Open Source

30511 readers

692 users here now

All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!

Useful Links

Rules

Posts must be relevant to the open source ideology
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

118

We need more of Richard Stallman's ideas, not less (ploum.net)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

43 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Richard Stallman was right since the very beginning. Every warning, every prophecy realised. And, worst of all, he had the solution since the start. The problem is not Richard Stallman or the Free Software Foundation. The problem is us. The problem is that we didn’t listen.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I got your point, but please look out of the programmer perspective. For a moment, look from the perspective of, for example, mechanical engineer: all she or he needs is a copy of AutoCad, Inventor or Catia. They know nothing about code, they do not need to modify the code, they are just use the software as any other machine. That's all they need. BTW, there is no open source competition to these programs. Free CAD, with all respect, is not so good. Not because it is made by bad programmers; simply because making such complicated software costs tons of people, time and effort, so only big enterprises can do that, and now they are sadly capitalistic.

[–] Freesoftwareenjoyer 1 points 1 year ago

Free/Libre Software solves this too. One of the 4 rights that it gives you is the right to distribute. So if AutoCad was Libre Software, any mechanical engineer could legally get a copy for free, from someone else. But this is only one problem in our society. We also want to be able to control our computers and in order to do that, we need to be able to control the software that runs on them. Otherwise our devices are not uder our control, but under control of corporations. Someone who developed a program might not have your best interest in mind. On the other hand spyware, DRM and other unethical practices are usually pointless to add to Libre Software, because anyone can remove them from a program and share this modified version with others. This benefits everyone, not just programmers.

Nobody says that Libre Software can't be commercial. Corporations can make Libre Software and sell it. Just because most Libre Software is released for free, doesn't mean people can't charge money for it.

Perhaps FreeCAD isn't as good as AutoCAD. That's a shame, but there are other areas where Free Software is just as good or better compared to proprietary alternatives. Blender is one example and it is available for free and funded entirely through donations from users and companies.