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by Turing_Machine
720 days ago
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I personally think FOSS software is a fine thing, while not being overly fond of the GPL. If you allegedly "give" me something for "free", but still assert the right to tell me what I can do with it afterward, it's not "free" in either sense of the word. It's not "free as in beer", nor is "free as in freedom". Stallman's monomania on this subject became tedious and counterproductive decades ago. Yes, he wrote some great software. So did dozens of others. |
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I do share the feeling towards the free terminology. Over the years he has been fond of libre more and more.
That said I think the reason behind the confusion over the term free is less sincere and somewhat of a Freudian slip in retrospect. I think his original view was indeed against commercialization and he pivoted to the current iteration of Free Software advocacy. By the way, Linus is on the record making the same mistake and initially licensing Linux under a non-commercial license.