Discuss your views on these things, why you think that way and why that way is right (for you)
Please respect everyone's opinions, don't argue for the sake of arguing and please don't flame (I doubt the AT would do that anyway I'm just making sure )
some copypasta allowed

Personally, I have quite complex views on what I believe should and shouldn't be free and to what degree (public domain vs GPL, MIT etc) I'm not going to write the in the OP but if anyone's interested feel free to ask!

Edit: Fixed spelling mistake

Recently I installed GNU/Linux on my laptop that definitely is not great for running anything besides Windows. So far I've run into issues with exactly the nonfree parts of the system (graphics drivers, wifi drivers) while the free/libre parts work just fine. Bit of a case-in-point in my opinion…

$(".box-head")[0].textContent = "committing AT crimes since $whenever"

Proprietary software is a crime against humanity.

badatprogrammingibe wrote:

Proprietary software is a crime against humanity.

Yet you use Scratch 2.0 and Adobe Flash?

(The version of Scratch 2.0 on scratch.mit.edu is proprietary software, the GPL'd version is similar but does not include cloud data and is not integrated with the Scratch website. Both depend on Flash.)

badatprogrammingibe wrote:

Proprietary software is a crime against humanity.

It's up there with the holocaust, slave trade and Rwandan genocide for sure!

I do think that there are mostly-legitimate reasons to make proprietary software, or at least to make software that is not under the GPL – namely, stuff that you want to sell. Licenses like the GPL that give you the ability to redistribute code kind of make commercial (client-side) software (like games) under the GPL infeasible, because all it takes is one person to redistribute it, and so you have to count on players wanting to buy it even though they can download it legally for free.

However, I think most software should be free, with the exception of things like games, which are more akin to a piece of art than a piece of software.

So, in line with these views, for any open-source work I do, I release libraries under something like MIT or zlib, which enables them to be used in proprietary software – I mostly would hope that the only software using them would be games, but sadly that's not really enforceable.

All of the actual applications I build, though, I release under the GPL. I don't really want to provide tons of free work to proprietary software developers, especially if I were to try to build a competing product with some proprietary software.

Of course, I also don't take my views particularly seriously these days, as I am writing this from a Windows computer and I do a lot of my work in Visual Studio.

I believe that most things should be open source for editing, security, and bug finding, but someone should be allowed to charge money for their software if they have put a lot of work and time into it. Open source is good when a project starts, but if it kicks off, but eventually it should be open to a point where bugs can still be found but the software cannot be obtained for free.

I guess I'll explain my views.
I strongly disagree with the idea that all software being closed source is bad.
I also disagree that all software should be closed source
there is a difference between software and software in the post, the former being what it actually means, the latter being my views on what it should mean
Of course, we'll have to start by talking about what I see as software.
Software is not games, libraries or general utilities.
Games are more like art, even a game with bad graphics and a bad story can still have good gameplay, that's what makes it an art, you can paint a picture with bad colours and bad brush movements with it still looking nice, in its own way.
Libraries, I believe, should be public domain, things like OpenGL, Audio / Video Codecs and File handling libraries should be under public domain, you shouldn't be able to copyright a file format, nor it's way of handling it.
General Utilities, things like file archive managers, web browsers, file managers, simple audio editing etc, should be free software. They aren't complex pieces of software, can be based on libraries which I believe should be in the public domain and free versions of all of these exist already.

So what do I think Software is and why do I believe that some of it should be non-free.
Software is programs that are large, time consuming to make, are targeted at a specific market and are expensive to make.
Take Music Production software, this can get very expensive, however to make it you need to be or hire:

• Audio Engineers
  
• Software Engineers
  
• UI Designers
  
• People with expansive knowledge of Music
  
• People specialised in optimisation (CPU emulated synths need optimisation to run well, there's a reason music production desktops can get very high end)
  
• Audio Recording Teams (You need samples)
  

This software is expensive and hard to make, justifying it's non-free nature and it's price.
But what if you can't afford this and don't want professional grade software?

This is where I believe free software comes in.
For every type of software, there should be at least one piece of free software of that type preferably made by the creator of the non-free software. No, not a replacement of the demo version of the non-free software, but instead another piece of software that does the same job, but is free.
Since this free version is software it isn't an audio utility with some simple synths and a midi editor, it is a full piece of software that you could do everything you could with the non-free software, but lacking more professional built-in synths and more professional samples.

This would justify there being non-free software because for every type of software there is at least one piece of free software of that type.

And those are my views. What do you think of them and why do you think I'm wrong (if you do)?

bybb wrote:

snip lol

I agree, to a point. Certain softwares shouldn't be free, but others should be. Games, Pro apps (Premiere, Logic, FCPX), and other large apps deserve some money to run. When it comes to server utilities like web servers and stuff, that should be open source. Due to the security issues, most or all server software should be open source. When it comes to consumer apps, games, and other large scale apps, adding a price to it is fine, but some of it should be open source if possible.

Do you agree?

DatOneLefty wrote:

bybb wrote:

snip lol

I agree, to a point. Certain softwares shouldn't be free, but others should be. Games, Pro apps (Premiere, Logic, FCPX), and other large apps deserve some money to run. When it comes to server utilities like web servers and stuff, that should be open source. Due to the security issues, most or all server software should be open source. When it comes to consumer apps, games, and other large scale apps, adding a price to it is fine, but some of it should be open source if possible.

Do you agree?

With your point of “When it comes to consumer apps, games, and other large scale apps, adding a price to it is fine, but some of it should be open source if possible.” Is it the software you want to be free, or the algorithms behind it? I personally hate the ability to patent a algorithm (it can be done and has been done, entire maths equations patented and licensed out [particularly RNG algorithms]) If the algorithms and functions behind the software were free, so anyone wanting to learn from it can do, I'd be happy.

bybb wrote:

DatOneLefty wrote:

bybb wrote:

snip lol

I agree, to a point. Certain softwares shouldn't be free, but others should be. Games, Pro apps (Premiere, Logic, FCPX), and other large apps deserve some money to run. When it comes to server utilities like web servers and stuff, that should be open source. Due to the security issues, most or all server software should be open source. When it comes to consumer apps, games, and other large scale apps, adding a price to it is fine, but some of it should be open source if possible.

Do you agree?

With your point of “When it comes to consumer apps, games, and other large scale apps, adding a price to it is fine, but some of it should be open source if possible.” Is it the software you want to be free, or the algorithms behind it? I personally hate the ability to patent a algorithm (it can be done and has been done, entire maths equations patented and licensed out [particularly RNG algorithms]) If the algorithms and functions behind the software were free, so anyone wanting to learn from it can do, I'd be happy.

chrome is probably a good example, its based on open source but certain parts are from google so they have some control over it.

chrome should be pay for what you people on about

Open source projects are vulnerable to trolls

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cheeseeater wrote:

badatprogrammingibe wrote:

Proprietary software is a crime against humanity.

It's up there with the holocaust, slave trade and Rwandan genocide for sure!

That went dark, fast!

I'd like to observe that:

- Just because software is libre (open source) does not mean the developers can't make money off it.
- High-quality software (to use bybb's term) can and often is FOSS!

My favourite example is Krita, a professional-quality paint program spun off from the KDE project. It's available under the GPL; your local GNU/Linux distribution probably has packages for it. On Windows, it's sold for a nominal fee on the Windows Store, which provides quite a bit of revenue. They also allow users to make direct donations to the developers via a number of platforms; I personally supported them at one point (and maybe still do? I'm not sure what happened with the payment processor)

Due to these income sources and a few more, the Krita Foundation is able to pay multiple salaried full-time engineers. The project has the skills bybb mentioned available; the resulting software is very polished IMO. If I had to choose between Photoshop and Krita, personally I think I would choose Krita due to its incredible brush system.

And yeah, the source code is available if you want it (I once used its pen handling code as a reference to improve the UI in a piece of animation software I used. Can't do that with proprietary tools!)

I think open source is like seeing the 11 secret spices of KFC

Yes Please

sudo sh -c 'echo "text" > file'

echo 'text' | sudo tee file 1> /dev/null