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Free, Open Source software grew out of the polemic position it took. BSD / MIT licenses might be "freer", in some sense, but almost all free projects are relea
by wisty 17y ago
Free, Open Source software grew out of the polemic position it took.
BSD / MIT licenses might be "freer", in some sense, but almost all free projects are released because of the ideal of fighting propitiatory software.
I'm pretty sure that the GNU project was one of the main forces that inspired this culture.
The fight is still going on. Academia and business is still getting pushed to release code - think climate models and finance. If it weren't for RMS's work, would people really take such a hard line on propitiatory software? I doubt it.
- dnsworks 17y agoBSD / MIT licenses might be "freer", in some sense, but almost all free projects are released because of the ideal of fighting propitiatory software. This word, propitiatory .. I do not think it means what you think it means .. But even if it did mean what you thought it meant, I don't buy the argument. Lots of people don't release software for free because they're against proprietary software. Some release it for geek cred, or because they want somebody else to maintain it, or because it's not commercially viable as a product (which defines 99.99% of software that comes with a linux distribution .. I mean, do you really think you could get people to buy /bin/ls?)
- pmjordan 17y agoThe word you're looking for is "proprietary". And back in the day, people did (effectively) pay for /bin/ls. The difference between proprietary software and F/OSS isn't just price though, it's also the freedom of what you can do with it.