Comment Freedom fundamental to software and capitalism? (Score 3, Insightful) 970
I think we all should respect RMS for his strong ethical principles. America was also born by brave men, who literally risked their lives to guarantee the future freedom of the American people. This freedom is fundamental for the capitalism that the western world is based on. I would like to question whether we see a similar pattern within the software world. I only know that just like software projects, the economic system of the world is also awefully complex. To facillitate incremental development in complex systems, freedom seems to me like a fundamental requirement.
We need brave figures like the people in the FSF and those who support their work, and people should really visit the GNU homepages to learn about all the software they've produced. Sure, your typical linux distro typically include other software than GNU's, but without the GNU project we would not have had any freedom at all. Think about it. Where would we have been without GCC and glibc? Soon, the FSF have been fighting for 20 years to give computer users the freedom that most of us recognize is necessary for a software community to thrive. Linux have been around since 1991, and it has helped spreading free software - but people don't really recognize the root of all this software. That sad pretty sad, isn't it? By forgetting our past, we risk loosing what now have because we no longer understand how we got here in the first place. On the other hand, Linux enabled a new user experience and helped spread open source ideas. But it's questionable wether the users really understand the very roots of the system they're using. RMS wants to fix this, not to boost his ego, but to im rove the sitation for the users - and for the world - by educating us. Of course, I wouldn't mind other people as well could stand up (risking attacks on their personality) for free software so we could hear other stories and viewpoints.
I respect the work of Debian developers (creating quality packages are a huge job!), also the work of the FSF and finally I also love the work that goes into the Linux kernel. To credit all developers, I always to my system as a Debian GNU/Linux system (at least on my homepage).
Well, that's my insights for today. Does it make any sense to any of you out there?
We need brave figures like the people in the FSF and those who support their work, and people should really visit the GNU homepages to learn about all the software they've produced. Sure, your typical linux distro typically include other software than GNU's, but without the GNU project we would not have had any freedom at all. Think about it. Where would we have been without GCC and glibc? Soon, the FSF have been fighting for 20 years to give computer users the freedom that most of us recognize is necessary for a software community to thrive. Linux have been around since 1991, and it has helped spreading free software - but people don't really recognize the root of all this software. That sad pretty sad, isn't it? By forgetting our past, we risk loosing what now have because we no longer understand how we got here in the first place. On the other hand, Linux enabled a new user experience and helped spread open source ideas. But it's questionable wether the users really understand the very roots of the system they're using. RMS wants to fix this, not to boost his ego, but to im rove the sitation for the users - and for the world - by educating us. Of course, I wouldn't mind other people as well could stand up (risking attacks on their personality) for free software so we could hear other stories and viewpoints.
I respect the work of Debian developers (creating quality packages are a huge job!), also the work of the FSF and finally I also love the work that goes into the Linux kernel. To credit all developers, I always to my system as a Debian GNU/Linux system (at least on my homepage).
Well, that's my insights for today. Does it make any sense to any of you out there?
