Of the powers we choose to lose

Feb 24, 2010, 01:33 (12 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by memenode)

[ Thanks to Daniel Memenode for this link. ]

"I used to be what is sometimes called a "Free Software purist". "Free" here refers to "free as in freedom" according to Richard Stallman's Free Software Philosophy. As such I was opposed to all proprietary software licensing. If a program doesn't come with a license that allows you those "four freedoms" (to run, modify and share both unmodified and modified versions of the program as you wish) then using it meant you don't care for your freedom and are choosing to be a "slave" to the developer. In turn I largely tended to agree that such developers are immoral to offer software under such licenses.

"Needless to say that put me against the likes of Microsoft and Apple and even to some extent against certain Linux based offerings because they included certain bits of proprietary software in it. I joined in the fight against DRM which we called "Digital Restrictions Management" rather than "Digital Rights Management" which is its official name. I wrote articles in support of GNU General Public License which I saw as the best way to guarantee these four freedoms and protect them from being taken away. I chastised Linus Torvalds for choosing not to relicense the Linux kernel under GPLv2."

Complete Story

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