On Jul 21, 2008, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Alexandre Oliva wrote: >> Several times, you end up having to decide between promoting software >> freedom and promoting the software that happens to be Free (and OSS). > Yes, the divisive nature of the GPL is unfortunate. FYI, the GPL (and very many other licenses) satisfy both the Free Software and the Open Source Software definitions. There's some 5 different licenses that satisfies one of the definitions and not the others. Please don't get the impression that the issue above has anything whatsoever to do with licensing choices. It's about underlying values and goals of the two movements. >> Depending on whether you're guided by FS or OSS values, you'll tend to >> consistently choose one in detriment of the other. > Yes, that is unfortunate, but you have to live with it to promote FOSS. This is fundamentally contradictory. If you have to choose between these two, you're choosing between promoting either FS or OSS. I.e., you're promoting one in detriment of the other. How can that be promoting FOSS? Or, in a more fundamental level, how would it even make sense to say "promoting something", where something is defined by means of conflicting goals? I guess it's worth giving a concrete example, to save a round-trip delay. The FS movement cares about software freedom, so an essential part of this movement is to not accept, endorse or promote software that denies users any of the 4 essential freedoms, even if this means inconvenience for or even a delay in the liberation of some users. The OSS movement cares about popularity and convenience, so an esential part of this movement is to accept, endorse and promote the use of software that denies users their freedoms, when that is convenient and can lure in more users. Do you see the conflict in these two positions? Do you see that a step forward for one amounts to a step backward in the other? How, then, could it possibly make sense to even talk about "promoting FOSS"? -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! => http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
