3 ms·

> Well the utter and complete non-existence of any commercial software on Linux... Linux (I'm thinking of just the kernel itself here, but it's true of the who

by rwl 16y ago

> Well the utter and complete non-existence of any commercial software on Linux... Linux (I'm thinking of just the kernel itself here, but it's true of the whole GNU platform as well) has plenty of "commercial" software running on it. That is, it has plenty of software that people were paid to write, because it is supporting the business functions of many organizations. If "commercial" software is software that is purchased -- software that people are paid to write -- then GNU and Linux have no lack of commercial software. They do have a dearth of software that is paid for by one particular business model: restricting copying in order to charge a fee. You are right that the FSF and many others consider this particular business model to be unethical. But don't confuse that particular business model with the practice of paying for software, which the FSF has no problem with and actually encourages. [1] [1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

roel_v 16y ago
Please don't insult my and other reader's intelligence by playing definition games. There is no way an even only semi-informed reader could misunderstand that by 'commercial software', I and others replying to me meant 'software written by companies or individuals with the purpose to sell this software to others, under the conditions that these others cannot distribute or modify the software, and whose source of income rely on this non-redistribution so that they can charge others too; in this way spreading the cost of development over all users rather than making the first users of a specific feature pay the full amount for it". In all common usage, "paid software" is "software that the user paid for in order to get the right to use it", and not "someone was paid to write it". Firefox is not "paid software" or "commercial software" because some dude at Mozilla.org got paid for writing parts of it. I'm not "confusing" anything here, I'm perfectly aware of software business models, how they relate to open source, the FSF's stance on them, etc. If I had to qualify all words I use each and every time, rather than assume that readers can make a reasonable contextual interpretation of words, a 2-paragraph post would have to start with 10 paragraphs of definitions, assumptions, assumed pre-conditions etc. Your post is a schoolbook example of the hard core FSF disciple's propaganda strategy: focusing on semantic minutiae, making things that are 100% clear in any reasonable reader's mind opaque and ambiguous, using emotionally-laden words like 'open', 'free', 'restricting' so as to associate Free software with the words with generally positive connotations and those with negative with other software, to get gullible people to subscribe to their idiosyncratic world view. I'm not even sure why I got suckered into replying at all, I guess I'm just gullible too, maybe just in another way.

by rwl 16y ago

roel_v 16y ago

Please don't insult my and other reader's intelligence by playing definition games. There is no way an even only semi-informed reader could misunderstand that by 'commercial software', I and others replying to me meant 'software written by companies or individuals with the purpose to sell this software to others, under the conditions that these others cannot distribute or modify the software, and whose source of income rely on this non-redistribution so that they can charge others too; in this way spreading the cost of development over all users rather than making the first users of a specific feature pay the full amount for it". In all common usage, "paid software" is "software that the user paid for in order to get the right to use it", and not "someone was paid to write it". Firefox is not "paid software" or "commercial software" because some dude at Mozilla.org got paid for writing parts of it. I'm not "confusing" anything here, I'm perfectly aware of software business models, how they relate to open source, the FSF's stance on them, etc. If I had to qualify all words I use each and every time, rather than assume that readers can make a reasonable contextual interpretation of words, a 2-paragraph post would have to start with 10 paragraphs of definitions, assumptions, assumed pre-conditions etc. Your post is a schoolbook example of the hard core FSF disciple's propaganda strategy: focusing on semantic minutiae, making things that are 100% clear in any reasonable reader's mind opaque and ambiguous, using emotionally-laden words like 'open', 'free', 'restricting' so as to associate Free software with the words with generally positive connotations and those with negative with other software, to get gullible people to subscribe to their idiosyncratic world view. I'm not even sure why I got suckered into replying at all, I guess I'm just gullible too, maybe just in another way.