My alternative busines model

[Rui Miguel Seabra]

On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 12:30:00AM +0100, Niall Douglas wrote:
> I'd like to think this thread has at least made us think more deeply 
> about our own beliefs on the matter. I'm sure it's not usual for some 
> asshole like me to come barging into a free software list saying free 
> software is all the things I've said? :)

This is not a religion, although many *joke* about it, no one takes it
seriously.
Maybe we should stop joking, if it causes so much confusion and gives
others arguments agains us.

Free Software is not a belief, but the result of deep, carefull and
conscious thinking: a ground solid conclusion.

I can't see any other kind of people who wouldn't reach the same
conclusion but people whose only motivation is profit at all expenses,
even if it means unbalanced exploitation of others.

See Microsoft... they are all about free software, as long as they are
free to embrace and extend it in ways that improve their
monopoly^Wprofit.
The GNU GPL, and others like it, have special properties that do not
permit the maintenance of a monopoly, so they attack it, and say "Open
Source" is okay, trying to drive people away from the notion of the four
freedoms, but "intellectual property" must not be undermined. Why?
Because as people become aware those freedoms, and think about them,
they reach the same conclusion we did, and that is bad for Microsoft's
business model. Because they intend to maintain the notion that ideas
can only derive from one single entity and its sweat, so they must be
"protected" by laws which "are the same" (patent, copyright, trademark,
etc...).

Those ideas are false. People are learning about what Free Software is,
and more and more embrace it every day.
People are learning that patents and copyright are not only two quite
different things, but also that they are being utterly currupted in favor
of big interests, doing more harm to society than the promised benefit
(the so called radical innovation: if you invented music which is so
radically different that it was not based on anything else people know
so far, would you be listened to? I pretty much doubpt the big labels
would publish you, mister ;)).

Rui