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> Open source good; commercial software bad. Free software good; commercial software bad. I don't get it, is he being facetious or am I missing the point in some other way? To anyone in tech those are obviously orthogonal concepts. There is commercial FOSS, commercial proprietary software, non-commercial FOSS, non-commercial proprietary software. And if you think commercial software is the problem, as some communist hard-liners that I've talked to, the only logical conclusion is to do as they did, vehemently oppose FOSS licenses since you're not allowed to restrict commercial use of it. Of course the F camp emphasise the personal values while the OS camp emphasise the commercial opportunities. But I don't think RMS was trying to "stick it to the man", he was just trying to print some listings. And big businesses like Microsoft have sensibly come to the same conclusion, that sometimes it's nice to have that same freedom. > The idea of free software, for example, has led to a software economy where you, the user, are no longer the customer, but the product. I don't see how it has led to that at all. It's just different, not as polished, but if you have the know-how you can fix things. You gain some, you lose some. |