does a slightly better job at ensuring freedom.
@Suiseiseki @alex @dushman @mauve @Hyolobrika I think one important thing to think about here is that software freedom doesn't begin and end with copyright licenses. Far too often when I talk to people about this stuff, every single point I try to make is answered by either "we'll add such and such term to the copyright license" - but it's not something a license can actually do - or "this is already covered by such and term of the license" - when that is visibly not working in practice.
It kind of does, as the government makes all software proprietary by default and you can only adequately correct that by choosing a software license.
It's not possible to validly release software into the public domain worldwide, so that's a poor substitute for licensing.
It is correct that many things have nothing to do with copyright and cannot be solved with a license, but many things are already covered by the license and often the main reason why such isn't working is due to lack of license enforcement.
@Suiseiseki Software as a service is one important hole in the "license as sole mechanism for freedom" approach. It's not clear that a license does or *should* have the power to bind persons who only use the program without receiving or distributing it; it's not clear that a license does or should have the power to force giving copies to users who use a Web service; and even if they get copies, dependencies (such as on Google hardware) and the code/data boundary reduce usefulness of the code.
@Suiseiseki For instance, getting all of OpenAI's source code benefits me very little if I don't also get the weights of the models they use. And trying to claim that a license can force them to give me the weights too A. is probably just not true under the law as it stands today, and B. if it were true, would have other serious consequences regarding the power of copyright holders, that might not be good for the world - so the law should probably not be changed to make that possible.