[Fsf-friends] Item-9 in Open Source Definition

Mani A a.mani.cms at gmail.com
Wed Nov 26 20:52:37 IST 2008


On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 9:11 AM, Raj Mathur <raju at linux-delhi.org> wrote:

> It doesn't deprive users of anything.

I do not agree to that.

>To be quite frank, 99.9999% of
> users don't care what licence the software on a Linux CD falls under as
> long as it works for them and they can obtain and use it for free.

In most western countries, the users are so aware that the only way
out for proprietary software companies is by way of corrupt, illegal
and unethical practices.

> There have been and will continue to be pure FOSS Linux distributions,
> but you probably won't see them gaining much traction in the market.

Market trends and the increasing income disparities in the population
indicate that users will only become more wary of trusting proprietary
closed source stuff and "proprietary closed source scientific
research".


> repository.  Requiring a licence to prevent bundling of free and
> non-free software together seems like overkill.

Such a license is required for producing truly trustworthy software.
With the changing nature of software, in future, I should expect such
a license to be a de facto requirement for any-sane-sense trust in
computing.

> To sum up, people who care about FOSS principles will be able to sift
> out non-free software anyway.  People who don't care about those
> principles will probably not use a pure-FOSS distribution at all.

It is not just about choice and principles.

>> Yes, GPL does say that. But  most concepts of FOSS try to go beyond
>> that.

> Wasn't it RMS who wrote v2 and approved v3 of the GPL?  Are you saying
> that the concepts of FOSS extend far beyond RMS' vision?  Be very
> careful! ;)

RMS-sense FOSS is not the GPL. (The cited article is by RMS)

> automatically.  Make better software so that it is difficult or
> impossible for proprietary software companies to profit from leasing
> out software, work towards getting Governments to adopt FOSS and FOSS

You are looking at only one of the ways used by proprietary software
companies. They expect to profit in various  other ways. Most
proprietary closed source software companies have big stakes in the
organized crime industry too.  The latter is apparently as advanced
(if not more) as any other industry.

Best

A. Mani

-- 
A. Mani
Member, Cal. Math. Soc


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