[FSF India] Open $ource is as dangerous as M$ (if not more)

[Pappu]

On Fri, Aug 31, 2001 at 06:39:00PM +0530, Kalyan Varma wrote:
> > According to the Oxford Dictonary
> > 
> > Freedom = Condition of being free and unrestricted
> > Freedom	= Having personal rights and social and political liberty
> 
> Sure, and your 'personal rights' ends where it can hurt 
> another persons Freedom. 
Right. Your freedom to swing your arm ends at the tip of my nose.
>  
> > 	When I write code ( original from scratch ) I own the code.
> > If my main aim is to make money, I sell it as a proprietary software like
> > any of the traditional company. If I want to make money and still want
> > people  to see the code, I release it under the Open Source License.
People can' do any thing just by the previlege of seeing the code. So this
Open source licenses don't contribute any thing to the community. On the 
other hand, if a person looks at the code and likes the idea, he may be
tempted to do something similar in his program and may end up in trouble,
if the license was not a free software license as powerful as the GPL.

> > If I want other to take and , modify it, and redistribute it then I would
> > release it under GPL. The choice is mine. 
Sure it is. But I guess the debate is not about anybody's personal choice but
about software licenses and the good/bad they do to society.

> >So I have my personal rights on
> > the code and am unrestricted by any other licenses. So I have freedom
> > here. 
But others may not have. How does this benefit the community and thus how 
does an opensource license be any better that a non free license?

> >Now you are saying I *must* release it under GPL to give freedom to
> > others. 
Please don't take it so personally. The "*must*" seems to give it a 
dangerous look. The whole matter is as simple FREEDOM = FREEDOM. If you want
to give some one freedom, then you got to give them freedom and not some
revokable prevelage to look at the code. GPL is a very good free software 
license. You are free to use any license, but you may give some thought 
(I didn't say *must* and please don't read *must*) to using a free software
license IF you want to give freedom to others.

>     I will say you *must* release it as Free Software (FreeSoftware != GPL)
> since I think that is the right way to go.
May be we should start a thread discussing merits of various free software
licenses (excluding open source ones).
> 
> > So dont I loose my freedom to choose now ???

Choose what? You can choose whether to give others freedom or not. But if 
you choose to give freedom and you really mean it, then you have made your 
choice, and a great one :-))

bye,
pappu.