Free Toaster (was: Defining Free Software Business)

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > Well, how is your freedom to study the toaster restricted?

   I have experienced that really understanding how a program works
   withouth having its sourcecode is practically impossible for me.
   Your skills might of course allow you to also understand programs
   without seeing the source, and this also would explain why I would
   value this partial freedom higher than you.

First of all, you can't know that the source code corresponds to what
you in your toaster.  So even if you have the source code, you can't
really know that the toaster does as the source code specifies.  You
can't even check that they are the same.

I find that `experiencing' how a program works is just a simple matter
of using it, and duplicating what it does in some fashion.  You don't
really need to poke around in assembler listings, or whatever unless
it is a device driver.

Cheers.