press release critique

Hilaire Fernandes hilaire at ext.cri74.org
Sat May 5 05:40:43 UTC 2001


On Fri, 04 May 2001 23:33:48 +0200
Stefan Meretz <stefan.meretz at hbv.org> wrote:

Stefan> Werner Koch schrieb:
Stefan> > 
Stefan> > On Fri, 4 May 2001, Marc SCHAEFER wrote:
Stefan> > 
Stefan> > > However, I would like that FSFE describe in a confusionless way the
Stefan> > > distinction between free (as in beer) and free (as in above).
Stefan> > 
Stefan> > Check out the 4 basic freedoms.  RMS talks about these in every
Stefan> > speech on Free Software and of course you will find them at
Stefan> > www.gnu.org and www.fsfeurope.org.  IMHO everyone in the Free
Stefan> > Software community should know them as well has the basic syntax of
Stefan> > his favorite programming language.
Stefan> > 
Stefan> > I think it is in most cases pretty easy to compare some software
Stefan> > against the freedoms 0 to 3.  They don't say anything about money or
Stefan> > other ways of compensation - why should they?
Stefan> 
Stefan> Agreed. Then _please_ talk about freedom, not about making money as

No, making money is a good motivation to do things. When we say making money with
free software we then encourage people to make free software. 

Telling so has also the advantage of breaking down the misconsception about free software: the
point is not to be gratis but to be free (libre in french).

About telling that to journalist, I think it is important as well, so they will dig a bit more
in their reflexion about free software, they can not say easily free software is gratis when
we tell them we can make good money from it otherwise they will look like idiot.

Concerning FSFE, I guess it will promote Free Software idea in Europe and all the possibility with
that. (one is to make money but there is much more for sure!)


Hilaire


--
OFSET - Organization for Free Software in Education and Teaching
http://www.ofset.org
http://www.ofset.org/freeduc



More information about the Discussion mailing list