Date: Mon, 22 May 2000 22:24:38 -0700 From: Arun Sharma <adsharma@sharmas.dhs.org> To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: The Ethics of Free Software Message-ID: <20000522222438.A11092@sharmas.dhs.org> In-Reply-To: <20000523085510.A5994@physics.iisc.ernet.in>; from Rahul Siddharthan on Tue, May 23, 2000 at 08:55:10AM %2B0530 References: <20000521131809.A6546@sharmas.dhs.org> <20000522170335.B94994@azazel.zer0.org> <20000523085510.A5994@physics.iisc.ernet.in>
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On Tue, May 23, 2000 at 08:55:10AM +0530, Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > Instead the article confuses the whole idea, and alleges that RMS/the > FSF don't want you to pay for your software (in fact RMS carefully > distinguishes between free speech and free beer). The distinction between free speech and free beer is bogus. If you can pay Sun or Microsoft $1000 per line of code, they'll easily sell you the rights to the code. You can GPL it and have free speech and they won't have a problem with you. Their curtailing of your right to look at the code (!free speech) is motivated by their desire to make money (!free beer). Therefore free beer and free speech are not two entirely different concepts, with the former being despicable and the latter being divine. Again, the analogy between free speech and free software is flawed. "Free listening to market research by a Merrill Lynch analyst" would be closer. The claim that "for profit software" and "closed source software" are different is not supported by market realities. Neither RMS nor ESR have come up with a viable economic model which can support all the programmers being supported by the current closed source software economy. If I were to take free software as anything more than a hobby, they'll have to answer the hard economic questions. Otherwise, they'll just limit their support bases to impressionable college kids, non-professional programmers, rich and/or famous ivory tower kinds and USENET trolls (which I think is currently the case). It's good to see Linus and Larry Wall standing up and saying that people should have the right to copyright their work and benefit from it. http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2573456,00.html I think the real benefits of open source are the elimination of mediocre products with ridiculous price tags and in CS education. -Arun To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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