BBC TV: Click: Free=beer and facebook-flaming

Ben Finney bignose+hates-spam at benfinney.id.au
Sun May 18 01:23:59 UTC 2008


Florian Weimer <fw at deneb.enyo.de> writes:

> * MJ Ray:
> 
> > didn't mention how free (as in freedom) software allows any random
> > end-user to check or have it checked.
> 
> How is this different from proprietary software?

Either this is obvious, or I'm not understanding the question.

Software that doesn't give the user freedom to inspect the source code
and pass it on to others, doesn't allow the user to check the software
themselves or have someone else check it and pass it along to them.
This is distinct from free software, which allows all of this.

-- 
 \      "...one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was |
  `\        that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful |
_o__)                  termination of their C programs." —Robert Firth |
Ben Finney




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