In 1984, the same year as the Mac introduction and before the Unix Wars, Richard Stallman at the MIT Media Lab published the GNU Manifesto in Dr. Dobbs Journal (an influential programming magazine) announcing his intention to re-code from scratch a Unix compatible system and make it freely available.
In the article, he outlined his philosophy of freedom.
Later he expended his ideas into a critique of the open source movement and set his philosophy apart from open source.
www.gnu.org
Stallman makes many points, which we will find relevant to the culture of Apple and hackintoshing.
But in immediate context the most pertinent observations are about ambiguity in common-sense terms, such as "open source" and freedom:
(I've mashed up excerpts from Stallman's philosophical exposition)
In a world of digital sounds, images, and words, free software becomes increasingly essential for freedom in general.
"Think of free speech, not free beer"
The terms “free software” and “open source” stand for almost the same range of programs. However, they say deeply different things about those programs, based on different values. The free software movement campaigns for freedom for the users of computing; it is a movement for freedom and justice.
Philosophical values and practical values can overlap and disagree:
By contrast, the open source idea values mainly practical advantage and does not campaign for principles.
This is why we do not agree with open source, and do not use that term.
The
official definition of open source software (which is published by the Open Source Initiative and is too long to include here) was derived indirectly from our criteria for free software. It is not the same; it is a little looser in some respects.
Nonetheless, their definition agrees with our definition in most cases.
The GNU philosophy:
When we call software “free,” we mean that it respects the
users' essential freedoms: the freedom to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute copies with or without changes. This is a matter of freedom, not price...
I believe that Steve Jobs found this philosophy agreeable, but his interest in freedom ended with himself. He privileged open source, not freedom.
As soon as he got back to Apple in 1997, he determinedly and unabashedly set about selling mac users to big business by reinventing the Mac as both a TV and as the development station for content (Pro).
In privileging himself, Jobs was far from alone. But this was antithetical to Stallman's philosophy.
(Keep in mind Stallman is writing his particular values. The reason he's worth listening to is that because like Steve Jobs, Stallman led work the changed the entire world.)
Not all of the users and developers of free software agreed with the goals of the free software movement. In 1998, a part of the free software community splintered off and began campaigning in the name of “open source.” The term was originally proposed to avoid a possible misunderstanding of the term “free software,” but it soon became associated with philosophical views quite different from those of the free software movement.
[So,] The term “free software” is prone to misinterpretation: an unintended meaning [per GNU], “software you can get for zero price,” fits the term just as well as the intended meaning, “software which gives the user certain freedoms.”
We address this problem by publishing the definition of free software... This is not a perfect solution; it cannot completely eliminate the problem [of terminology].
An unambiguously correct term would be better, if it didn't present other problems. Unfortunately, all the alternatives in English have problems of their own. [...] For instance, in some contexts the French and Spanish word “libre” works well, but people in India do not recognize it at all. Every proposed replacement for “free software” has some kind of semantic problem—and this includes “open source software.”
Re licensing:
Another misunderstanding of “open source” is the idea that it means “not using the GNU GPL.” This tends to accompany [yet another] misunderstanding that “free software” means “GPL-covered software.” These are both mistaken: the GNU GPL qualifies as an open source license and most of the open source licenses qualify as software licenses. But there are
many [free/open] software licenses aside from the GNU GPL.
I hope this provides some deeper context for the topic at hand.
Regarding Canonical, it's an open source firm, but their product and values acknowledge Stallman's idea of freedom.
Stallman's diatribes consider the tension between claims to product and claims to branding, which adds to the confusion, but that's one step beyond...
en.wikipedia.org
