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Old 6th June 2014
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rocket357 rocket357 is offline
Real Name: Jonathon
Wannabe OpenBSD porter
 
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: 127.0.0.1
Posts: 429
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Quote:
Originally Posted by thirdm View Post
I'll only remind you you started out with, "THAT is what bugs me so much about Stallman. He has a very narrow definition of "open source" and decries anyone who doesn't precisely meet his definition." Yet you seem to have your ideas of what rights should be ceded in free software licenses and are criticizing people who who prefer copyleft for not following your preferences. Or maybe you just can't get by the use of the word free.
That's probably a good assumption, that I can't get by the use of the word free. You don't call something "free" then attach taxes and fees to it...it ceases to be "free" at that point. That is basically my issue with Stallman. Call it overly optimistic or whatever you want (wording seems to be the core of this debate anyways heh), but if someone offers me something and says "it's free", I think of the traditional meaning of the word "free". To quote Stallman:

Quote:
Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer”.
Free speech is a great way to think about it. I can't walk into a crowded theater and yell "fire", as that may cause harm to others. And in Stallman's eyes, proprietary software harms others. I completely get that.

But I disagree. Proprietary software is not the devil that Stallman believes it to be. Yeah, he's got some accurate points that companies DO utilize their licenses to screw their users over. I agree with him 100% on that. But the core of that issue is *not* proprietary software. 99.99% of the users out there do not give a flip if they have access to the source code, or even if bugs get fixed (unless it directly affects their workflow, of course), or to go a step further, most end users don't even care if security patches are put in place. Think of your typical Microsoft user, or typical Mac user. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've been called out to help a family member or friend with their "computer issues", and they're doing things like disabling Windows firewall while their machine in plugged directly into the internet with a public IP on it. I know you've had similar experiences so there's no need to expound on that.

For people like you and I, who do indeed care about source availability, proprietary software is not a good match, and we seek out other sources of software that we can tinker with. Beyond that, we are enforcing our preferences on others when we demand they release their source code.

Sure, I disagree with Stallman's policy that other developers release their source code. It's a political issue, not unlike government assistance (i.e. should homeless people go to their local church where they are likely to get assistance, or should the government raise taxes so they can assist the homeless? Think about that. It boils down to "do you trust others to do the right thing?" If yes, you trust the developers to release code free of encumberment. If not, you sue them into releasing their code).
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