Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 18:46:15 -0700 From: Gregory Sutter <gsutter@pobox.com> To: freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: "Open Source Town Meeting" supports only one faction Message-ID: <19980721184615.A15764@notabene.zer0.org> In-Reply-To: <199807212125.PAA17645@lariat.lariat.org>; from Brett Glass on Tue, Jul 21, 1998 at 03:25:08PM -0600 References: <199807212103.PAA17229@lariat.lariat.org> <Pine.BSF.3.96.980721140603.5607F-100000@orkan.canonware.co m> <199807212125.PAA17645@lariat.lariat.org>
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On Tue, Jul 21, 1998 at 03:25:08PM -0600, Brett Glass wrote: > > Actually, FSF doesn't support the concept of "Open Source" at all. > That's what's so ironic. Here you have a conference called the "Open > Source Town Hall" donating its proceeds to a group that openly and > repeatedly denigrates the concept of "Open Source" > on its Web site. They are the _F_SF, not the _OS_SF. This should not be a fresh realization -- Stallman has always supported _free_ software. Open source software can have certain strings attached, as RMS points out in Qt's case. The FSF hasn't changed their viewpoint at all. > Since the Free Software Foundation does not support the concept > of "Open Source," it is antithetical to the purpose of an "Open Source" > conference to force attendees to contribute money to it. This is a major > faux pas for which O'Reilly should be remonstrated soundly. An Open Source conference could certainly donate to the FSF, as free software is a subset of open source software. (Indeed, it's a very large subset.) While it's not necessarily best to have all software completely free, it is certainly a good cause. The FSF has done more for Open Source software than any other individual or group I can think of. Where would FreeBSD be without awk, gcc, gdb, or gmake? All of those are both Open Source _and_ free. > It is not appropriate to ask supporters of the Open Source concept > to donate to a group that openly and strongly opposes it. I think I disagree with you. The FSF doesn't oppose Open Source software any more than Linux opposes FreeBSD. Greg -- Gregory S. Sutter "How do I read this file?" mailto:gsutter@pobox.com "You uudecode it." http://www.pobox.com/~gsutter/ "I I I decode it?" To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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