Re: Documentation Standards was Re: [ox-en] UserLinux
- From: Raj Mathur <raju linux-delhi.org>
- Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 08:44:52 +0530
"Niall" == Niall Douglas <s_fsfeurope2 nedprod.com> writes:
Niall> [snip]
Niall> I'm not really sure what's driving it and it probably
Niall> doesn't actually matter. His heart's in the right place -
Niall> software does need a good deal of liberalising and it most
Niall> certainly should come with source wherever
Niall> possible. However, software freedom to me includes the
Niall> right to commercialise if that's better for the software -
Niall> injection of capital lets you do innovation quite
Niall> impossible without a government grant under the GPL - and
Niall> most governments quite rightly won't put public money
Niall> towards GPL development, only BSD/MIT etc. I also don't see
Niall> why business, the lifeblood of our society, should be
Niall> denied the ability to reuse free software just like anyone
Niall> else - you can have a license prohibiting exploitation of a
Niall> copyright holder by business stealing your code, but still
Niall> give fair rights for use as a self-contained sealed package
Niall> (I know that technically the GPL permits this, but it's a
Niall> legal gray area as yet legally untested).
A number of fallacies apparent here:
1. Software will not be innovative without grants or
commercialisation.
There are enough examples of innovative software being developed
without injection of capital from any party. Apache is probably the
first that springs to mind. Another is OpenSSL. Could you explain how
these don't meet your innovation criterion?
2. Right to commercialise.
A common mistake, mixing up commercial with free (as in freedom).
Free software may be commercial, the GPL doesn't prevent you from
exploiting free software for money.
OTOH if you mean proprietary when you say commercial, I take serious
exception with your views. The notion of proprietary information has
only been around a hundred years or so (I'm no historian). Before
that all art, music, technology and writing was free as in freedom.
We ourselves imposed restrictions on the freedom of information and
now we turn those restrictions into holy cows that may not be touched
or whose existence and relevance questioned.
I do believe that hoarding information is incompatible with being a
good citizen of any sane society. We do see further because we stand
on the shoulders of giants. The whole FLOSS movement and its products
are only a trivial example of the innovations possible when technology
(in this case the Internet) and freedom work together to permit humans
to collaborate in ways that weren't possible earlier and let them
self-unfold (<g>) and express their basic instinct for sharing
intangibles.
3. Business.
Business may be the lifeblood of our society but that doesn't mean
that it must exist at the cost of individual benefit. Like the RIAA,
proprietary software companies are dinosaurs and must change or die.
Perhaps the period 1970 to 1990, when hardly any one was questioning
the proprietary software model of business, was an anomaly in our
history, and 20 years down the line we'll all look back and wonder how
we could ever have permitted companies to exist at the cost of
individual benefit.
Note that not all business is affected by freedom of information: only
businesses that depend on making information proprietary. Heretical
as it may sound, the ``lifeblood'' of our society can continue pumping
and circulating just fine without the existence of MS, Oracle and
Pfizer.
Niall> [more snip]
Regards,
-- Raju
--
Raj Mathur raju kandalaya.org http://kandalaya.org/
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It is the mind that moves
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