Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 00:22:21 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: adsharma@sharmas.dhs.org (Arun Sharma) Cc: rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in (Rahul Siddharthan), chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: The Ethics of Free Software Message-ID: <200005240022.RAA03210@usr05.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <20000522222438.A11092@sharmas.dhs.org> from "Arun Sharma" at May 22, 2000 10:24:38 PM
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> The distinction between free speech and free beer is bogus. If you can > pay Sun or Microsoft $1000 per line of code, they'll easily sell you the > rights to the code. You can GPL it and have free speech and they won't > have a problem with you. > > Their curtailing of your right to look at the code (!free speech) is > motivated by their desire to make money (!free beer). Therefore free > beer and free speech are not two entirely different concepts, with the > former being despicable and the latter being divine. Again, the analogy > between free speech and free software is flawed. "Free listening to > market research by a Merrill Lynch analyst" would be closer. I think that you are confusing the real "right to freedom of speech", as acknowledged (not granted) by the U.S. Constitution with the more and more frequently imagined "right to be heard". Just because you have a right to speech doesn't mean you have a right to a willing audience. > The claim that "for profit software" and "closed source software" are > different is not supported by market realities. Neither RMS nor ESR > have come up with a viable economic model which can support all the > programmers being supported by the current closed source software > economy. True enough. > I think the real benefits of open source are the elimination of > mediocre products with ridiculous price tags and in CS education. The main price tag in CS education is the grundle of fools who, having achieved their union cards (degrees) with a minimal expenditure of effort, are thus somehow ennobled, and deserving of joining the ranks of the professional software engineer. Even doctors are not granted this right by divine fiat; they must "pay their dues", one way or another, to prove that besides their degree, they have also acquired some amount of knowledge such that they will not frequently result in dead people. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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