[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]
On Mon, Oct 30, 2006 at 02:10:11PM +0000, Aaron Trevena wrote: > I actually find it less black and white, I sympathise with the FSF > agenda but on a day to day basis work closer to the Open Source side. I found myself move from being a user of a proprietary system to being a major proponent of free software in quite a short period of time... mainly because I got sick of trying to get free software working properly on a proprietary OS. Some things don't work quite as well on Debian and Ubuntu as they did on OS X, but lots of things work better. I'm happy to say I've been nearly a year off the OS X now and I feel better for it. I've learned a lot more about free software, which is always good. > That means while I help campaign against Software Patents, and release > my software under the GPL (or dual licensed artistic and GPL), I don't > have strong philosophical objections to other people writing > proprietary software, so long as it doesn't impact on others who > choose to write free/libre open source or even shareware software. I don't think the FSF have objections to other people writing proprietary software either. The FSF wants computer users to have freedom, and does this by first creating the basis of a free operating system (GNU) and spends its time now as more of a proponent of software freedom, as well as providing a philisophical base for free software developers and users. The FSF wants users to be able to run a computer entirely using free software, and one way to do that is to draw people's attention to the importance of freedom - the problem with Open Source is that it ignores this for the sake of practical usage, and in doing this, millions of users are unaware that they are running software that gives them freedom. This is one reason to refer to the system as GNU/Linux -- even if you talk of Open Source -- if you let people know they are running a variant of the GNU system, they will find out what GNU is and in doing so, may well discover what Free Software is. ** I should say, this is my own opinion and not the official opinion of the GNU Project or the Free Software Foundation. So it might be wrong. ** matt -- Matt Lee Chief Webmaster, GNU Project - http://www.gnu.org/ - Free as in Freedom Free Software Foundation - Free Software, Free Society - http://www.fsf.org/
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
-- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html