Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 08:55:10 +0530 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: Gregory Sutter <gsutter@zer0.org> Cc: Arun Sharma <adsharma@sharmas.dhs.org>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: The Ethics of Free Software Message-ID: <20000523085510.A5994@physics.iisc.ernet.in> In-Reply-To: <20000522170335.B94994@azazel.zer0.org>; from gsutter@zer0.org on Mon, May 22, 2000 at 05:03:35PM -0700 References: <20000521131809.A6546@sharmas.dhs.org> <20000522170335.B94994@azazel.zer0.org>
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Gregory Sutter said on May 22, 2000 at 17:03:35: > On 2000-05-21 13:18 -0700, Arun Sharma <adsharma@sharmas.dhs.org> wrote: > > http://www.sdmagazine.com/features/2000/03/f4.shtml > > > > Just in case you missed this on slashdot. > > Don't miss the excellent rebuttal by Christopher Montgomery: > > http://www.advogato.org/article/94.html The original article glosses over what I think is the real point behind free software, and the rebuttal also does not tackle this point as firmly as it could: that is, software is a tool, not just a work of art, and therefore you should have the freedom to tinker with it just as you can tinker with your music system or your car. Bob Young's comparison of closed-source software with "a car whose hood is welded shut" is excellent. 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 article includes in its definition of free software a requirement that "it must be available from at least one source without charge", but while this tends to be true in practice, nowhere is it required either by the FSF or by the Open Source initiative. The advogato article accepts this requirement without questioning. What the FSF wants is that just as you can examine your music system, fix it, enhance it, and resell it or give it away, you should be able to do that with software too. You can only do that if the source code is available. In addition, software has the property that you can copy it perfectly at very little cost, and the FSF says you should be allowed to do that too. They have a mechanism (the GPL) that tries to guarantee you can do both. People have tried to preserve the freedom to tinker while curtailing the freedom to distribute (eg Sun), and such licenses have had problems of their own which have made them unpopular with hackers. The article targets the second point (freedom to distribute) to the exclusion of the first (freedom to modify), but it is the first that is really the fundamental idea. It exists everywhere else, why not in software? And the article gives me the impression (maybe unfair, I don't know) that all this "ethics" stuff is an eyewash to cover the author's own feeling of insecurity against these free competitors, or something. The advogato article is not bad but I think the author could have made this point earlier and more clearly in the article, rather than start off by going on the defensive against the personal attacks on RMS and ESR. R. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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