Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software - <AUTHOR> https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html <comment><USER3> The point, for me at least, is to increase the total volume of freedom in the world. Here is a radical thought: Western Civilization hasn't reached "freedom peak". The freedom level can continue to rise or it can decrease. Peasants in the Middle Ages probably thought they were free. We think we are free. How silly do we think those peasants were? How silly will future generations think _we_ are?

It depends. If everyone just shrugs their shoulders, then we can easily slide back to the Middle Ages. Freedom is not monotonically rising all the time. What I, who likes computers much more than people, can do to generate freedom is write free software. It's not much but it provides value and proves that valuable stuff can be produced without a profit motive and that salary slavery isn't necessary to ensure that good software is programmed.

That's why I like the GPL. In a way that is saying "This is highly valuable software, but you can have it for free, provided..." vs BSD "Do whatever you want with this shit I just wrote for fun." Free software is great fun and I contribute to it only because I _like_ writing code, but as a side effect of that I'm also, well, improving the world one tiny step at a time.

<comment><USER4> So GPL'd software is highly valuable where BSD'd software is just hobbyist stuff...because of the license?

Less loaded (and more accurate) one-liners might be...

GPL: you may use this code, provided you follow rules representing my views on software freedom.

BSD: you may use this code however you see fit.

Which approach fits with your personal philosophy depends on you. But certainly BSD does nothing to lessen the highly valuable software licensed with it. OpenSSH, sudo, and many others, for instance.

<comment><USER5> It weird to me that the free software license is more restrictive than other licenses. GPL maintain the end user freedom, but not the freedom of the programmer.

<comment><USER6> That's a play on words.

I believe freedom of one person ends where freedom of another person starts. Freedom to steal, freedom to kill, freedom to harm are not seen as positive things. Countries and societies all around the world restrict or forbid them.

Freedom, when out of control, can result in bad outcomes. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partitions_of_Poland](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partitions_of_Poland) Poland disappeared off the map because nobility and clergy had too much freedom. Most infamous was /liberum veto/ "This policy of parliamentary procedure was based on the assumption of the political equality of every "gentleman", with the corollary that unanimous consent was needed for all measures. A single member of parliament's belief that a measure was injurious to his own constituency (usually simply his own estate), even after the act had already been approved, became enough to strike the act."

Unless you're a hardcore anarchist, you have to draw the line somewhere.

<comment><USER7> > I believe freedom of one person ends where freedom of another person starts.

Nobody will disagree with that. The question is where to draw those lines.

> Freedom to steal, freedom to kill, freedom to harm are not seen as positive > things.

As Cicero pointed out (in "De Republica"), these things would prevent humans from living together in cities.

I am a classicist. I look back to Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero far more than I do Locke. As far as I see it, the goal of the economy is to serve the household, not the other way around.

> A single member of parliament's belief that a measure was injurious to his > own constituency (usually simply his own estate), even after the act had > already been approved, became enough to strike the act."

And yet Quakers have shown an ability to make a universal veto work. The key thing though is what you pointed out: universal vetos weaken central authorities and return the power to small regional entities where people can more easily work together. This is a _good outcome._

The question really is how to define Freedom. Stallman tries to follow in FDR's footsteps of four freedoms. But in both cases you have logic which then requires centralization as a matter of policy, and then freedom in the service of freedom becomes self-consuming.

Here's my radical idea: freedom requires limits, to be sure, but freedom is defined by the space within the limits. I.e. freedom is a matter of partitioning, physically or metaphorically, something in order to give people a right to control their own space. The freedom which then matters is economic freedom, and by this I mean the right to engage in economic production and trade without micromanagement from outside. To put it another way, it's one thing to have to do the dishes. It's another thing to be told not only to do them but be micromanaged in how one must do them.

Evaluating software licenses from this perspective then gives one the sense that those licenses that the FSF is willing to call Free Software Licenses do not universally as a group deliver more freedom than proprietary software licenses. The AGPL places many more restrictions on products and services delivered with the software than does the license for the Microsoft Visual C++ runtime library when obtained as part of development tools.

So the question is: what can someone produce? What are the limits there? Who is making those decisions? So I side with the BSD folks.

<comment><USER6> In my opinion small regional communities can only exist in isolation. I don't see how such communities could defend against an aggression by a strong state- backed military. Putin is having a great time picking off countries one by one. Maybe if someone comes up with an anarchist _religion_ , something that strongly motivates people to seek out and destroy governments before they grow.

I think it's like snipers in FPS games - the only thing that can REALLY stand up to a sniper is another sniper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think Stallman misses the point that many of us who are at least latent distributists see in free/open source software. Freedom can't be defined as a freedom from restriction or a Lockean framework of liberty, as Stallman imagines, but rather the freedom to engage creative or productive endeavors without micromanagement from others.[1]

The question, rather literally is who has a right to tell you what license your works go under, and under what circumstances. If freedom to create things is economically valuable (and I think it is), then one need not worry so much about people misappropriating things because in the end they cannot out- compete what is free and open. Yeah, SunOS forked from BSD. How is it doing these days compared to the open source versions?

These days, my preferred license is the BSD license. I am uncomfortable with the MIT license's sublicensing grant, and I am even more uncomfortable with the AGPL, which strikes me as a demonstration that freedom in the name of freedom is ultimately self-consuming and self-defeating. I am willing to tolerate the GPL and in fact most of my works are licensed under that license for legacy code reasons.

But I still prefer the BSD license. This license is very simple. I own my work and give everyone else a right to use it. They own their own contributions and an decide how to license those. Since freedom to create new solutions with the software is economically valuable, there I can expect that the original BSD- licensed versions will win out over the long run.

[1] [http://ledgersmbdev.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-distributist- view...](http://ledgersmbdev.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-distributist-view-on- software-freedom.html)

<comment><USER8> Your preference for BSD is certainly valid, but it's valid because of your objectives.

If you want a software package that you own to be openly collaborated, but still controlled by you, the GPL is a great copyright construct to do that with.

There isn't a right answer here. I think Stallman has an ideologically pure argument that is appealing to me as a consumer, but not always ideal for my business needs.

I disagree that BSD solutions will necessarily "win" in the long run. There's no incentive to share.

<comment><USER9> Licenses are a toolbox, like the tech they cover.

Wanna stop basically everything commercial related? AGPL

Wanna stop tivozation? GPL 3

Wanna allow tivozation? GPL 2

Wanna allow general commercialization? 2-clause BSD

EDIT: if anyone remembers the OSS license feature matrix site that's new, plz reply.

<comment><USER10> _Wanna stop basically everything commercial related? AGPL_

The whole business of the company I work for, and of the large network of peers around the world, is built around a piece of AGPL licensed software called OpenERP[1].

In other words, my paycheck disagrees with you :)

[1] [https://www.openerp.com/](https://www.openerp.com/)

<comment><USER11> Just to poke a little fun at you, Most ERP softwares are not well-known for being exactly understandable by average developer, and is known to be consultant-based business so much that it is hardly possible to learn it without paying for consultant.

It's just another way of being proprietary by obscurity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord What's more is that terms "open source" and "closed source" by themselves allow many companies (like GitHub) to sneakily evade the stigma of shelving out proprietary software. After all, you can view the source, right? So it _must_ be open source! And it technically, is, too. Even if not by the OSI definition, it still fits the criteria, because having source access is only one piece of the puzzle.

What's more is "closed source" sounds much less scary than "proprietary".

Now you might say that the same can be said for "free software". Not if you explicitly denote it as "libre" or "free as in freedom", in which case its meaning becomes unequivocal.

Terminology matters.

<comment><USER12> > After all, you can view the source, right? So it must be open source! And it > technically, is, too.

No. It's not. It's technically viewable source, or readable source, but it's not open, which as you know, needs to meet certain criteria.

Those of us who have been around long enough know this old game. Microsoft has tried this in the past. If it doesn't pass by OSI, it's not open source, and that matters to some of us. It's also why being an "open source" company is meaningless to many of us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems like HN is mostly missing the point. Stallman's four essential freedoms are intended to fix proprietary software vendors abusing their users.

For example, let's say there's some "open source" software that allows you to read the code, but prevents you from distributing it. Well, what's stopping them from slipping in a nasty backdoor in their binaries if you're not allowed to compile your own clean version? I'm really shocked, and quite frankly disgusted, that you all can be so critical of free software after all that has come to light about the NSA.

<comment><USER7> > For example, let's say there's some "open source" software that allows you > to read the code, but prevents you from distributing it.

I think btw that is a bigger restriction than allowing you to distribute the binary but not read the code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Free Software is dead. Long Live Open Source Software. The reason for this is simple: Free Software is simply too radical for most practical uses. The majority of users don't care about the philosophical benefits of one over the other and are never going to contribute back to the original project (think of the millions of Android/Linux or Firefox users). On the other hand, OSS allows plenty of practical benefits: you can view the source, fork it, often times contribute to it. It's often done on good faith. Think of all the projects released under the Apache or MIT licenses which are doing so great. Who cares if someone somewhere is not contributing back: most people that matter do and the license does not hinder them.

The GPL is an appropriate license for lots of projects, such as the Linux kernel. Those are too important and too large a target to leave to good faith. However, something like a JavaScript framework of the week does not benefit from being GPL. Also, think of all those BSD distributions.

Having said that, open source your technology now. Not your secret sauce, but most of your code can be OSS. No reason to hide the Rails app that runs your site. It's not why you are making money, so open it up and let others take a peek. The worst thing that's going to happen is that nobody will look. Chances are, nobody will clone your exact product because you are likely delivering value that's past just the code you are writing.

<comment><USER15> > Not your secret sauce

Open source your damn secret sauce so other people can improve and benefit from it rather than hoarding it as your precious in a lockbox like Gollum.

<comment><USER14> If you can do so without damage. I suspect that if Google opened up their exact page ranking algorithm, the quality of the web overall would drop dramatically for everyone. But for example, if they opened up their home page, or Google Docs people could actually improve upon them with no downside to Google.

<comment><USER16> > I suspect that if Google opened up their exact page ranking algorithm, the > quality of the web overall would drop dramatically for everyone.

That's only because Google is a single point of failure. They have excellent engineers making their systems resilient, but relying too heavily on a centralised system inevitably amplifies those bugs which do slip through.

If Google's code were Free Software, there would be many much smaller, much less stable instances out there. There would be far more outages, but each one would be very minor.

Of course, a decentralised Google would be excellent. There are projects out there which try to do this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It is interesting to read this through the eyes of the burgeoning Open Source Hardware (OSH) community. There seems to be an Free Hardware Foundation in Italy, but I have never seen it mentioned before, and rarely do I see discussion of the sort of essential freedoms I see Stallman is talking about. However, I often see people struggling with (and reverse engineering) proprietary hardware, firmware and software. Hardware tools often come feature locked and internals are intentionally obscured, down to sanding the labels off chips. When the question of open tools comes up, the response is usually something like this: "How much demand is there for, say, a 100 MHz open 'scope that costs a bit more than a Rigol?" Taken from a recent discussion about Free/Open Hardware:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7375771](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7375771)

Does the Free Hardware movement need a Stallman?

<comment><USER18> Eh... you do realise Arduino comes from Italy, right? That's not a coincedence.

I'm currently studying Interaction Design at Malmö Hogskola, and have had David Cuartielles as a teacher. I have also seen Massimo Banzi give a workshop on the Arduino in the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design.

So I can say from experience that there are Stallmans for open hardware out there.

<comment><USER17> I think you misunderstand my comment. I know there are lots of advocates for OSH. But I don't think there is someone like Stallman who is advocating for free as in speech hardware the way Stallman does for software. I don't see the "social and ethical values" of the kind of freedom that Stallman talks about reflected in OSH discussions. However, I only see the English language part of the conversation, so something different might be happening in Europe/Italy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It seems that the only reason why people would prefer BSD/MIT over the GPL is to say "I want people to give me their code for free but I may want to sell it in the future."

<comment><USER20> Or maybe they just want their code to be unquestionably _free_.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7404914](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7404914)

Besides, there's nothing wrong with selling software. And for what it's worth, I can sell GPL software too, even though it's not free.

<comment><USER21> Placing any license on code imposes restrictions. The only "unquestionably free" license is public domain.

<comment><USER22> This is just incorrect. By default, you retain the copyright to things that you write. Which means that others can't make copies without getting your approval. And in many jurisdictions, it is not at all clear that you can relinquish your copyright simply by declaring your work to be in the public domain. So by default, there are legal restrictions on what others can do with things you write.

It's called a "license" because it enumerates the things you are explicitly _allowing_ others to do with something you hold the copyright to. Without a license, the default "rules" of copyright apply. Licenses don't impose restrictions, they remove them.

Liberal licenses (BSD, MIT, etc) allow you to do nearly everything you can do with something in the public domain. Copyleft licenses (GPL, etc) allow you to do somewhat less, with the notion being that this restriction of your freedom increases the overall freedom of everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> For the record I am more of an open source guy. I think tools are used by people in all sorts of ways and I care about how good they are and that they should gently encourage the right kind of culture. Free software is about liberty as the foremost social value and derives everything from there. It would be interesting to many laissez faire market advocates that almost all the Free Software advocates are extremely leftist civil libertarians.

In fact the whole thing might not compute for anarcho capitalists because the main enemy of Free Software -- which is restricted or unfree software -- is produced and used, not by governments, but by corporations. You might realize why they are so leftist and why they actually use the copyright laws to ENFORCE software freedom (an interesting twist!) when you realize that their main enemy is privately held companies who build large platforms on top of proprietary codebases.

I am for open source for practical reasons, they are for free software for philosophical reasons. And lookit: The PRIVATE COMPANY (which anarcho capitalists so admire as the outcome of a completely laissez faire society) is in fact the government over its little jurisdiction, which is the proprietary installed code base that people have. Such as the Bloomberg terminal, or Windows or the iPhone. In many industries, you have to pick one of several companies and they all are run as feudalism. They grant certain favors to some app developers and not others. You can't just deploy apps you write on them.

The exceptions are Linux and the Web, etc. Which have in fact become the most widespread operating system and platform, respectively. Linux and other open source software did it using licenses on their code that USED GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT THROUGH COPYRIGHT to prevent the software being used by companies to lock people out. The Web did it through a culture of openness where every user could View Code and browsers had to conform to standards of bodies like W3C and WhatWG.

My point can be summarized as usual: people create groups, and if it's not governments then it's companies. Someone will always be lording it over others, creating barriers to unrestricted freedom. And the most we can do is have systems to guide things away from terrible abuses of power.

<comment><USER23> One of my friends (who is an anarcho capitalist) replied:

 _There 's nothing wrong with creating groups, as long as nobody forces me to be a member. I'll read about open source vs free software, but I think you know my view: I'm against IP because I'm against legal fictions, because they violate natural property rights._

No one is forcing you to become a member of New York City or your particular town or state. You can move.

What anarchists are really lamenting is the lack of available space where people havent set up a group with a government. That just goes to show how it emerges naturally out of other states, which can briefly be described as close to anarchist. And sometimes those states arent so glamorous.

Anyway it's the same in software. It takes massive effort to build a system that is completely free for everybody. That is what the Free Software movement has done. But they are besieged at every turn by PRIVATE, proprietary interests such as businesses who lick their lips and want the "freedom" to use the software those guys built to RESTRICT the freedom of THEIR users. So the Free Software Foundation and its allies have a great ally in the US government and copyright laws! They use them specifically to banish infringers who would use software licensed under GNU License for example without giving their users freedoms.

Interesting? Government helping keep people more free. Thats what happens when the perps are private companies and not governments.

And to address your point - it is just as hard to move away from Windows and Mac, or from Android, iPhone and Blackberry all of them etc. as it is for you to move from the United States. Sure it's possible. But first you need a massive effort to build a natio-- err I mean a platform that is based on principles of freedom. And along the way you will need the help of governments to defend it from people easily coming in and ruining the whole thing because they were "free" to take what you built for their own selfish interests.

The dynamics are almost exactly the same! But it's an interesting case study because software battles are virtual, hurt less people, and softwrae moves really fast. Yet you can actually see the problems that would happen with anarchy without enforcement.

Even today, the free software movement is developing new licenses to combat a new threat: hardware that will only run an approved version of an open source program.

<comment><USER24> > Even today, the free software movement is developing new licenses to combat > a new threat: hardware that will only run an approved version of an open > source program.

You mean, like the GPLv3, which restricts the freedom to _choose_ such software to business users?

<comment><USER23> Right, which is why I am not a major fan of ideologies of any kind getting too much power. I think there are trade-offs, in this case the freedom of businesses vs the freedom of their users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There are a host of issues that one could take with Stallman's proposals/ideas, but one that I think doesn't get much attention is the slight falseness in some of his assumptions.

We give up our freedom to a plethora of things in the world all the time that we all interact with (be it cars, planes, microwaves, televisions, etc). I interact with tons of products that I know, in theory, could threaten me because they are closed systems, but I use them anyway. I suspect RMS does the same and I'm sure he and I try to be cautious and judicious of our use of these things (many others are probably not).

For example, I use Gmail. I know that there is a possibility, however remote, that my correspondence could be hacked or used against me in some way, because of the distributed and closed source nature of the program I'm using. I don't care though. I simply don't trust Gmail with correspondence that is sensitive to my personal life and I get along happily.

How is Gmail impinging on my freedom if I am able to choose, taking a knowing risk? I know RMS would respond that since I don't have access to the source that I actually don't know the risks that I am taking, but I think this is a straw man. Even if every product in the world was open source we would all still be taking risks with them, because there is no way we could spend our time reviewing all of the specific implications of every product.

<comment><USER26> As long as you are happy with the terms GMail is offered under, and the feature set of the software, you are right, in the short term it probably does not impact your freedom in a way you are likely to notice. It may even enhance your short-term freedom by letting you focus on other things.

However, the fact remains that if you dislike something about GMail (the ads, the way it renders ASCII art, or maybe you wish it supported OpenPGP encryption), you are powerless to do anything about it. This also means that if GMail changes in some way you don't like (e.g. the recent UI changes), you have no choice but to accept them. If one day they decide to forbid normal attachments and force everything to go into Google Drive... well that's just too bad.

Basically, your choices always boil down to "take it or leave it", where leave it means migrating (or losing) your mail and learning to use a new app. This is not a trivial undertaking, even for a skilled user.

When you further consider how many people are putting their eggs in the same basket, these issues (especially the privacy concerns) become much more worrying. GMail, through its market dominance, is actively holding back the adoption of encryption and actively harming the privacy of entire nations. This wouldn't be a concern if it were free software people ran in a decentralized fashion.

Free Software comes with its own issues - running your own software and maintaining it does incur a cost. But with Free Software you have the option of doing things yourself or hiring someone to help you out. With non-free software, you don't have that choice.

How important these issues are to you personally will of course vary. But that doesn't mean Free Software supporters are wrong to believe these are problems worth spending time and effort on fixing. Raising awareness is of course a necessary part of that.

(disclaimer: I work on [https://www.mailpile.is/](https://www.mailpile.is/), a Free Software project which aims to offer many of the features of GMail with strong emphasis on privacy/security, so I feel pretty strongly about this.)

<comment><USER7> But this comes back to why I keep saying that freedom is economically valuable. If you don't like something about Gmail, if you have all the components, you can bring another service _to market._

This is what's missing in the discussion. The point of freedom is in production, in bringing things to market. There are certain things (like DRM) that Stallman does not want to be brought to market and so the FSF tries to discourage them using the license.

But that's a dangerous power, left in the hands of a few organizations and companies. I prefer to see this as something that should not be in the hands of anyone, but a case where the freedom to bring products and services to market is the primary goal of the movement. However, this only really exists in Distributism, and of this, the BSD license is the best fit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The name "Free Software" is bad. The explanation is confusing. The idea that you can have a class of software that is Free but not GPL is confusing, and I'm not sure what he means unless he is just saying you can use other copyleft licenses.

The obvious practical reality in our society driven by money is that if your product must include its source code then you may have some big problems making money or maintaining whatever competitive edge you had.

Whatever your license says or the law says, if the source code is available its a good chance some people are going to copy your software and distribute it for less.

Also, as far as old-school copyleft components (such as GPL, not LGPL), if including the component in my software means that I have to distribute the full source of my application, that means that I go from having a product that is only available by purchase to a product that someone can compile on their computer for free.

The reality is that we live in a monetary society and people aren't always honest. And insisting that source code be distributed with proprietary software is not compatible with business.

Now, I believe that the current form of the structural aspects of society related to business and the monetary system are ultimately incompatible with the truthful holistic application of science (technology) and with ethics in general. We need to fix that. Until we do, copyleft isn't practical for many products.

<comment><USER23> I once wrote Richard Stallman suggesting what I thought was a much more helpful name, keeping all the good connotations but with less of the ambiguity:

Liberating Software

But I never heard back.

<comment><USER28> Some people use the term "Libre" or "Free as in Speech" also.

<comment><USER23> I know that. That's why I wanted to choose a two-word English phrase which immediately conveyed the right thing without the downsides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The distinction between Open Source and Free Software seems increasingly silly to me (as a user and someone who has to program for his job, but is not a developer, and is not terribly interested in licenses). Both are open source (lowercase) as in, I can see the source openly. That's what's important for me, personally _. Then there is the question of Copyleft or not, which is partially orthogonal to that. Copyleft is this neat hack of the copyright system where you can make people who use your code (and care about copyright) share their code, too. I think the real question Stallman is addressing is copyleft vs. non-copyleft.

_ ) In fact, I'd be really happy if e.g. Microsoft would "open their source", that is show the source code to Windows, even under a ultra non-permissive license a la: "You may not use this for anything."

<comment> vezzy-fnord _In fact, I 'd be really happy if e.g. Microsoft would "open their source", that is show the source code to Windows, even under a ultra non-permissive license a la: "You may not use this for anything."_

That is proprietary software. Source code by itself is useless when you have no rights to go with it. This is why "open source" is such a sly term. Companies can very easily pull off shenanigans like in your hypothetical scenario and then hide behind the banner of "open source". They would also technically be correct, even if not abiding by the OSI. After all, it sure as hell isn't closed source!

Free software, so long as you specify "libre" or "free as in freedom", is unequivocal. Bullshit like freely viewable source without distribution rights doesn't cut it.

Your views are misguided, and are even potentially harmful.

<comment><USER30> There are plenty of benefits to being able to read the code without the ability to distribute it. Two things come immediately to mind:

1\. Is the software secure? Are there gaping security holes riddled through the source? Think about all the times you hear about people "working on getting the project ready for open source". Often this is due to vulnerabilities that are ticking time bombs waiting to go off as soon as the security by obscurity clock runs out.

2\. There may be GPL code in the source that is being used in violation of the license. I would not be at all surprised if a significant chunk of closed proprietary software is using GPL code, but no one knows because they cannot read the source.

Both of these points are moot if you simply avoid proprietary software altogether RMS style, but only a tiny fraction of users are going to do that. Of course, these benefits are also the reasons why this will never happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> While its intentions are noble, in my experience the GPL is Free as in "you probably need a lawyer to ensure you're not violating it". Doubly so for AGPL.

The irony of RMS spreading his own vision of "Freedom" is that the GPL restricts things which he doesn't agree with, which seems to violate the most basic principle there. I've been involved with several organizations which try to avoid GPL code, by policy, in favor of MIT/BSD because it raises too many issues. Not saying GPL hasn't done good things (my understanding is that much of Apple's compiler work is public bc they started with GPL code), but the wind seems to be blowing towards less restrictive OSS licenses.

</comment><comment><USER32> Stallman is wrong that proprietary software hurts users; that's the essence of his critique. It's sad that so much software has sailed under the GPL flag of convenience, simply because it existed and could avoid license bikeshedding. Most of the efforts embodied in Linux or even GCC are not motivated by RMS's political spin.

What's really unfortunate about his noise is that it has consumed the air that should be supporting more fundamental topics - especially the nature of protocols (which must be free, documented and unencumbered in order to really qualify as protocols.) The IETF really embodies the philosophy that has made the net a success.

</comment><comment><USER33> Imagine a world where _all_ software adheres to the tenets of Free software. Our freedoms would continue to be egregiously curtailed by website Terms of Service Agreements at, Contracts with the service providers of hardware devices, Firmware restrictions like UEFI safeboot, and legal straightjackets like software patents. I dont understand how the philosophical underpinnings of just the software are really all that effective in guaranteeing any sort of freedom without _also_ having all the other freedoms we're already denied.

</comment><comment><USER34> How does the free software movement live in a capitalistic society? I'd be all for writing and contributing to free software if I could make a living off it. But I need to make a living, and that likely isn't coming from writing free software. I charge for my software because I want the freedom to choose what I create, rather than just pounding out code for someone else to make a profit from.

<comment><USER16> > How does the free software movement live in a capitalistic society?

One obvious way is to sell Free Software. The market has raced to the bottom recently, but a while ago a lot of GNU development was funded by Free Software sales.

Compare this to proprietary software, which can't operate in a capitalistic society. It relies on government interference in the software market to create an artificial scarcity (ie. copyright).

<comment><USER24> > Compare this to proprietary software, which can't operate in a capitalistic > society.

Er, what?

> It relies on government interference in the software market to create an > artificial scarcity (ie. copyright).

Capitalistic society relies on government involvement in the market to create property rights; among the property rights that were features of the systems for which the term "capitalism" was coined is copyright.

So, to say that proprietary software cannot exist because it relies on government for the system of property rights that underlie it is a gross misunderstanding of "capitalism".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Anyone is free to copy, modify, publish, use, compile, sell, or distribute the original SQLite code, either in source code form or as a compiled binary, for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and by any means.

</comment><comment><USER36> The problem is that code doesn't afford freedom. Money does. So to the extent that a license inhibits users of a codebase from making money, it is anti- freedom.

<comment><USER37> To the extent that the Underground Railroad inhibits would-be slave-owners from making money, it's anti-freedom.

Note that I'm quite emphatically not saying these are exactly the same thing, but pointing out by example that there are other factors that can clearly be far more important.

<comment><USER36> It's not clear at all what you are trying to say. If you think there are other more important factors, why don't you just say what they are?

<comment><USER37> There are some obvious important factors - most importantly the ability to extend my software (or pay others to do so) and to thereby ensure continued interoperability.

<comment><USER36> Why are these more important than the ability for developers to make money?

<comment><USER37> In general, because an increasing amount of our lives are dependent on software and there are far more users than developers.

Note crucially that we're not talking about _all_ ability to make money (as we would be with Non-Commercial clauses); we're talking about the difference between the ability to earn money based on copyleft code (demonstrably non- zero) versus non-copyleft code (probably more).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I got the point "Free" in Free Software. Whether it ends up in giving the software Free since we can modify and redistribute Free Software?

</comment><comment><USER39> I used to put a lot of stock into RMS's philosophy of How The World Works Best™. Now I ask myself why I don't just treat it any differently than reading some random blog on the internet. Yes, RMS has done great work in leading emacs through the ages. That's pretty awesome. But that doesn't really give him any credibility in the realm of philosophy. And such a social and human topic as software licensing is pretty genuinely venturing into actual philosophy.

<comment><USER40> Correct me if im wrong, but I don't think he just invented this mindset out of nowhere. It was born from the hacker culture at MIT before industry completely took over software production. Im not very hip on philosophy, what makes someone a credible philosopher?

<comment><USER41> Absolutely, but that model relied on programmers being paid by MIT, who was in turn paid by the US taxpayer. It was never going to pay for millions of programmers salaries, it was designed for the elite few.

I think the past decade has shown that free, open source, and completely proprietary software can all co-exist without negatively affecting consumer choice.

<comment><USER10> _Absolutely, but that model relied on programmers being paid by MIT, who was in turn paid by the US taxpayer. It was never going to pay for millions of programmers salaries, it was designed for the elite few._

My paycheck disagrees with the assertion that the model relies on programmers being paid by MIT.

It's certainly less profitable than writing proprietary code, but I see no reason why it can't pay for millions of programmers' salaries. And no, the fact that it doesn't right now is not proof of that, because proprietary software crowds out free software jobs. I'm talking about the hypothetical situation of all software written being Free.

<comment><USER41> Sure, it could be an option, but for those of us who have no moral objection to proprietary code, its not a compelling universe to live in.

People who write proprietary software generally take on harder problems before the free software community (from AT&T to Google), and are quite generous with their fortunes once they make them.

I'm not concerned when producers of good things make money, I'm happy when I see that happening, as opposed to non-producers like financial vultures making all the money while being destructive to society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Question:

If I license my _software_ under the GNU Free Documentation License and include invariate sections, is it still free?

</comment><comment><USER42> This licensing terms of this article is not compatible with the GPL or the Debian Free Software Guidelines.

<comment><USER21> This article isn't computer code, it's an editorial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> tl;dr Open Source is a necessary but not sufficient requirement for Free Software.

</comment><comment><USER44> To begin, my position on this matter has been clear for years: both free software (as defined by Stallman) and non-free software (as defined by Stallman) can co-exist. I believe in free market (not ideal free market).

\-->

 _For the free software movement, however, nonfree software is a social problem, and the solution is to stop using it and move to free software._

 _We in the free software movement don 't think of the open source camp as an enemy; the enemy is proprietary (nonfree) software. But we want people to know we stand for freedom, so we do not accept being mislabeled as open source supporters._

These two quotes strike me. Why should we label proprietary software as enemy?

If we clone all proprietary developers to work on free software alternatives, then we definitely have more options to choose from. The problem is not a social problem -- it isn't that people, average like my parents, don't know free software exists - but because there aren't enough to choose from. Like I said, if you can clone all of the developers to work on free alternatives every day, you will definitely have free alternatives. If you only have a handful of people working part-time as a hobby to contribute to free software, how can you compete with proprietary software?

I am not against free software. I like free software (as defined by R.S). I like open source. I also think proprietary softwares have value. Note here on HNs a lot of people run _X-as-a-service_. In the ideal world, if everyone knows how to program, if everyone has access to a computer, if everyone has time, we could have the old Internet back; imagine a world where everyone can write, distribute and host their free _X-as-a-service_ for people to use? That's why knowledge base like Wikipedia is important to us. I like this ideal world, but at the moment this is not easy to achieve.

You don't need to teach me to use free software. If it is free and open source, and reliable, I will use it. But if the interface is ugly, unusable, crashes all the time, and if there is no reason for me to contribute back (say an IRC client), I will dump that software and look for something else. I am a programmer, but I am not going to contribute to every software I use. I don't have the time. I don't have the necessary skill. I have more important things to do like finishing my work, looking after my family, relax, cooking, working on my hobby project, and getting enough sleep.

\-->

 _But software can be said to serve its users only if it respects their freedom. What if the software is designed to put chains on its users? Then powerfulness means the chains are more constricting, and reliability that they are harder to remove

<delete chars>

Sooner or later these users will be invited to switch back to proprietary software for some practical advantage._

This is a good time to re-mention MS Office vs LibreOffice/OpenOffice. I am fine with LibreOffice's Word processor and PowerPoint program until I need to do something complex. If I just need a quick PPT or a quick doc I can get away with LibreOffice. But when I need something complex, polished, I like to use MS Office. True I have been raised to use MS Office since I was a kid. It is true MS is locking me in all the time, but it is simply because the features in LibreOffice is still lagging behind. I will be happy to dump Office completely if LibreOffice continue to improve.

\-->

 _Under pressure from the movie and record companies, software for individuals to use is increasingly designed specifically to restrict them. This malicious feature is known as Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) (see DefectiveByDesign.org) and is the antithesis in spirit of the freedom that free software aims to provide. And not just in spirit: since the goal of DRM is to trample your freedom, DRM developers try to make it hard, impossible, or even illegal for you to change the software that implements the DRM._

I don't want to start a flame war on DRM. This is as dirty as complex as politics. After reading the FAQ on [http://www.defectivebydesign.org/faq#what](http://www.defectivebydesign.org/faq#what) I will point out a few striking remarks:

 _If you purchase electronic copies of games from Steam, you can 't sell them or share them with a friend after you're done playing them._

I don't see this as a violation of my freedom. If the license given to me is restricted to my account, why is it okay for me to distribute it to my friends and everyone in my friends' circles? The other examples may be violation of freedom, I won't argue. What do you propose? Create a universal gaming platform where you can download games and all you need to access a game is to own an account. Say pay $29.99 and I can run a Steam game I didn't purchase but acquire from my friend? If Steam has a feature to transfer game (say only once) but locked to Steam platform, is that a violation of freedom?

 _Are Hollywood the one to blame? Not exclusively. This way, all their customers remain dependent on them, and helps maintain their dominant position in the market._

I think this is a direct attack on anyone who is trying to come up solutions. If you are a solution technology company, your job is to create a solution. Just as Google is an excellent search engine I feel attached to using it because it provides what I want 8/10 times. As a customer of Google's search engine, I am okay with Google keeping its dominant position by using the search engine. When Google SE fails to deliver the right results I might use Yahoo, Bing or even DDG.

\-->

I feel like a lot of the free software advocates seem to be against the existence of proprietary software and any business depends on proprietary software development. As I have said before, I think both can co-exist. Do I want free software? Of course. I would like to own a free copy of Mac OSX and able to modify from start to finish. But I don't think everyone should be told to use free software.

<comment><USER15> > I believe in free market (not ideal free market).

Nothing about proprietary software reflects a free market. The entire proprietary software industry can only exist through the existence and practice of copyright law. Nothing about copyright law has anything to do with the usual tenants of free markets - voluntary exchange, property rights, and informed transactions. It is just made up rules with (maybe) good intentions and catastrophic consequences.

> Why should we label proprietary software as enemy?

Because it violates Richard Stallmans, and anyone who agrees with him (so at least the entire FSF and GNU project) ethics.

> I also think proprietary softwares have value.

The act of being proprietary adds no value to any software. It only serves to take away potential value in the ability to trust, understand, reuse, and modify it. The only exception is software that only functions through its obfuscations, such as DRM, and that entire class of software is implicitly anti-user and only functions to take away more freedom.

> but at the moment this is not easy to achieve.

The ease of accomplishing something should never be just cause to work for or against it.

> because the features in LibreOffice is still lagging behind. I will be happy > to dump Office completely if LibreOffice continue to improve.

You probably (assumptions here) have done no part to fund or participate in the continued development of LibreOffice, while you have paid Microsoft for their Office suite. You are directly incentively the continued usage and development of proprietary software without doing anything for the free alternatives. Even if you have contributed to LibreOffice in some way, you are still sustaining the proprietary freedom depriving Microsoft suite through both your purchase and usage of it.

> I don't see this as a violation of my freedom.

Free software has three tenants - the ability to study, modify, and share software. Implicit to Steam is a violation of (at least) one of those freedoms. You are free to not consider them freedoms in your ethical outlook.

> But I don't think everyone should be told to use free software.

It isn't about forcing anyone to do anything, it is about removing the force already imparted upon you by proprietary software vendors that restrict your ability to modify or redistribute software. Richard Stallman (probably) doesn't give a shit if you use emacs or a competitor, as long as both are free, or at the _least_ that you understand that you are sacrificing your freedoms to use convenient proprietary alternatives.

<comment><USER44> _It is just made up rules with (maybe) good intentions and catastrophic consequences._

Not necessarily catastrophic though I can see this as an argument to defeat patent trolls.

My main point is that in a market where can freely consume a freeware, free software and fully proprietary software is a free market. A world with only free software is still one sided.

 _The act of being proprietary adds no value to any software. It only serves to take away potential value in the ability to trust, understand, reuse, and modify it._

There isn't always a need to actually understand, reuse and modify a software if the user only wants to use it. Proprietary software cannot be studied and trusted fully -- that's true, but if there is no free alternative competitive sacrificing is how we live in this world.

 _You probably (assumptions here) have done no part to fund or participate in the continued development of LibreOffice, while you have paid Microsoft for their Office suite. You are directly incentively the continued usage and development of proprietary software without doing anything for the free alternatives. Even if you have contributed to LibreOffice in some way, you are still sustaining the proprietary freedom depriving Microsoft suite through both your purchase and usage of it._

Using a software is already participating in the continued development of LibreOffice.

If I could take a train to get to work in 15 minutes, why would I bike for 45 minutes to work every day? I may bike occasionally, but definitely not everyday. If LibreOffice is convinent to do everything I need to do with MS Office, I'd switch permanently. If not, they will both co-exist on my computer.

How will removing MS Office do any good to free software if I don't actually write code for LibreOffice in the first place?

Is there not enough people already writing code and plugins for LibreOffice suite? Sounds like free software moment is pushing people to write free software because they don't have enough developers who are willing to put time writing code for free software.

 _Implicit to Steam is a violation of (at least) one of those freedoms. You are free to not consider them freedoms in your ethical outlook._

That's why free software movement from R.S. is radical to me.

 _It isn 't about forcing anyone to do anything, it is about removing the force already imparted upon you by proprietary software vendors that restrict your ability to modify or redistribute software._

The force imparted upon me is due to the fact the free alternatives aren't good enough or just don't exist. If there exists one that works really well, like proprietary software, the force is not as strong as you think.

If we shall, free software is awesome, it has the ability to study and modify the software in any way the user wants, now, how do I make a living off my work?

<comment><USER15> > My main point is that in a market where can freely consume a freeware, free > software and fully proprietary software is a free market. A world with only > free software is still one sided.

And my argument is a world with only free software is just one without copyright law. How about we add in a new kind of software - <USER2> software. You have to pay monthly and you get a random file from the source code each month as per the EULA. We don't have much of that software around, though, so I guess the market is lopsided and needs more balance?

It is all artificial, and yes, even the release-the-source part of the GPL is artificial. But if we lived in a world without copyright, we wouldn't need the release the source stipulations because you couldn't profit off artificial scarcity of information anymore anyway, so not releasing the source would just be considered a dick move. But platform lock in matters a lot less when you have no way to profit by "having the platform" since you can't enforce distribution restrictions.

> but if there is no free alternative competitive sacrificing is how we live > in this world.

What software is there without free alternatives? I'd get started tomorrow on any unique problem not addressed to some degree by a free software project. If you are going to argue "the proprietary has more features and convenience than the free", then of course it does, our current copyright regime enables the profiteering off information denial, you can make _profit_ off of denying freedoms. So businesses can bloom under it. It just means you are leeching value out of artificial constructs and are redirecting effort and money artificially.

> Is there not enough people already writing code and plugins for LibreOffice > suite? Sounds like free software moment is pushing people to write free > software because they don't have enough developers who are willing to put > time writing code for free software.

There are _never_ enough people. We could have most of the human species devoted to the development of free software and we wouldn't have enough. There is always work to be done, especially if you are claiming MS office as having features Libre doesn't - then yes, Libre is understaffed and needs either funding or developer hours to make it better, and that is your (and my, and everyone elses) responsibility if you believe in software freedom. If you don't, and won't consider it, then the entire argument is moot since the whole position of free software assumes a belief in it by providing its rational argument for why it is optimal and why proprietary software is bad.

> That's why free software movement from R.S. is radical to me.

And your stance is radical to me, because I think respecting a users freedom should be assumed, not extraneous.

> If we shall, free software is awesome, it has the ability to study and > modify the software in any way the user wants, now, how do I make a living > off my work?

You do the same thing you do anywhere else, you propose value and seek compensation for your work. "I want to add bloom filters to GIMP, but will need about 400 hours to do so, and at $50 an hour that is about $20000 of work, so if I can raise that money I'll implement the feature".

The same thing applies to pretty much all other copyrighted works, but this is beyond the scope of free software arguments and into the anti-copyright movement, but it boils down to "charge for scarce resources, not for artificially restricted infinite information".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> "all existing free software would qualify as open source" \- does Stallman missed Freeware software? I hate this guy.

<comment><USER46> Stallman has a rather precise definition of "Free" software, which does not include freeware (i.e. "free as in beer") software.

<comment> vertex-four It's not just Stallman insisting on it. "Free software" has been a well- defined term for a long while now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Why Free Software missed the point of Open Source.":

doing WTF you like, commercial or not.

<comment><USER37> To be clear: Free Software does not object to commercial activity. Copyleft requirements happen to get in the way of _some_ commercial activity, which the FSF and related community finds objectionable for reasons unrelated to its commercial nature. Stallman _opposes_ "noncommercial" requirements in licenses, no FSF license has these, and such clauses are reason to call a license "nonfree".

<comment><USER47> Gpl on commerce, in a nutshell:

Sell this software without ability to modify: tyrant

Use this software to create a closed REST API: no problem

<comment><USER37> The license doesn't prevent the latter, but the FSF doesn't approve. There's also the AGPL, which would forbid the closed REST API.

None of that means there's no opportunity to make money. People might pay for convenience (I don't have to set up and run my own server, even though I technically could) or access to networks - if Facebook AGPL'ed their whole stack, people using Facebook would keep using Facebook because their friends are on Facebook.

<comment><USER47> So, where is the line where providing services with the software becomes acceptable? An API is obviously a service provided with the software, but so is consulting using a GPL statistical package. How, and where, can you draw the line between those things?

<comment><USER16> The customer is not the end-user of the GPL code; the consultant is. The customer is an end-user of the consultant. That relationship will be governed by a completely separate contract.

On a related note, the output of a GPL program is not GPLed. I can compile non-GPLed code with GCC. Myths like this keep getting used as FUD.

Licenses with a network-use clause, like AGPL and CPAL, define access over a network as distribution. This would cover an API, but would not cover going via a consultant, since the consultant isn't software. If you want to argue that people's minds are software, you may as well argue that our teachers hold the copyright to our thoughts.

<comment><USER47> I'll have to look at those network use clauses. I've always found proprietary, BSD, and AGPL to have coherent philosophies. The GPL, on the other hand, has always felt to me to be much more of a mishmash of whatever Stallman likes or dislikes.

<comment><USER37> I'm confused - it's the GPL that fails to make a distinction between the REST API and the consultant. I'd thought you were criticizing that distinction as being arbitrary.

<comment><USER47> Yes, that's what I think and what I thought I'd been saying. What of what I've said indicates otherwise?

<comment><USER37> I see contradiction in:

1) The AGPL is philosophically well founded, the GPL is arbitrary.

2) The AGPL enforces an arbitrary distinction, the GPL does not.

<comment><USER47> I think I've found the confusion. I was still talking about the GPL in my second comment. I see why that was confusing given that you'd explicitly added the AGPL into the discussion, sorry.

I might have better stated it as "I agree the AGPL removes the tension, I think the AGPL is philosophically coherent. But the FSF still primarily pushes the GPL. [transclude prior comment]"

<comment><USER37> Hm, I still don't see how that resolves it.

You say _" How, and where, can you draw the line between those things?"_, when the AGPL does precisely that and the GPL refuses to.

I'm not trying to criticize, here, I'm trying to understand...

<comment><USER47> I'm criticizing the GPL as inconsistent because it draws lines haphazardously. That it is ok with the API but not with the distribution feels arbitrary and inconsistent to me.

The AGPL is elegantly precise - anything you do to the code becomes public.

The bad is elegantly precise - anything you do is fine.

GPL is complicated and inelegant - some things are fine while their near equivalent actions aren't.

Edited to clarify

<comment><USER37> "Anything you do becomes public" is an inaccurate description of the AGPL. That consultant can keep things private.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Latest TPP Leak Shows US Still Pushing Terrible DRM and Copyright Term Proposals - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/10/latest-tpp-leak-shows-us-still-pushing-terrible-drm-and-copyright-term-proposals

<comment><USER2> The issue is NOT whether or not this benefits corporations, consumers, IP, or other pieces. The issue is that it's being done in secret and there is a big push for a "Fast Track" for the US signers, so that Congress will not be allowed to view it or vote on it.

<comment><USER2> By the way, make your voice heard here:

[http://www.house.gov/htbin/findrep](http://www.house.gov/htbin/findrep)

[https://act.eff.org/action/speak-out-against-the-trans- pacif...](https://act.eff.org/action/speak-out-against-the-trans-pacific- partnership-agreement)

[http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_c...](http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's not entirely clear to me, what do partner countries actually gain from TPP? There has to be at least some kind of carrot on the stick.

<comment><USER4> Well, it's a free-trade agreement. Mutually getting rid of tariffs increases trade, which makes all the participating countries better off.

In addition, it tries to remove non-tariff barriers to trade, which involves harmonizing legislation. E.g. if you want to sell US beef in Japan and Japanese beef in the US, then the health regulations about how cows should be raised should be the same in both countries.

The copyright stuff comes under the heading of harmonizing intellectual property law, although somehow it seems to end up as pro-copyright-holder as possible...

<comment><USER5> > then the health regulations about how cows should be raised should be the > same in both countries.

As you point out in the copyright example, this is an immediate race to the regulations that are best for businesses. So in this plan, Japanese consumers would be subject to health regulations constructed on behalf of corporations by a broken and regulatory-captured US political system.

Ultimately, the health regulations of their food would be that imposed by US companies, regardless of the political actions of the Japanese electorate.

This is not harmony, it is discord.

<comment><USER6> Yes exactly. And to take your specific example, Japanese health regulations with regard to meat are much more strict than US regulation. I've eaten things raw in Japan (pork, beef, fish, etc.) that I would never consider doing in the US. Choosing the lowest common denominator for the sake of improved trade will cause problems and get people killed due to culture differences. And as you say, totally ignores the wishes of the local electorate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Criminal treatment of trade Secrets without "public interest" exception. great, Aaron Swartz is gonna happen again. :(</comment>


Awesome Mac App Websites - <AUTHOR> http://www.design-heaven.com/awesome-mac-app-websites/

<comment><USER2> Well, it seems awesomeness is another thing in the eyes of the beholder.</comment>


Ask HN: Career change at 40: bootcamp, degree, other? - <AUTHOR> I am currently a lawyer in the US. I am moving to Germany in a few months. I am committing to a career change, since my spouse earns enough for us to live on. I've had enough of being a lawyer.
I am considering whether I should do a coding bootcamp, an online degree through a US institution, or a degree in Germany[1], or to continue to work/study on my own until I can get a job (remote or local).
I started in CS when I was in college in the late 90's, but I switched away from that and earned my degree in philosophy (focus in logic and ethics). Back then I learned C and Java. Then HTML, CSS, and PHP3. I built a few dozen websites on my own, and I contributed to the production of about 600 or so. But, that was a long time ago, and I'm not interested in web development so much any more.
When I switched from Windows to Gentoo GNU/Linux about 10 years ago, I started learning Bash scripting and some sysadmin basics, just for fun/interest.
A couple of years ago, I started to learn Python 3, and I have dabbled a bit in Common Lisp. Python led me to machine learning, which I really like, but I'm not 100% sure I want a career in ML anymore (I thought I did maybe a year ago, and I still might -- I really like it).
I have written a lot of code over the years, but I don't have anything that would really qualify as a portfolio, or much that I feel like I could turn into a portfolio.
I guess this is the main reason I have been looking at doing something like a bootcamp, or cheap online degree--though money really isn't the issue. Or should I just start to work on a portfolio of projects?
I have also worked professionally as an editor many years ago, which came out of an incomplete foray into a master's degree in technical writing.
If you had the time and money, would you do a bootcamp, or a degree, or work on your own?
[1] My German is around B1-B2 level, and I would work to improve this dramatically if I were going to try for a local degree. <comment><USER2> Is it your goal to be a junior IT plebian throughout your 40's competing with eastern bloc/south asian workers? Because that's what a bootcamp and half- baked knowledge in a bunch of random trendy technologies will get you, especially outside of silicon valley. A degree at your age won't get you far either -- tech companies what 22 year old grads, not 44 year olds (unless you already have a CS degree and are talking about a PhD).

Why completely throw away your experience as a lawyer? I am starting a company in the legal-tech domain and it'd be very valuable to have someone with experience in both sides of the world.

<comment><USER3> Instead of throwing away those years as a lawyer, I'd look to complement them - specifically, I'd look at management/director level infosec/compliance/governance roles. You'll get less hands-on exposure as a manager, but your legal experience will give you a leg up that it seems silly to throw away. You can always move on to more technical roles later, with the advantage of a tech-related job title in your resume.

Law is like IT - even if you get a job in a completely unrelated field, as soon as your past gets out, you'll find yourself inundated with requests to "just take a look at this." Might as well use that experience to your advantage first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do you have a specific job in mind? It seems obvious that you want to pivot to an IT/tech role but the particulars (aside from not wanting to work in web development) aren't clear. I assume you will be looking for something interesting and fulfilling rather than a way to pay the bills.

So I would suggest looking at the question from this angle. What excites/motivates you enough to invest some time in it? What kind of job or context do you see yourself working in? If you are academically oriented, getting a degree will probably bring you the most satisfaction while you figure out the next step. If you're more practically minded, I would suggest building your own one-man business, capitalizing on your interests and expertise (ML to automate lawyery stuff?)

Given your past experience, I don't know what you would learn in a bootcamp and (in my opinion) a bootcamp on your resume has weak signaling power. I would suggest looking at apprenticeship degrees, where you're at school part- time and work the rest of the time. They're pretty common (in France at least) and some of them are explicitely targeted at people who already have had a first non-IT career. The upside is that you'll get to work early on (these schools will usually help you find a company). The downside is that you'll be working in a junior position. But, aside from starting your own business, I don't see how you can avoid that.

FWIW, in my company we have an apprentice data scientist who used to be the GM of an industrial company in Asia! He caught the data science bug a few years back and he's having a blast going back to school and learning on the job.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't exactly have a specific job title in mind.

If I could get to a point where I could help solve problems in AI R&D, then that's what I would probably do. I mentioned that my philosophy undergrad focused on ethics and logic. If I could find a way to work on building systems that have ethics as a primary concern (ethical algorithms, ethical artificial intelligence, etc) then I would like that.

I have really enjoyed my self-study in machine learning, and for a while I thought for sure that's the path I would take. Right now I am not as sure. I just don't have a good sense of what I should do to keep going down this route if that's what I want to do, other than trying to get into a data-sciecne-type degree program perhaps.

I have no issue with starting in a junior position. I don't care about the money or the power or the prestige specifically -- I just want to do something interesting and fulfilling. I have already had the chance to make lots of money in my life, and I just don't care that much, so junior (engineer/data scientist/etc) is fine. Also, it's easy not to care about money so much when your partner earns so much; I realize that I am in a fairly privileged place of not having to worry about money right now, but that's just where the universe has put me for now.

Otherwise, I am really into Linux and FOSS stuff. I don't know if I would like kernel dev or embedded software as a career, but that's a possibility.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for clarifying. Given the interests you cite (e.g. AI R&D), a specialized degree might be necessary to break into the field - I don't really see a clear path from "starting a new career in IT" to "working on advanced topics" that doesn't include a degree or a few years of work and regular promotions/job changes.

Re junior positions, they're often not the most interesting jobs, unless you have a specific interest in learning the ropes (or you love fixing bugs and handling JIRA tickets ;) - hence my remark.

A final thought: if working remotely is on the table, i.e. if you're not explicitely looking for a local job and the accompanying social interactions, maybe you can look at working remotely for a US company. Hit the latest "who's hiring" post, look at remote job postings that sound interesting, and contact the recruiter to see if your profile could interest them and if not what you would need (degree, portfolio, previous experience) before applying again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can I suggest homemaker. Based on your other posts your wife is the big earner so make it your full time job to support her as I am sure her job is very stressful.

</comment><comment><USER6> The main issue with learning on your own is that you won't have the alumni network nor the degree that signals that you can program. It makes getting that first and second job in the field, much more difficult. That said, if you find yourself with an opportunity, take it and learn the rest yourself. Personally, I would look into bootcamps in Germany as the primary option and at degrees from German universities as the second option, primarily because bootcamps will probably get you started in a new career faster. To get you started on your research take a look at [https://www.quora.com/What-are-the- major-coding-boot-camps-i...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-major-coding- boot-camps-in-Germany) and then do some research at SwitchUp and CourseReport. Best of luck!

<comment><USER7> There are no signals you can program. That's why we have brutal, demoralizing white board interviews.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you have the time, I would absolutely go for a degree. As far as I know, University is free in Germany. If you can get into a CS degree, do it. You should be able to do a bachelor degree in 3 years, but you can probably do it faster because you aren't a distracted 20 year old anymore.

Self taught programmers take years to make up for their missing education. If you have the time to learn from very smart people for a couple of years, I don't know why you wouldn't do it.

</comment><comment><USER9> > _I am currently a lawyer in the US. I am moving to Germany in a few months. > I am committing to a career change, since my spouse earns enough for us to > live on. I 've had enough of being a lawyer._

Even so, this can easily lead to resentment and arguments, (and also self- doubt), if the other part doesn't start earning enough soon. So it's not like "family income" is a solved problem, even if one partner brings in all you need.

<comment><AUTHOR> No doubt. However, we are moving to Germany because of my spouse's job.

My lawyering requires a significant amount of court hearings, which I will be unable to do from Germany. I do very little transactional work that I might be able to continue in Germany, so a career change is a realistic and logical move. It just happens to coincide with wanting to make the change as well.

Family income, as long as she keeps her job, is pretty much a solved problem for us. She makes a lot of money. Waaaaaaay more than me.

I do not need to work necessarily for income but because I want to work. This has been the case for us for many years now.

But I do appreciate your sentiment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It would be a large mistake to try to become a rank and file programmer at this point in your career. Unless your goal is to learn enough to be dangerous so that you can start a legal tech startup. Why not consider shifting your area of focus in law to something more palatable or relevant to your interests? Do legal work for startups or join a tech company as general counsel.

</comment><comment><USER11> >If you had the time and money, would you do a bootcamp, or a degree, or work on your own?

Unless I knew for certain that I couldn't do solo work, or knew for certain that I couldn't muster the discipline, I would say "work on your own" in the beginning.

If I am to take your harmonious financial arrangement at face value, which you reaffirm in another comment, understand that your situation is probably very enviable to many. Make the most of it.

You didn't specify but I assume you expect this situation to hold for at least a year, maybe two or three years? That's great. And you already dabbled in ML, and you "really like it"? Well, its the remote option, but this is what I would do :

1\. I would brainstorm a project about applying ML to law, or my field of law[0]. This is not completely unheard of, as I'm sure you're aware.

2\. If I come up with some holy grail ideas, I would put them aside for later. I would then try to find something to start with that is very simple, maybe something that would have helped me day-to-day in my previous lawyer life. Maybe something much smaller that would be a necessary but not sufficient item for one of the holy grail ideas, or like I said some small but obvious value added day-to-day lawyer stuff.

3\. After I decided on the project, I would apply the Amazon way of working backwards, a. Create the press release: Describe in simple terms what you're going to build b. 20 most frequent questions: Answer in clear, simple terms (& iterate until it is very clear what you're going to build) c. UX Document: How are my users going to interact with this d. Keep the above simple, don't overdo it.

4\. So you came up with your first project, now you have to skill up. Since you dabbled in ML maybe you are already familiar with the ML learning angles people recommend on this site (fast.ai, Coursera etc). I would research and make a decision which ones to start with first (maybe you've already completed some) and focus on completing them together with all the relevant exercises etc. In parallel, I would be on the lookout about what I need to learn for the project and continuously apply what I learn to the project.

5\. Out of necessity, you are probably going to need to dabble in integrating frontend web and mobile stuff. Research and decide on learning path based on what concrete things you actually need in your project.

6\. Once you feel you know enough to build the shittiest and dumbest version of your idea build the shittiest and dumbest version of your idea before continuing a new online course in your studying plan.

7\. Put your code on the web when you have the shittiest and dumbest version of your idea working and keeping updating it. I would upload two separate things as projects a. the software/product that the end user will use that has everything in it. b. The ML component as a separate project. Don't let the frontend stuff detract from the ML stuff. Imagine someone with better web and mobile skills wanted to use your ML-law work to make something more polished. They could use this.

8\. Now you have a portfolio, don't you? You could go on building the next item on the road to a holy grail, or you could continue iterating on this as you learn.

9\. Meanwhile, you could start applying with your portfolio for remote work at AI tech companies targeting law or NLP areas (more general overlapping domains) , or law firms that are scared of tech who don't want to be the nokia or blackberry of law in the future (this is probably the unlikelier of the two, since this tech would disrupt billable hours). In the former, you would be the "domain" guy for the tech, in the latter you could be the "tech" guy for the domain. Your skills and background will be unique.

10\. Alternatively, or in parallel, start selling what you built. Cause looked at it another way, this is identical to have received seed funding for 1-3 years to start a company.

Sure when you start working with others you may soon feel you've missed out on some fundamentals, but this is what I would do in terms of opportunity cost. By the end, you will have a unique background and you will be working in a niche area suited to your background, your weaknesses will matter less. After this, if I still felt iffy and it still didn't matter if I got a job or not, then I would consider a online degree through a US institution, but if its a very good program.

Anyway you asked me what I would do, obviously might not be the best advise (disclaimer).

[0] assuming doing anything related to law or your field of law doesn't instantly fill you with dread or actively demotivate you in whatever you're doing. If I hated law, the general outline would still be the same. Coming up with a project idea that kept me motivated and that I thought would be of use to others might take a little more time to find. I wouldn't be able to use my law background for applying for work for maximum effect, so there would be no binding narrative between my previous lawyer life and what I'm doing now, that might make it more difficult to sell myself to potential employers. But with a portfolio that would matter less.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your answer, and the time and detail you put into it. I will consider it.

Everything that I have learned related to programming, hardware, networks, etc in the last many years has been on my own. I have run my own law firm for more than 10 years now. I believe I am capable of self-motivating and being productive.

But, you know, you never know.

I have also had success in formal academics. Sometimes I feel like it'll really boil down to picking one option and seeing what happens.

My main concern in wasting a bunch of time by picking an option that won't get me anywhere, but there's never a guarantee against that anyway.

<comment><USER12> As an alternative view, I cannot strongly enough suggest to get an academic degree if you can afford the time and money.

Self-directed learning is ok if that's the best you can do, but having the structure of an academic setting is absolutely invaluable. You'll immersed in an environment where those around you are doing the same thing, and the value from discussing difficult concepts with others is impossible to overstate.

Self-directed learning will put you in a bubble of the overhyped web technologies. What is extremely hard to understand from the outside is that there's an ENORMOUS hidden level of much more interesting problems and work in fundamental engineering. But it doesn't get discussed online much, because it's more difficult to get into, and there's no point arguing with people online when they don't have the background to participate.

Happy to discuss my thoughts further if you have questions

<comment><AUTHOR> My instinct is to get a degree, because that's what I know. I've gone to school for four of them in my life, after all.

There are some interesting programs around. I don't think I will qualify for a masters program yet, so where do I look at bachelors degrees?

In Germany, I think they are all in German, which means improving my German quite a bit (I don't think my level of proficiency is sufficient).

I have looked at a few post-baccalaureate online degrees, where if you already have a BA/BS then you just complete the major coursework requirements and they grant you a degree. That is definitely interesting, but it's sometimes hard to judge the quality of the institutions or what their degree would actually get me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Lambda School</comment>


Apple withdraws patent claim against Samsung's Galaxy S III mini - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2012/12/28/apple-samsung-siii-mini/

<comment><AUTHOR> I posted this. Good news on the patent front, but a shame the S III mini will not be available in the USA. My wife and I both have S IIIs and love them. I just spent 3 weeks in the Amazon Basin and the S III was perfect for travelling. With the 1280x720 screen, it was great for reading eBooks, taking video and pictures, and for communication.

I have usually liked Apple as a company but their patent trolling is pissing me off.</comment>


Web Reviews: Average Online Review Is 4.3 Out of Five Stars - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125470172872063071.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_tech

<comment><USER2> the WSJ article is not available in full. Subscription required. Please do not post links of this nature which cannot be read or verified

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, they don't make it clear what's behind or in front of the paywall. Let me know if this link works: [http://www.emailthis.clickability.com/et/emailThis?clickMap=...](http://www.emailthis.clickability.com/et/emailThis?clickMap=viewThis&etMailToID=1451300943)</comment></comment>


Ford wants to launch a fleet of thousands of self-driving cars in 2021 - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612423/fords-self-driving-taxi-passengers-may-share-rides-with-packages-and-ads/ <comment><AUTHOR> > The cars took journalists on several trips through downtown Miami—a driving > environment described as "double black diamond hard" by several Ford > executives, in reference to the most difficult downhill ski runs.

Seems like snow-covered roads with falling/blowing snow is what I would describe as the most challenging environment (for humans or computers). I suspect they ruled that out from their double black diamond rating.

</comment><comment><USER2> Ford say they want to do a lot of things. I'm sure some shareholders get excited from that. But how about execution ?

They acquired chariot 2 years ago. Why i don't hear massive PR about chariot's great success, great results ? How is it doing against it's competitors , let's say ridewithvia.com ?</comment>


My steps to create a lucrative website - <AUTHOR> https://www.lazypreneur.pw/2016/steps-create-lucrative-website/ <comment><AUTHOR> I posted a rather worthless article yesterday that made it to the frontpage. Someone suggested that i write about how i made my main passive site successful so i did.</comment>


Ask HN: Is something from your startup a good gift for a CS student? - <AUTHOR>

So, I've been taking CS classes and tutoring at a local community college in the SF Bay Area.  As part of the end of the tutor program, we are doing a white elephant thing, 10 dollar max.
Rather then just buy something from fry's or ThinkGeek, I think it would be cool to potentially give them a subscription to a cool web app or two for a year, or a purchase something that would be of interest/be of help/have a geeky appeal to a CS student.
So please, pitch me your product. <comment><USER2> Ideally, I think the best gift that you could possibly give a CS student would come from your start-up, but I don't think it's what you have in mind. The best thing that you could give a CS student would be a job working for your start-up.

That being said, if the app is something that targets a CS student's interests, yet isn't something that they are already likely to have, then a free subscription / license would be the next best thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am not sure this meets your criterion. You can check out the CloudMunch Developer Edition (Link: <http://www.cloudmunch.com/developers>). Helps you deploy your projects from GitHub to AWS. You don't pay for the platform. You just pay for the AWS usage.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ragic, a Database/Excel hybrid. I just posted Show HN above. It's a product where you can build online databases just like creating a Web Excel spreadsheet.

There's free trial that you can try out first with online tutorial. The lite license is $5/user/month

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks... not quite what I was thinking of for a gift, but I'll check it out for myself :)</comment></comment>


Introduction to Cybernetics (1957) - <AUTHOR> http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASHBBOOK.html <comment><USER2> Fun trivia: Cybernetics and Kubernetes have the same etymology, as does the word 'government'

All of them ultimately are derived for the Greek word for 'steer'

<comment><USER3> The negative-feedback device that fixes the speed of a steam engine is actually called a governor: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugal_governor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugal_governor) .

<comment><USER4> It's also why a software algorithm that controls CPU frequency scaling is called a "CPU governor" [0] in Linux kernel. Although the mechanism is completely different, but the analogy is used here since it controls the speed.

[0] [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CPU_frequency_scaling#S...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CPU_frequency_scaling#Scaling_governors)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> cybernetics links:

What is cybernetics? [https://vimeo.com/41776276](https://vimeo.com/41776276)

DESIGN FOR A SELF-REGENERATING ORGANIZATION [https://www.pangaro.com/ashby+design-for-self- regenerating-c...](https://www.pangaro.com/ashby+design-for-self-regenerating- corporation.htm)

NOTES 358 ON THE ROLE OF LEADERSHIP & LANGUAGE IN REGENERATING ORGANIZATIONS [http://www.pangaro.com/littlegreybook- dom.pdf](http://www.pangaro.com/littlegreybook-dom.pdf)

Towards a theoretical foundation for agile development [https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7302798](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7302798)

Viable system model [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model)

Conversation, Education, Constructivism and Cybernetics [https://people.well.com/user/elin/edhom.htm](https://people.well.com/user/elin/edhom.htm)

Cybernetics in the 3rd Millennium — Vol. 9 No. 2 — Apr. 2011 [https://people.well.com/user/abs/Cyb/archive/c3m_0902.html](https://people.well.com/user/abs/Cyb/archive/c3m_0902.html)

2017 Cybernetics Conference - Internet Society [https://livestream.com/internetsociety2/cybercon](https://livestream.com/internetsociety2/cybercon)

How cybernetics connects computing, counterculture, and design [http://www.dubberly.com/articles/cybernetics-and- countercult...](http://www.dubberly.com/articles/cybernetics-and- counterculture.html)

A Tale of the Mirror World, Part 1: Calculators and Cybernetics [https://www.filfre.net/2017/06/tales-of-the-mirror-world- par...](https://www.filfre.net/2017/06/tales-of-the-mirror-world- part-1-calculators-and-cybernetics/)

<comment><USER6> Brian Eno's development of Ambient music and generative art/music systems was strongly influenced by cybernetics, especially the work of Norbert Wiener and Stafford Beer.

[http://www.trustmeimascientist.com/2014/03/03/brian-eno- ambi...](http://www.trustmeimascientist.com/2014/03/03/brian-eno- ambient-1-music-for-airports/)

[https://rhizome.org/editorial/2009/oct/21/brian-eno-peter- sc...](https://rhizome.org/editorial/2009/oct/21/brian-eno-peter-schmidt-and- cybernetics/)

[https://books.google.com/books?id=rxcqDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT402&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=rxcqDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT402&lpg=PT402&dq=generating+and+organizing+variety+in+the+arts&source=bl&ots=nz3KijZAZh&sig=ACfU3U2VHKtnqxFL5hdvGTiO0Jxu7dWAjg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjBu4_q8N_oAhXSoFsKHcaJBrgQ6AEwB3oECAsQKQ#v=onepage&q=generating%20and%20organizing%20variety%20in%20the%20arts&f=false)

Not ambient, but Eno name-checks Wiener in the cheeky "Seven Deadly Finns" :-): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaLrS0WG7Z0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaLrS0WG7Z0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> PDF: [http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/books/IntroCyb.pdf](http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/books/IntroCyb.pdf)

<comment><USER8> You have one of the like, two good comments in this discussion. To add to this I'd broadly recommend in (loose order) for people interested in Cybernetics.

Maxwell, "On Governors": [https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/maxwell1.pdf](https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/maxwell1.pdf)

Wiener, "Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine pdf" : [https://sci-hub.tw/10.2307/1266498](https://sci- hub.tw/10.2307/1266498)

Also the following is a _very interesting_ read, "Cybernetics and Information Theory in the United States, France and the Soviet Union": [https://www.infoamerica.org/documentos_word/shannon- wiener.h...](https://www.infoamerica.org/documentos_word/shannon-wiener.htm)

<comment><USER9> The third link was a very interesting read, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For an esoteric but practical offshoot, checkout the Cynefin Framework [0] by Dave Snowden(no relation to that other Snowden).

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework)

</comment><comment><USER11> Has the potential for this approach been stripped, or does it just have a different name now? There are matrices and feedback loops. What was the key insight that kept cybernetics from following machine learning towards neural nets?

<comment><USER12> Second-order cybernetics happened, and as a result there was a split. Like neighboring comments say, there is control theory and game theory for first- order cybernetics, but second-order cybernetics is extremely philosophical and failed to make an impact aside from broad ideas like the emergence of complex behavior from simple designs. The Constructivist movement has a journal [0] and is still alive, but I'm not sure what impact they are having.

[0] [https://constructivist.info/](https://constructivist.info/)

<comment><USER13> It feels like elements of that split was always there. You have, on the one hand, very practical engineering cybernetics, what's standard control theory now (PID, optimal linear control, impulse responses and transfer functions, and so on). On the other hand, you have the more general (philosophical, "woolly") part that's filled with comparisons to biology, that deals with society and variety, general patterns, etc.

I once gave a friend of mine Medina's "Cybernetic Revolutionaries", and I think he found it hard to get through because of the latter kind of cybernetics, even though he was very familiar with the former kind.

<comment><USER14> > On the other hand, you have the more general (philosophical, "woolly") part > that's filled with comparisons to biology

But see, that "other" part is also really a generalized/philosophical/speculative etc. take on control theory. "Systems theory" in the cybernetics-related sense is basically a name for 'this control theory stuff is so cool/impressive, let's see if we can generalize it beyond its standard engineering domain and draw any uselful conclusions from it.' Of course this kind of interdisciplinarity would be seen as standard nowadays, you wouldn't need to call attention to it by trying to name a new field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I read this thread and I have no idea how this relate to the (little) reading that I have from Prometheus Rising, though I'm told that it also deals with Cybernetics.

<comment><USER16> How'd you like Prometheus Rising? Did you humor the exercises or just read? I read like half of it a few years back and got a little fatigued, but the ideas stuck.</comment></comment>