Free Software / Open source concepts

Matthias-Christian Ott ott at enolink.de
Sat Feb 16 19:23:48 UTC 2008


Noah Slater <nslater at bytesexual.org> wrote:

> > I know this is a sore point in most communities, I was hoping to bring a new
> > perspective on the matter. So don't bust me if I got it wrong.
>
> Yes, Open Source and Free Software are very different.
>
> Free Software is about ethics and Open Source is about pragmatism.

Open Source has in fact its own ethics. You can be without ethics. The
difference is that they preassume this capitalistic ethics and make it
their ethical foundation.

> There is no reason you can't support both or use both on a project.

Yep, talking with Linus about proprietary licenced kernel modules makes
no sense. You can just cooperate with Open Source people within their
framework and vice versa.

Regards
Matthias-Christian



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