FLOSS/Linux Political Party

[Jeroen Dekkers]

(I didn't have time to read this discussion earlier, that's why I
reply so late)

At Thu, 03 Mar 2005 20:51:35 +0100,
Reinhard Mueller wrote:
> 
> Am Donnerstag, den 03.03.2005, 14:20 -0500 schrieb Sid Dabster:
> > FLOSS
> > is not a rightwing idea, it goes against normal
> > capitalist ideas.
> 
> Free Software is neither a right nor a left wing idea. Many enemies of
> Free Software would like the Free Software movement to be regarded as
> anti capitalistic, but that's plain wrong.
> 
> In fact, several of the people active in the Free Software movement even
> own a company, including (for example) myself :-)
> 
> So basically I agree with the other posts on this list who think that
> there are various and very different political views within the Free
> Software movement.

Non-free software goes directly against the idea of a free market and
free competition. With non-free software, there is only one company
which can look at the code, fix bugs, add features, etc. With Free
Software, you can go to every company and ask them to implement a
feature or fix bugs. There is a free market for services around the
software.

Free Software is also like a socialist system. I mean, the software is
owned by everybody (or nobody, but that's not really a practical
difference), which really fits the socialist idea.

And here you see that Free Software doesn't have a political colour,
but with the correct argumentation you can get the support of most
parties.

Jeroen Dekkers