[Fsf-india] Emotion, ethics, and free software

[Richard Stallman]

Please forgive me for the delay in sending this message.  It was not
easy for me to figure out how to write it, so in the flood of mail I
put it off.  Now I had time to write.

I have not seen the discussion of the ethics of free software which
you were commenting on:--only your own message was forwarded to me.  I
agree with most of your views, but I disagree on one basic point:

It is terribly important to discuss the ethics of free software,
because ethics is what the Free Software Movement is all about.
Discussing the ethics of free software does more than just "help the
development" of the movement--it helps us understand what the goal is.
We must continue to talk about the ethical issues.

    Yes, its not how we (people in FreeSoftwareMovement) wanted it to be.
    But it is not *nothing*, may be it's first time in India government
    asking to support Free Software in policy document. If you are
    saying its *nothing* you are making fun of a lot of people who worked for 
    getting the government support free software.

I agree completely with your conclusion, but I would give a different
reason for it, and I think that is important.

Every person, every company, and every government agency ethically
ought to develop and use just free software.  And they all should
understand this as an ethical imperative.  That includes, for instance,
the government of Kerala.

However, we must not be too harsh and condemning as we try to teach
this principle to others.  If we take that attitude, they won't listen
to us.  And we have to recognize that there are degrees of good and
bad--it is not just black or white.  If the government of Kerala does
the right thing some of the time (using free software) for a secondary
reason (saving money) and does not recognize the primary reason
(freedom), this doesn't constitute wisdom, but it is a change for the
better.  In July I helped the FSF India people in an effort to
persuade them to do this, and I'm glad we have had some success.

    We had a lot of Open Source worser than proprietory articles in list...
    My humble opinion is, it is not going to help Free Software Movement.

I mostly agree with you here, but I think it is important to explain
the situation more deeply.

The Open Source Movement fails to oppose proprietary software as
strongly and as deeply as we do, but does argue against it to some
extent.  It advocates doing the right thing, but not fighting hard to
do the right thing, and not for the most important reasons.  This is
not evil.  This is good, but vague and confused.

The right way to treat a group that is vaguely good but confused is to
teach them, not to condemn them.

Some of the people in the Open Source Movement do things that
interfere with our work.  For instance, they label our work with their
slogan, and try to drive us and our philosophy out of public
awareness.  We have to work very hard to prevent that from happening.
We criticize the people in the Open Source Movement who do this, but
that doesn't mean the Open Source Movement in itself is evil.

So we treat them as rivals, not as enemies.  Think of them as opposing
political party within a country (the free software community) that we
both belong to.  In "foreign affairs", they are on our side, but in a
weak way; "domestically", we compete with them (which does not mean we
hate them or fight to destroy them).

We have to remember both halves of this situation.

    But I will say the contributions of people like Raju is more valuable than 
    that of a Free Software Fundamentalist (I know its highly relative).
    (For some people i am a Free Software Fundamentalist)

If a "fundamentalist" means someone who says "anyone who isn't a free
software purist is evil", that is clearly wrong.  But comparing Raju
Mathur with them is not a very useful way to think about Raju Mathur.

Based on what you said about him and what you quoted, it appears that
Raju Mathur contributes to free software development, makes practical
arguments in favor of free software, and feels some anger towards some
of us in connection with the name "GNU/Linux".  What can we say about
these things?

Contributing to free software development is certainly good.  Making
practical arguments for free software is also good (of course, someone
needs to make principled arguments too, but it is not essential that
they be made by the same person).  So everything that he *does* seems
to be good.

The words "so sue me" show anger at us in response to our request to
call the system "GNU/Linux".  This is not nice, and not fair to the
GNU Project.  But fair treatment of the GNU Project is not a
first-rank issue.  Whether a person is fair to the GNU Project is less
important than how he treats people's freedom.

There may be a simple misunderstanding underlying Raju Mathur's anger:

      If Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox,
    Linux definitely will (yes, I still call it Linux, so sue me).

If he is thinking of something that Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox work
on, he probably is thinking of the kernel.  The kernel IS Linux; we
all call it Linux.  The combination of this kernel, Linux, and the
larger GNU operating system is GNU/Linux.

Perhaps Raju Mathur thinks we ask people to call Linus's kernel
"GNU/Linux".  That would indeed be wrong, but we don't do that.  A
little explanation from a friendly person, perhaps in the Indian
language of his region rather than in English, might clear up the
misunderstanding.

Many users of the system are not fully aware of the difference between
the kernel and the whole system--they don't realize that the term
"Linux" is being used ambiguously, so they think it always refers to
one and only one thing, which is an operating system whose development
was launched by Linus Torvalds in 1991.  When they realize there is no
such thing, they see the logic of what we are asking.  I don't know
whether this is true in the case of Raju Mathur, but you will certainly
find people who are confused in this way.