Objective of IFSO Re: [Fsfe-ie] stuff from the past week [adelaney at cs.may.ie]
Niall Douglas
s_fsfeurope2 at nedprod.com
Sat Nov 1 18:35:41 CET 2003
On 31 Oct 2003 at 10:40, Aidan Delaney wrote:
> > I don't like "free software" much either because I don't think
> > software should be free in money terms.
> Free Software does not explicitly state any economic model. You are
> free to use Free Software within the economic model of your choice.
Oh yes it does! When people see the word "free", they think "lacking
in monetary cost". That is a trick of the English language - and
everyone can bang on ad nauseum about free as in beer and free as in
speech, but it's totally a storm in a teacup best solved by no longer
using "free" in the title.
EXCEPT that this misinterpretation is actually PR by some elements of
the free software community. They WANT businesses and people to think
it's free in monetary terms even though most of the cost of software
is in support and maintanence - but something which costs nothing
initially is psychologically more attractive than something which
does. Which is why shops price things with .99 rather than a round
value and there's "buy now pay later" schemes.
Now that's dishonest, manipulative and IMHO unethical. Of course,
we're up against even less ethical people, but what I consider to be
free software is just as much free of ALL exploitative practice -
including lying to users.
> > Ideally I'd like a term reflecting that the /use/ of software must be
> > as free as possible whilst maintaining a viable & sustainable revenue
> > model. How about we maintain the 1500 year tradition of Ireland
> > improving on the status quo by being a little bit better and use
> > "fair use" software? This term I believe most accurately describes
> > what we all agree upon.
>
> I think Free Software describes what you want to describe without
> explicitly mentioning an economic model.
We can choose to be like all the others or else set a higher, more
inclusive standard. I view the GPL as fundamentally immoral as a
Microsoft license, the term "free software" as unethical and "open
source" as too unspecific and thus liable for hijacking.
Cheers,
Niall
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