Posted by: Anonymous
[ip: 193.166.94.185]
on September 28, 2008 12:24 PM
"The US and Europe are free societies, meaning that you are free to give away your work or charge for your work. Mr Stallman thinks it offending that some people choose the latter approach. I fail to see why it is wrong for software engineers to want to make a decent living and pay for a family by developing software."
I think you haven't yet quite understood what Richard Stallman means with "free software". To him, free software is not about the price -- you can also charge money for free software, and it still remains free. And non-free software doesn't become free software simply by giving it away without any charge.
The crucial difference between free and non-free software is that free software comes with the source code, so you can modify the program to suit your needs if you want to (or, if you're not a programmer, you can pay a real programmer to modify it for you). But non-free software comes without the source code, so you can buy the non-free program but you're no allowed to modify it. Also, quite often you're not even allowed to give copies of non-free programs to your friends, although you've paid good money for it. But with free software you know that you're always allowed to give copies to your friends.
So is it really communism to expect that you can modify the software programs you've bought, or that you can give copies to your friends? I don't think so.
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Re: RMS is an Ideologist
Posted by: Anonymous [ip: 193.166.94.185] on September 28, 2008 12:24 PMI think you haven't yet quite understood what Richard Stallman means with "free software". To him, free software is not about the price -- you can also charge money for free software, and it still remains free. And non-free software doesn't become free software simply by giving it away without any charge.
The crucial difference between free and non-free software is that free software comes with the source code, so you can modify the program to suit your needs if you want to (or, if you're not a programmer, you can pay a real programmer to modify it for you). But non-free software comes without the source code, so you can buy the non-free program but you're no allowed to modify it. Also, quite often you're not even allowed to give copies of non-free programs to your friends, although you've paid good money for it. But with free software you know that you're always allowed to give copies to your friends.
So is it really communism to expect that you can modify the software programs you've bought, or that you can give copies to your friends? I don't think so.
Richard Stallman gives a clear definition of free software in this essay:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
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