FSFE position on "open core"

[Georg C. F. Greve]

On Wednesday 08 January 2014 12.02:03 Mirko Boehm wrote:
> What if a company that solely produces a Free Software product and a
> hardware manufacturer that uses proprietary firmware merge? The first
> will loose the label of being a "Free Software company". Now does that
> change the value of the contributions this company made to Free
> Software? The same goes for companies that have mixed proprietary and
> Free Software strategies. Are IBM's contributions to the Linux kernel
> less valuable because IBM also sells Lotus Notes?

All of this has actually been discussed a long time ago, in some depth.

See http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/gnubiz-disc/2000-December/000014.html 


> We need to promote the benefits of the freedoms provided by our
> licenses, not condemn people for not agreeing with us.

Software freedom is not just about licenses, and it is not about condemnation, 
but information. Labels are about giving users a chance to make an informed 
decision based on their own set of values and what they want to promote. 

This is an old and proven concept, and something we have yet to establish.

But there is a strong need given the amount of misinformation by third parties 
and companies that claim to be doing "Open Source" when they are in fact 
locking their users in perfectly is a problem on several levels.

Firstly, it muddies the water enough that companies which do not use the same 
tactics find it much harder to communicate their USP and value proposition.

Secondly it damages the overall value proposition of the community, as people 
no longer know what we stand for or what differentiates us when they experience 
the same behaviour from these self-proclaimed "Free Software" companies and 
thus conclude for themselves that software freedom is essentially fraudulent 
marketing they want nothing to do with in the future.

That kind of business behaviour is actively harmful to the technical, 
policial, social and economic principles and aims of software freedom.

Best regards,
Georg


-- 
Georg C. F. Greve <greve at fsfeurope.org>
Member of the General Assembly
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