Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 21:44:20 -0800 From: "Jeremiah Gowdy" <jgowdy@home.com> To: "Brian F. Feldman" <green@FreeBSD.org> Cc: <freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org>, <lan@irev.net> Subject: Re: ONTOPIC - FreeBSD vs Linux, Solaris, and NT - Not a bunch of licence Jihad crap Message-ID: <001801c0786c$e5d55b60$aa240018@cx443070b> References: <200101070509.f0759uw74992@green.dyndns.org>
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> 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. Okay, this levels of "free" concept that comes with GPL/BSD licenced software is pretty fuzzy. If I may quote President Clinton, "it depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Claiming that software isn't "free" because it's not valuable is redefining the word "free" to mean something that has no cost, yet has value. free (fr) adj. Costing nothing; gratuitous: The word has absolutely nothing to do with your value judgements. Useful != Free. No cost == Free. > 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. You're idioticly redefining the term "free" to be software with source code and restrictions, rather than no source code and no restrictions. You can't define the language. Free doesn't have a damned thing to do with your value judgements on what's useful, what's "no-value", whether or not it includes source, and whether or not it travels under the restrictions of your "free" licence. You're saying that the only "free" software is open-source software, and that's a pretty damned closed minded point of view. I've written hundreds of DOS and Windows applications, which are FREE, although I didn't include the source code with them. Your massive generalization that most Windows software is not "free" (by your foolish definition), that most of it is "no-value", and that "freeware" does not equal "free software" (instead "open source" = "free software"), is all terribly insulting to someone who's written free software for DOS and Windows for years. Who the hell are you to say that my software isn't free and isn't useful just because it isn't open source ? Certainly, open source is preferrable, but you can't start redefining words like "free" to push your rabid open source agenda. The people of the past who contributed their software to the scene in the form of public domain, freeware, and shareware were writing code in the same spirit as those of us who write open source code today. So why don't you get off your goddamned high horse and stop belittling the "free" software for other platforms simply because it doesn't comply with your open source jihad bullshit. I'm not anti-open source in the slightest, but I won't have my work, and the work of millions of other DOS and Windows programmers over YEARS, belittled by some asshole who can't look up the word "free" in the dictionary. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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