Lutz Horn wrote:
On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 01:31:34PM +0200, Klaus Schilling wrote:
John Tapsell writes:
On Thu, 10 May 2001, you wrote:
On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 09:56:24AM +0200, Stefan Meretz wrote:
Is there a copyleft license preventing from making money with free software?
No.
But you can always write one :)
No, you can't, because the software would not be free if its license prevented that.
This is some interesting point. The freedoms 0-3 as described on http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html dont't contain this notion.
: The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0). ^^^
So, to make this short, there may be one interpretation of freedom 2, the interpretation given by the FSF(E). But I don't accept that one body, the FSF(E), as the sole interpretational right and the only power to define how the four freedoms have to be interpreted.
Well, the freedoms and the "interpretation" are two consecutive paragraphs from the same text, so it seems natural to consider them together. Of course, you're free to agree to only one part of them, or completely disagree with RMS or whatever, but I think the FSFE, as the sister organization of the FSF, should support the FSF's position.
But I guess that's what is meant by "authorative information" :-)
It's authoritative as far as any software under the GPL, BSD license or any other DFSG/OSD conforming license is concerned. I'm sure the FSFE would not claim that any software which does not permit commercial use and/or distribution does. (In fact I think, since such software is not free according to all the definitions mentioned, the FSFE would not talk about such software at all and therefore also not give any misleading information about it.)
And that's why this whole thing will lead to nothing. If you are not willing or not able or too "realistic" to actively consider some ideas that sound utopian, why all this fuss?
I'm certainly willing and able to consider such ideas, but:
- This thread did not start with some utopian ideas, but with someone criticizing the active "political" work done by the core team. IMHO, there's a lot of work to be done, both on the technical side (to make free software a viable and better alternative to proprietary software, and simply to produce a lot of interesting projects -- note that I'm not saying the FSFE or any other organization has to coordinate or even control it all, I say we (or most of us) need and want to write some code) and on the political side (to make sure writing, distributing and using free software remains legal, that the infracstructure of the future (formats, protocols etc.) remains open, etc.). Discussing utopian ideas in order to stop actual constructive work is a bad thing, IMHO.
- Most of these ideas have been discussed back and forth for years (maybe not in an only-European forum like this, but with participation of many Europeans as well), and I'm wondering if anything really new has been said in this thread (including my own comments ;-).
- Quite a few of the "realists" have been "doing" free software for some years, i.e. (in varying degrees) written, used, distributed and evangelized free software. Some (including some of the core team members) have found ways that allow them to use free software for most of our work, write and improve free software and make enough money with it, not to get very rich, but to be able to do it this way and not have to waste our time in other jobs. IMHO this is quite a comfortable situation, both for themselves (who can enjoy hacking and using free software, not only at night, and don't have to beg for food) and for all who like free software (because more free software is written this way than would be otherwise).
So this "model" really works, because we do it. I can't say this of the anticommercial ideas presented here. I have asked some quite concrete questions in my previous mails. Most of them went unanswered. So to me it seems only like some vague ideas (ok, maybe I should expect this from "utopian ideas").
So, perhaps the real confusion here is mixing up utopian ideas and real, you might say pragmatic, actions, and we're better off separating them.
I also like to have utopian ideas and I'd like to discuss them in a separate thread -- but I prefer to remember that they're utopian. The ideas can appear fantastic and unrealistic, but when you try to derive some course of action from them, the actions must be questioned whether they're realistic.
E.g., if living in a society without money is the utopia, I agree (yes, really, though my mails so far may not appear like this). But if your consequence it to disallow the use of free software in connection with money, I disagree because that's no realistic way to reach the goal. It won't make the money disappear, but it will severly hurt the free software. So it's ineffective towards one of my visions (society without money), but destructive against another one (world without proprietary software), and therefore I reject this consequence (not the vision!). If you have any workable plans on how to realize vision #1, I'm all ears. Until then, I prefer to concentrate on vision #2 because I see a bigger change to reach it (or at least comer close to it).
Maybe this distinction helps to make it clear that we might not disagree on the visions, but "only" on the consequences we draw from them.
Frank