Brockmeier: Anti-Rantifesto: Why Free Software and Free Culture Aren’t the Same

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On his Network World blog, Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier has posted a rebuttal to Nina Paley’s “rantifesto” on free culture vs. free software. “Not only is the process for creating cultural works different, so is the process for enjoying them and working with them. While a person might enjoy having the rights to modify a book, essay, or movie, the works function as intended without those rights. The same is often not true of code. Users legitimately need the rights to fix and distribute software that does not work properly on their hardware, no one “needs” the right to revise non-variant sections of GNU documentation containing RMS’ opinions on free software.

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