press release critique

Lutz Horn lh at lutz-horn.de
Wed May 2 18:19:52 UTC 2001


Hi,

On Wed, May 02, 2001 at 12:19:09PM +0200, Georg C. F. Greve wrote:
>  1. We (meaning the FSF and FSF Europe) very deliberately speak of
>     Free Software in the "freedom, not free beer" way. We would speak
>     of "Free Software as in freedom AND free beer" otherwise.

With this you say that you (meaning the FSF and FSF Europe) don't care
about the commercial world and that you have no intention to make any
statement that touches the political implementations of Free Software in
an the realm of economics.

Of course you can restrict yourself to this postition but you should
accept that others try to take this postition and try to develop new and
more political thoughts based on it and the idea of Free Software.

>  2. One of the freedoms that is very important is the freedom to make
>     a living off good work. Personally I believe Free Software is good
>     work.

This can be only a derived freedom. First has to come the freedom for
the individual to live a good and comfortable life free of danger. It
may be possible to achieve this freedom by means of selling your time
and power for money. But this does not mean that making money is the
only or the preferd way to reach this freedom. I'd dare to say that
there are better ways to reach it and that one is shown by the removal
of Free Software from the sphere of capitalistic utilization.

> As Pim van Riezen stated quite correctly: the central goal of Free
> Software is freedom, not money. But there is nothing bad or unethical
> about making money with Free Software.

That's your postition which of course can be questioned. Since you don't
question the goal of making money you of course can't ask any ethical
questions about the status of Free Software concering commerce.

Regards
Lutz
-- 
Lutz Horn <lh at lutz-horn.de>
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