Date: Sun, 07 Jan 2001 00:09:56 -0500 From: "Brian F. Feldman" <green@FreeBSD.org> To: "Jeremiah Gowdy" <jgowdy@home.com> Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: ONTOPIC - FreeBSD vs Linux, Solaris, and NT - Not a bunch of licence Jihad crap Message-ID: <200101070509.f0759uw74992@green.dyndns.org> In-Reply-To: Message from "Jeremiah Gowdy" <jgowdy@home.com> of "Thu, 28 Dec 2000 16:23:48 PST." <001801c0712d$9d46be20$aa240018@vista1.sdca.home.com>
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"Jeremiah Gowdy" <jgowdy@home.com> wrote: > > Uuuuh, I'm gonna have to agree with Murray that there is a complete > > dearth of free software for Windows. Go search shareware.com, or > > Tucows, or any of the other Windows-centric software sites, and just > > TRY to find most of the same tools or applications you take for > > granted on your Unix box. I do all the time, and wished to hell I was > > managing thousands of BSD boxes instead of Windows. The free software > > either doesn't exist, is of very poor quality, or you have to pay for > > it. While "free as in beer" software for Windows is fairly prevalent, > > GOOD free software is quite rare, and open-sourced software for > > Windows is very rare indeed. > > He said, the "amount of free software". He didn't say the amount of free > GOOD software, the amount of useful applications, etc. He said AMOUNT of > FREE software. He didn't say the AMOUNT of OPEN SOURCE software. Saying > that there is more _free software_ for FreeBSD than there is for Windows is > insane. If you're talking about how useful it is, or whether it's open > source, you need to specify those things. But anyone worth their salt would > choke on the general statement, "there is more free software for FreeBSD > than there is for Windows". What's so "free" about software that you don't pay money for? Pretty much nothing compared to software that you are /free/ to modify and /free/ to use any way you want is "free". There is very little of that for Windows compared to for Unix in general. Instead of a lot of free software for Windows, there's quite a lot of no-value software. I don't know why you'd possibly think that software is more /useful/ by costing no money -- and in that it means that it is not an important distinction. Software is more useful if it is truly free (unencumbered by restrictions), therefore that is the important distinction which should define "free" software. We already have a term for software that just costs no money: "freeware". This is _NOT_ free software. Shareware is not free software. GPLed, BSDed, X11ed, public domain, APSLed (ad infinitum) code is free software, the kind that is not often written for Windows. -- Brian Fundakowski Feldman \ FreeBSD: The Power to Serve! / green@FreeBSD.org `------------------------------' To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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