[HN Gopher] Free software hasn't won
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Free software hasn't won
Author : LorenDB
Score : 51 points
Date : 2025-10-12 21:51 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dorotac.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (dorotac.eu)
| palata wrote:
| I read through half the article, and I don't understand what it's
| trying to say. Has free software won? Or not? And what does it
| mean? No clue.
| __del__ wrote:
| they're suggesting that "open source" has won (attention, mind
| share, funding, whatever) while "free software" as defined by
| richard stallman has not
| schoen wrote:
| I may have glossed over this detail, but I didn't think the
| article was saying that "open source" had actually won either
| (perhaps that people who preferred the term "open source"
| have tended to accept much narrower wins as "victory" in
| practice?).
| schoen wrote:
| It's quoting people who say that it _has_ won because of
| extensive adoption. However, that adoption doesn 't mean that
| most people are allowed even in principle to change most of the
| software in embedded devices they own, or even on most of the
| _computing devices_ they own.
|
| I've also found this really weird. Like, we have Linux kernels
| on most cloud instances, and most data center servers, and most
| academic and research computing systems, and probably lately on
| most embedded microprocessors that are big enough to run it.
| (And various ecosystems for computing infrastructure and
| software development are mainly using free software userspace
| and tools.) Meanwhile, _almost all_ user-facing software that
| almost all people interact with almost all of the time is
| proprietary. Why would someone say it 's "won"? Thinking really
| small?
| stingraycharles wrote:
| > What picture does this paint? Things programmers care about
| directly, like the OS and the kernel, are quite well covered.
| Whatever we need, there's an open version.
|
| I think this is the wrong conclusion. It's rather the opposite:
| when there's money to be made (applications, device drivers),
| businesses have came in and managed to dominate it with
| proprietary versions (music, video, etc).
|
| When they don't, it's because of strategic business interests:
| you're probably going to want to make your programming language
| open source in order to gain developer interests, but the
| applications you make on top of that closed source.
| xwowsersx wrote:
| I think this post overstates the "loss" of free software. Yes,
| closed firmware and locked hardware are real gaps...but that
| doesn't erase the fact that open software has completely reshaped
| the modern stack. From Linux and K8s to Postgres and Python, it
| is the infra of the internet. "Winning" doesn't have to mean
| owning every transistor; it means setting the norms and powering
| most of what's built.
|
| I tend to see this kind of absolutist, binary tone a lot from
| people deeply involved in FOSS... and sometimes I think maybe
| that mindset is necessary to push the movement forward, but it
| also feels detached from how much open software has already
| changed reality.
| api wrote:
| The infrastructure it powers is mostly cloud hosted SaaS which
| is far and away the most closed model of software. Cloud SaaS
| is far more closed than closed source software on a personal
| device. Often it's not even possible to export your own data.
|
| Very few people use much open source software directly. With a
| few notable exceptions it's only used by developers and IT
| pros.
|
| I suppose the Darwin kernel in Apple OSes and Linux in Android
| kind of count but people really don't interact with those
| directly in a tangible way. They are way deep down under the
| hood from a user POV.
| xwowsersx wrote:
| > The infrastructure it powers is mostly cloud hosted SaaS
| which is far and away the most closed model of software.
| Cloud SaaS is far more closed than closed source software on
| a personal device. Often it's not even possible to export
| your own data.
|
| That's fair, but I think it misses the distinction between
| who owns the infra and what the infra is built on. Yes, SaaS
| is often closed to end users, but the reason those companies
| could even exist at scale is because the underlying layers
| (OS, databases, frameworks, orchestration, etc.) are open.
|
| You're right that control shifted from users to cloud
| vendors, but that's a _business model problem_ , not a
| failure of open software. If anything, FOSS won so decisively
| on the supply side that it enabled an entire generation of
| companies to build closed services faster and cheaper than
| ever before.
| fluoridation wrote:
| >he infrastructure it powers is mostly cloud hosted SaaS
| which is far and away the most closed model of software.
|
| Free software was conceptualized at the dawn of the personal
| computing era. As it is defined, it could never prevent
| isolating users from the software by isolating them from the
| hardware, because it was assumed that the software would run
| on the hardware that the user interacted with directly. You
| could build an SaaS product on entirely copyleft software
| without breaching any licenses. It's only _specific_ kinds of
| free software that require giving users the source code. And
| even then, they don 't require the service provider to
| implement any changes. If Google Docs was free software,
| Google isn't going to integrate your patch if it doesn't want
| to.
|
| >Very few people use much open source software directly. With
| a few notable exceptions it's only used by developers and IT
| pros.
|
| >I suppose the Darwin kernel in Apple OSes and Linux in
| Android kind of count but people really don't interact with
| those directly in a tangible way. They are way deep down
| under the hood from a user POV.
|
| I mean, what does it even mean to "interact directly" with
| something, at that point? If I'm using Firefox on Android to
| watch a YouTube video, is that direct enough or not? Firefox,
| like the kernel, is just a facilitator for a task I'm
| interested in. Hell, arguably, so is YouTube. Then it follows
| that almost no one actually "interacts directly" with
| software; people interact directly with their task, and
| software is ultimate just a tool that's more or less
| practical to accomplish it.
| getpokedagain wrote:
| As someone not deeply involved in FOSS I am starting to get the
| absolutist mindset.
|
| I run graphene on my phone and this new restricted security
| patch limit by google is nothing short of a shit show.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I think the article properly addresses that:
|
| > Things programmers care about directly, like the OS and the
| kernel, are quite well covered. Whatever we need, there's an
| open version
|
| What devs can build without much oversight or business pressure
| usually works well open sourced.
|
| Almost everything else (hardware, non technical "productivity"
| software, services) doesn't, and that's most of our life. We
| live in a world that's still massively closed source.
|
| I wouldn't call someone absolutist for wanting printers, coffee
| machines, laptops, TVs, cars, "smart" lights to be more open
| than closed.
| xwowsersx wrote:
| That's true. Wanting openness in everyday tech isn't
| "absolutist" in itself. But the article's tone (and a lot of
| the FOSS movement's rhetoric) frames it as failure rather
| than frontier.
|
| Of course we'd all prefer open printers and cars, but those
| domains aren't mainly limited by software ideology; they're
| limited by regulation, liability, and econ. The fact that
| programmers can build entire OSs, compilers, and global infra
| as open projects is already astonishing.
|
| So yes, the world is still full of closed systems... but that
| doesn't mean FOSS lost. It means it's reached the layer where
| the obstacles are social, legal, and physical, not technical.
| IMO that's a harder, slower battle, not evidence that the
| earlier ones were meaningless.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Wanting openness in everyday tech isn't "absolutist" in
| itself. But the article's tone (and a lot of the FOSS
| movement's rhetoric) frames it as failure rather than
| frontier.
|
| It is a failure. Things have been moving away from
| openness. A frontier would move toward it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openmoko
| jowea wrote:
| Yeah. I'd say open source won in the basic infrastructure of
| the tech world, but actual political free software is just
| barely holding on. I want users to be free not some base
| shared code you can't actually modify running somewhere in
| the stack of a closed source SASS.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| I don't think the article was absolutist, binary, at all.
|
| The issue is that for a lot of things, there is exactly zero
| foss options. The problem is not, and the article doesn't
| imply, that there should be a 100% foss, so that foss finally
| "wins".
| Sytten wrote:
| Complex puzzle, I feel a key part is that the financing /
| financial sustainability of free software has not been solved.
| The author touches on it a bit by saying "when you sell
| hardware..." which kinda means no hardware == no revenue since
| you can't sell the software. I don't discount that Redhat is a
| thing, but it is the exception not the norm.
| guyzero wrote:
| Sybase and Ingres disagree.
| pooyan2 wrote:
| I hate to complain about styling, but when I can't read it, I
| have to say something about it.
|
| This has a strange CSS styling problem on my phone. There's no
| left margin in portrait, so it's basically unreadable, but if I
| go landscape it's fine.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Use firefox. Click "reader view" on any page and read it
| according to your own them. Maybe help free software win.
| sdotdev wrote:
| Blog styling is a bit weird and for the actual copy I kind of
| don't get its direction
| piersolenski wrote:
| Yet ;-)
| Animats wrote:
| It's about to get much worse.
|
| You can't vibe code without using a service from a big company,
| and obeying their rules.
|
| If Microsoft terminates your account, your programming career is
| over.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| This is one of my biggest problems with AI coding assistance.
| And how they will shape the development of less human friendly
| APIs and libraries over time.
| protocolture wrote:
| >You can't vibe code without using a service from a big
| company, and obeying their rules.
|
| In abstract, probably true, but so vague to be useless.
|
| I can _probably_ vibe code with qwen on debian. But are you
| then going to pivot from your microsoft example to like, my
| ISP? And if I point out I can move to an ISP with less than 5
| staff, you will probably just move the goalposts further right?
|
| Might be better to let you establish your goalposts first hey.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| Haiku will win in the end, at least win what many in the free
| software world are trying to win. Or at least what I think this
| blog is trying to get at, but it is a weird post I am not
| completely sure what it is trying to get at. But I do appreciate
| its methods even if I am somewhat confused by them.
|
| The year of the linux desktop is not going to happen, far too
| much baggage. The year of the Haiku deaktop will happen; they are
| doing everything right and staying under the radar until they are
| ready.
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