LWN: FreeDevelopers.net – the way forward?

[ Thanks to tony
stanco for this link. ]

“A rather widely distributed message made the rounds this week,
proclaiming that Richard Stallman and the GNU Project support
FreeDevelopers.net. Many people had not heard of this organization
previously, and were naturally curious about what’s going on. It
is, in fact, an interesting initiative which seeks to change the
way software is developed worldwide.”

“The company will be bound to developing software under the GPL
only – no other free software licenses need apply. It is a highly
international effort, with members from over a dozen countries –
including a number of “developing” countries.”

“The membership of FreeDevelopers shares an intense distaste
for proprietary software – they seriously hope to drive it off the
planet. They are also uncomfortable with the current crowd of free
software companies, which they see as unfairly profiting from the
work of others. Consider, for example, this message from
FreeDevelopers founder Tony Stanco:

I don

’

t think there is distributional justice in

taking the work of others without compensation and having the

insiders reap billion dollar rewards from it. What I found

especially disturbing is, at the time, they were saying that open

source is a

“

gift

”

community. So why did they get most of the

gifts? Why didn

’

t they give multi-billion dollar gifts back? I

don

’

t see why there can

’

t be a more equitable distribution of

ownership in those companies. If there was, more developers would

be compensated and more free software would be written.

”

Complete Story
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