FSF's "Defective By Design" Targets Apple Genius Bars 838
mjasay writes "At OSCON this year, MySQL's Brian Aker made this bold statement: 'Microsoft is irrelevant ... We're more worried about Apple.' The Free Software Foundation appears to have caught the hint, and has turned its attention to all-things-Apple with a 'denial of service' attack on the Apple Genius Bars. The idea is to completely book all Genius Bars and then ask the 'geniuses,' over and over again, a few questions about Apple's proprietary ways (while, apparently, real customers with support issues are left to flounder). Lost in this anti-Apple fervor, however, is the Free Software Foundation's complete and conscious failure to protect the web. Richard Stallman has long felt that software that doesn't sit on his desktop doesn't affect his freedom, but isn't the opposite true? Why is the FSF focused on Apple when the bigger concern should be Google, Yahoo!, Amazon, and other web players, a point made by Tim O'Reilly recently at OSCON?" Defective by Design is just one of many FSF projects, remember; it hardly seems fair to say that the FSF has been ignoring the implications of software as a service.
Geniuses are not Company Spokesmen (Score:4, Interesting)
Having previously worked at an Apple Store several years back (and even if I hadn't). I can tell you most people will probably get a "I'm sorry I can not answer that question. Please call corporate to get answers to your question."
Unless Apple has noticed this and given an internal memo of detailed responses to give out, this is the response you will get even from a store manager or supervisor.
Some geniuses may actually give you their own personal view on things but they wont represent Apple, nor will Apple necessarily stand behind said responses.
The only benefit of this is perhaps making more Apple customers aware of what the issues are, if they happen to overhear the conversation.
If you will be participating in this, I'd recommend staying polite. Being a stuck up customer trying to stick it to the man via a part-time, full-time non-corporate employee is not going to win you many friends or make people willing to listen to your cause.
Re:This is why they will never be taken seriously (Score:4, Interesting)
The free software movement has never been very good at PR/communication. It's really a testament to the strength of the idea, that it has made the progress it has.
No offense, but it is as though the whole movement has Aspergers syndrome, in the sense that they have zero intuitive understanding of how they will be perceived.
Way to bite a hand that feeds you FSF. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm getting really tired of people bashing apple as "locked down" with DRM.
Last time I checked, it was the other guy who spent upwards of a decade re-engineering their entire os with the specific purpose of DRM, causing massive GFX and audio card driver instability and feature stripping which goes on to this day.. but back on topic here: apple isn't "locked down".
Their kernel is OSS, they allow the development of third party "haxies" for their OS and official apps (see chax, synergy, etc), and their unix based system serves as a large "main-stream" market for many products which would otherwise have a much smaller user base.
This is the reason why I use osx.. it combines the benefits of OSS with the benefits of proprietary, while retaining very few of the drawbacks.
Re:DoSing is OK now? (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually read the text of the email... (Score:5, Interesting)
A link [defectivebydesign.org] that I got in my email, to the full text of what the FSF is doing here.
From TFA:
Because this is the only way to get the entertainment industry to agree to allow its content to be distributed as openly as it has with Apple, and because Apple wants to make sure it makes money.
From the link:
Jobs is the largest individual shareholder at Disney, and he could insist that its films be DRM-free.
From TFA:
As to the third question, no one cares where you go. Get over it.
Anyone who believes this, where are you right now? Boxers or briefs? How long is your penis / how big are your tits?
If you feel uncomfortable sharing these details with me, keep in mind, you at least have some idea [slashdot.org] who I am. You have no idea who's tracking you at Apple or AT&T.
What's the recourse if this douche is wrong?
The fourth question? It's not a question. At least put a question mark at the end to pretend.
That's only because you didn't read the whole question. Again, from the FSF:
If Jobs really wants to see open formats, why doesn't the iPhone play Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Theora video and FLAC?
Anyone who says "because it would cost money" is a moron. All of these formats have free implementations -- in fact, as far as I know, all of them have free, patent-free, royalty-free, and MIT license at worst, which means if iTunes is at all pluggable, it should take one engineer maybe two hours to add support for them, if that.
I think this is kind of an extreme action, and I can't really support it. But then, maybe extreme actions are exactly what's needed. (And maybe that's just Dark Knight rubbing off on me.)
Re:Mean-spirited? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well I will. I've sent several donations already this year, but I won't be sending more.
Re:DoSing is OK now? (Score:4, Interesting)
You call this activism? I call it harrasment, immoral, and unethical. I call it rude and stupid.
I like the way you have a double standard for DoS. It is OK in meatspace but wrong in cyberspace.
Maybe Apple should send out an email or just post on their website how the FSF decided to hurt Apple's customers and ask that people not support the FSF in any way.
WTF? (Score:2, Interesting)
If what the FSF is doing is wrong, why do you feel the need to deflect attention from Apple? When did Timothy start whoring for a corporation?
You know, years ago, when .NET was first released, I predicted it was part of a plan to end the dominance of open systems. With their code signing and runtime restrictions, they were going to require special permission for developers to write "unsafe" code. Microsoft was taking the first step toward making Stallman's "The Right to Read" into a reality.
But I was wrong. I picked the wrong villain.
It has been Apple who released a revolutionary computer that is completely locked down. It took Android and the jailbreak community to force their hand, make them admit that a web browser was not an SDK. And still, over a year after they announced it would be a real platform, the iPhone is as bad as any console - you need Apple's favor to run on the device, you have to sell your work through their channel, and they can cut you off on a whim. And the crapware that all the apologists said this was supposed to prevent still makes up the majority of the App Store. It has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with control.
And you still can't buy most music on iTunes without DRM. You can't play that music on other devices. You can't even buy certain kinds of third-party peripherals for Apple hardware.
If Microsoft is Sauron, Apple is Galadriel with the One Ring - beautiful and elegant, jealous and cruel. You will not have any others before me. You will love me and despair.
Re:This is why they will never be taken seriously (Score:2, Interesting)
Here's why it's a bad idea - it's restricting the freedom of people who have nothing to do with the FSF.
That's right, people have the freedom to engage in commerce as they so choose, and the FSF is intentionally disrupting that with a stunt of dubious merit. They're the assholes here.
Basically, in my eyes, FSF and all the various related orgs just took a dive, and I am the target of the FSF because I am not only a developer, I also have influence over the software used by many large companies. I'll be considering this tactic when I overlook GNU projects and push Apache & BSD instead.
Re:Shut Up and Make Something Better (Score:3, Interesting)
Linux certainly is not better than Windows in the "users want to use it" department, as Linux is still substantially more difficult to use.
For the things that Linux is better at, such as embedded systems, servers, number crunching, etc., Linux tends to do much better than Windows.
In any case, spamming Apple users isn't the way to go. These people deserve the same punishment that e-mail spammers deserve: summary execution.
The FSF (Score:5, Interesting)
needs to learn that there is a difference between being a revolutionary and just being really annoying.
One changes the world, the other just makes people hate you. They seem to be in the camp of people that think that as long as people hate you, you must be doing something right.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Mean-spirited? (Score:2, Interesting)
The main thing putting me off of the GPL currently is its association with Stallman and the FSF. Every story I hear about them causes me to loose more and more respect for them.
Are there any licences that provide the same kind of stuff without linking me to them, or should I just change the name of the GPL when I licence my software?
Re:doesn't it "just work"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Moreover, Apple is one of the few companies where you can actually talk to one of their tech support people face-to-face. This as opposed to Dell or HP, where you typically wait on hold for two hours while your call is transferred to Bangladesh.
Apple "Genuis Bar" is the sort of support system we should be ENCOURAGING.
Re:Actually read the text of the email... (Score:3, Interesting)
Targeting *apple*? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, Apple's imperfect, it shares the problems of any big software company (and they ARE a software company, they wouldn't be selling all those Macs if they were running Vista), but it's bent over backwards for the open source community... even when its openness made it a target, even when it's been attacked by extreme members of the community.
The iPhone is a nice phone, but that's all it is. A nice phone. It's not the next big platform (look to Android or maybe OpenMoko for that). It's not an open source development platform, but neither are most cellphones.
Ten points of hippie-cred, dudes, but this smells more of Altamont than Woodstock to me.
Re:The FSF (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know.. I remember when they organized a "DOS Attack" by flooding Microsofts customer service lines to register complaints with their CSR's.
That seemed to get the proverbial nod of approval from many in this community.
Re:A few responses (Score:2, Interesting)
I understand your criticisms. I'm interested in what the alternatives are. How do we communicate with Apple executives? We've been trying that too. It's hard to get an appointment. Apple executives delegate communications tasks to other front-line employees. So, we are talking with the front-line employees. We are not harassing them or telling them that they are bad people. We are asking them questions that require some degree of familiarity with Apple technology and Apple policies to answer.
If Apple doesn't provide enough staff to handle the questions of customers and potential customers, then they should deploy more staff, no? They don't seem to have a problem doing that when they want to make a big media circus and create product debut situations of artificial scarcity that make just walking down the street near their stores a PITA for everyone, requiring cities to provide police presence to manage the traffic flow. And we're the ones being disruptive to ordinary folks? :) Or they should do what lots of other companies are doing in response to the customer service nightmares that DRM causes -- drop DRM.
We did encourage people who visit the stores to tell others there about Defective By Design, so they will know what's going on. They will also know why it's going on -- it's short-term inconvenient disruption in the interest of longer term pro-consumer change.
Thank you for supporting our goals, and for taking the time to think about this and speak up.
Re:This is why they will never be taken seriously (Score:4, Interesting)
Not anymore, but not for lack of trying.
This is the proverbial me telling people your sister is a dirty wore, and letting you prove that you don't actually have a sister. Would you care to give a few examples of Apple trying to violate GPL?
Re:This is why they will never be taken seriously (Score:4, Interesting)
RMS has a decent point there.
To me the name really isn't that important. What is important is giving credit where credit is due. I've had people tell me straight faced that Linus Torvalds wrote the entire "Linux Operating System" all the way from the kernel to gcc to bash. This is obviously wrong, and such misinformation comes from lazy journalists and editors who play fast and loose with the facts.
Call the operating system whatever you want, but when I read in articles that "Linus Torvalds created the Linux operating system" I cringe a bit. He arguably popularized it more than anyone else, and he created a very important part of it, but he didn't create it any more than Goodyear created my car.
Re:Mean-spirited? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have to agree with you.
This kind of puerile stunt is simply absurd. Apple can and should sue them over this.
This is specially bad coming from a flagship name list FSF, and can cause serious problems for the opensource/freesoftware initiatives. Who will take us seriously ?
Even if this is not carried out, the FSF should make a public apology over this unfortunate incident.
Re:Mean-spirited? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, this is a demonstration that there really is no such thing as a free lunch. Sure, the software is free to use, but the cost of it is a bizarre ideological movement that pulls stunts like this, interfering with people's ability to actually get some use out of their computers.
GNU/FSF were fun and useful about 15 years ago, when free software was generally about coders using and sharing each others code. Unfortunately, I think success has spoiled the movement. I'd rather just pay for my software and avoid all the political crap.
Mac v. Windows v. Linux (make it stop) (Score:1, Interesting)
How exactly is this really any different than the bad Vista campaign? I used to post to a number of forums online to get help with a number of Vista problems I was having. Often I got spam about how if I just switched to Linux everything would be fine. When you respond to them... they claim that you hate freedom and that somehow using Windows is not "green." or eco-environment friendly.
The difference here of course is that the confrontation is face to face and in a public forum. Second, they are going after Apple, which is beloved by the media and not Microsoft, which is generally seen as the late 90s. I grow a bit tired of people who somehow assume Microsoft is evil and Apple is good. These people are a bit out of touch with reality. The truth is that all of this is very subjective.
I really agree that if you want to promote your product over either Vista or Leopard... build a better one, make it friendly to corporate needs and market the hell out of it.
Re:For the Nth time... (Score:2, Interesting)
This meme that you must either love every aspect of a product or you must avoid purchasing it is destructive and stupid. Please stop perpetuating it. I like my iPod Touch, I think it's a nice device, but there are certain things about it that I wish were different. Rather than abandon the entire thing, I prefer to work for change. Part of this involves complaining about it. If we did things your way, nobody would ever complain about anything, they would just not buy stuff, and then nobody would ever know what was wrong with all of these products that never succeeded. Customer feedback is the lifeblood of any good business. If you don't want to read my complaints, stop opening my posts.
For the record, I agree with you completely that what the FSF is doing here is absolutely stupid, and borderline criminal, and it just reinforces for me the fact that the FSF is simply out of touch with what we like to call reality. But while I'm not on the FSF's side, neither am I completely on Apple's side. I know that it's not an open platform but I think that it should be, and I have no qualms about making my opinion known.
Re:Mean-spirited? (Score:5, Interesting)
Send them an email saying you will no longer donate while such campaigns are run. I did.
Re:This is why they will never be taken seriously (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously? That's your smoking gun? A completely separate company (as it was then), over fifteen years ago tried and failed to do something that you remember a bit vaguely and don't provide any substantiation for.
And further - that Jobs (as the CEO of NeXT and now of Apple) has nurtured a deep desire to try again, and he's just biding his time until he strikes. Like some evil super-villain in a cartoon.
It's hard to believe someone would stretch that far, but there you go! It's impressive stuff. Not grounded in sanity perhaps, but impressive nonetheless.
> It is the customer's choice to agree to the terms of the apple licenses.
Customer choice is what brought us the Microsoft monopoly.
Is your point here that people should not have the freedom to make choices you personally disagree with, or that you don't trust people to make choices? I'm not sure why it's relevant either, except as a snide non-sequitur.
Re:sounds good to me (Score:1, Interesting)
Given that the majority of Apple's operating system consists of FOSS
You just keep telling everyone that. Got any evidence to support that claim?
Yes, there is a BSD-derived layer of OS X. No, it does *not* comprise the majority of the OS. Furthermore, the BSD layer has almost entirely been rewritten by Apple to achieve UNIX2003 conformance, fixing thousands of bugs along the way, and Apple has chosen to keep all of the fixes open source. They could have easily decided to write UNIX-conformant libraries from scratch and ditch the open source license (since they were doing nearly complete rewrites anyway), but they chose not to.
The apple-provided BSD layer libraries are generally best-of-breed, and they are available for anyone to use.
Re:Mean-spirited? (Score:1, Interesting)
Heh. Yeah, I was thinking it's pretty funny seeing the Slashmob going after the FSF. They probably wouldn't have objected to harsh criticism of Apple from the FSF, but this little stunt seems to cross the line.
I think the response would've been fairly muted if it were Microsoft - maybe the consensus would be that it's a waste of time.
That's because there's a pecking order here, that goes roughly like this:
top tier: Linux (kernel and several top distros), Apple, Google
second tier: GNU/FSF/Stallman, BSD, other free projects, universities
third tier: Sun, IBM, Novell, Amazon, eBay
fourth tier: Microsoft, AOL, cable and telecoms
fifth tier: SCO, RIAA/MPAA, patent trolls
As far as Slashdot is concerned, it's politically risky for someone on a lower tier to go after a higher tier in a ham-fisted way like the FSF is doing.
Re:Mean-spirited? (Score:4, Interesting)
Are there any licences that provide the same kind of stuff without linking me to them, or should I just change the name of the GPL when I licence my software?
Certainly. Have a browse through http://www.opensource.org/licenses/category [opensource.org]. I suggest using the Microsoft Reciprocal License [opensource.org] (basically equivalent to the LGPL, and perfectly GPL-compatible), just to piss off the FSF...
Re:Mean-spirited? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:A few responses (Score:2, Interesting)
Why is that letter sufficient for you? He hasn't done what he said he was going to do, so I'm honestly puzzled. He said half the tracks on iTunes would be DRM-free by the end of 2007. Very few are.
Maybe Jobs is driving for harder terms than other people are, because of Apple's powerful position as distributor? I don't doubt that Apple is refusing terms from the record companies here -- my objection is to people who say that Apple *can't* change the situation, or that they are being bullied. They clearly can, but they are trying to maximize their own profits, and the freedom of their customers just doesn't weigh in the calculation. That's what we object to and what we're trying to change.
Let's keep in mind that any reason the record companies might be driving a harder bargain with Jobs than with others probably has to do with the degree to which Jobs is attempting to assert control over the whole market via iTunes lock-in and price control.
I dunno, I just wonder what it would take for you to believe that he was either full of it when he wrote that letter, and was trying to defuse opposition and shift blame, or that he has changed his mind since then and decided that DRM benefits him after all.
Re:Mean-spirited? (Score:3, Interesting)
The effect you mention is that SUV owners spend a little more time inflating their tires. But it may also remind them that others resent their sociopathic habits. Make them feel unwelcome and many will just become greater assholes, but in doing so will create a more visible cultural divide. Perhaps such a divide will remind people to think about the implications of buying an SUV, if not for society, then at least for themselves. Maybe because of this someone will buy a car rather than an SUV. That's not a lot, but it's not nothing.
The FSF thing uses a different mechanism. Presumably they're hoping that Apple customers will eavesdrop on the conversations, and learn something about Apple that they might want to know? Sadly, instead they'll probably just surf !/. on their iPhones...
Re:Sit In (Score:5, Interesting)
The people are sort of stuck here. Before most businesses we dealt with every day were large corporations, there could be a fairly equal exchange of ideas between customers and proprietors. A concerned community could make itself heard to businesses that affected it. Apple is a large corporation. They'll spend a lot of advertising money to talk at you in a way that sort of feels personal ("Hey, here's a company that understands me!"), but is limited in substantial message to, "Buy our shit, K?" They even go beyond what most companies do and hire a bunch of people to sit in stores and do face-to-face tech support, which means they're listening to customers, though in a somewhat limited way.
The only people that have DIRECT CONTROL over Apple's business practices are high up in the company. They talk a lot, but it's hard to make them listen. If you can tie up all the "genius bars" for a day, that might actually make someone notice. It would be pretty hard to do, but if you did, it might at least be acknowledged by someone with DIRECT CONTROL. It might also get noticed by the mainstream media, who would make some ham-fisted attempt to understand what the fuck it is that the FSF was talking about, and might even report on it, leading reasonable folk to wonder, "What was that clueless reporter blathering about," and look up the real info themselves.
Furthermore, as far as the analogy goes, every waiter at those white-only restaurants didn't have DIRECT CONTROL over anything. They probably were upset they weren't going to make any tip money. And I bet plenty of the would-be customers DID NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT EQUALITY, or maybe were even hostile to the cause. The magnitude of what the FSF is concerned with is not as great as the magnitude of what the civil-rights movement did. But some problems really do deserve more press. The recent Microsoft and Yahoo DRM expiration issues point out what a fundamental problem DRM is; a lot of people that use DRM-laden media every day don't understand that their very use of those files is at the whim of a corporation, and that they have no good reason to believe that those files will remain playable perpetually, or that they'll be able to find convenient portable devices to play those files perpetually.
As far as I'm concerned if the FSF can book a significant amount of "genius bar" time, more power to 'em. If they can make a big corporation listen to them even for a little while, that's a step. Almost any message coming from a position of principle, reason, and understanding (an anti-DRM stance is certainly one) is more important than a day's worth of "productivity" for Apple and its customers.
Where the question isn't really a question (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Mean-spirited? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why does it seem evident? Why must I like or dislike Apple any more or less than I dislike Dell or HP? The only difference is that for most Apple supporters any kind of disagreement with Apple is some sort of grave offence only explained with some supposed hate for their brand. Apple to me is nothing more and nothing less than a logo on a piece of plastic, and the thing that matters to me is their policy on DRM and others.
I would find it funny if they did this to Microsoft sure,
Here you have it then. I don't like or dislike Apple any more or less than I like or dislike Microsoft. Actually I'm lying - in general I think that Microsoft always was a bigger danger, and as such it has been the target of *countless* campaigns, from the FSF and others. It seems however that when complaining about Apple suddenly it's a matter of "hate" and other rules apply.
If the FSF thinks that all software should be free then they are morons
That's what the FSF *has always said*, and if anything they are quite vocal about it. I find it interesting that Apple users feel so threatened by that, it's not like they are not using a proprietary operating system. This situation however is solely about DRM - the DRM that smells bad when made by others but suddenly smells like roses when used and propagated by Apple.
This isn't just a "not great" strategy, it is going to waste a lot of people's time.
There are a lot of things in life that waste peoples time. Like trying to get the MS Windows reimbursement when it is bundled. The sheer amount of hours that it takes means that some other poor users have to wait in queue to get support. Does this mean that I should just pay and shut up? I don't think so. Sometimes it is not only inevitable to be inconvenient, it's necessary.
and I'm sorry if you somehow feel your self worth should be lower because you don't have a Mac
I get the humour, although I must say that 1) I have a MacBook in the household and 2) I find it almost comical the projection that Apple users make about "self-worth", like anybody but them actually cares about their brand. Actually, it's part of the lack of substance that I've seen in this threads: no answer to the actual points and questions addressed to the "Genius" about DRM, just a lot of posturing about "self-worth". I must confess that Apple in itself - and Apple users - are indifferent to me... one is a brand, the others are users of proprietary UNIX OS. Nothing more, nothing less.
I do however like that my system has a lot of the security benefits of a Linux based system
That's great. Use it then. The discussion never was about why people like OSX. Windows users have just as valid reasons to use is, as do Linux and BSD users. Nothing new, nothing different. I certainly have nothing against it - it seems like a decent OS to use, but my opinion is irrelevant.
It looks to me however that Apple users like to think of themselves as something other than users of a specific proprietary OS and get nervous when confronted with the fact Apple *is* using and propagating DRM. If, as you said, there is nothing wrong with it, I don't get the defensiveness and lack of addressing of the actual complaints and the side-tracking of the debate to how great OSX is and how Apple has the right to do foo and bar (Apple users in general talk a lot about the rights that Apple has, including being great defenders of EULAs and the like).
Re:Mean-spirited? (Score:3, Interesting)
What does Al Gore have to do with this? Learn some science already. He's not a scientist, although at least he's trying, which is more than can be said of many.
First the Republicans ignore scientists, commission partisan "studies", and claim that there is no global warming. Now they ignore scientists, commission partisan "studies", and claim that there is global warming, but that it's somehow a good thing? What's next? Ignoring historians, commissioning partisan studies, and claiming it was the Democrats' fault because the Republicans were fighting global warming all along?
If you seriously think that 7 billion people can all live however they want without any social responsibility, you seriously need to pull your head out of your ass. If science is too hard for you, try history.