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I don't believe this post is genuine. Perhaps I've been put on my guard by PR Firm Fakes Online Posters but I've also read lots of RMS's own words on the GNU website, and this post doesn't ring true.

Who remembers the DAT tax? Before doing digital audio on computers was made practical by mp3 and cd-r there was DAT. And the music industry clamped down hard to prevent it from becoming a consumer product. So they got a tax placed on DAT media and devices and had a chip implanted in every DAT device to prevent copying.

Thought it was relevant to this, but didn't think the slashdotters would let me do a feature ;)

Anyhoo, here's some reference links

The right way to tax dat by RMS

Phillip Greenspun comments and gave testimony before the Senate.

What happens to the money that the Library of Congress collects.

Since OpenBSD is based in Canada they can ship their system with strong encryption since they are not subject to the USA's fascist crypto laws.

The USA crypto laws are no longer fascist. The Bureau of Industry and Security (BXA) has lifted most restrictions on exporting free cryptographic software.

You are a moron.

Free and Open Source software is distributed under a contract. The only software that's not distributed under a contract is public domain software.

You have not shown me any examples of any open source projects where the source is not readily available ...

Irrelevant to the question of what the open source / free software definitions require authors to do. We're talking about custom jobs here; any such software is not going to be a well-known project.

The Venn diagram in this document from the GNU project clearly shows that the creators of the "free software" movement understand that not all free software is available for free download.

nor have you given any examples of such a license.

I've already explained how this could happen under the GPL.

My original argument was that making a piece of custom software "open source" does not provide an advantage to a business.

Perhaps way back at the start of the thread. But then you started to mis-interpret what open source / free software requires. That's all that I've been trying to correct you about, and I hope you're a little clearer on it now.

However, to adress that point: releasing software under the GPL does provide a "big picture" advantage in the sense that it encourages others to do the same. When everyone has the freedom to use, modify, and share software, we all benefit.

For example: these days I work for a division of IBM that makes software for telephone systems. Our clients are Sprint PCS, Verizon, SBC, and so on.

We did the software behind Sprint's "Voice Command" system, and we're working on a new version. Sprint is footing the bill. Yet that software will be owned by IBM, and IBM will possibly sell it to others too.

The source will be IBM proprietary. Would it be more to Sprint's advantage to have that software under the GPL, than under the current scheme? Yes; it would mean that Sprint would have the ability to maintain and modify the software (or more likely, to hire some other company to do so) if IBM's support fees became excessive, or if our development team were to be killed by the next round of layoffs.

Would it be to IBM's advantage? To their short-term thinking, no. They would lose control of Sprint's use of the software. They could still make plenty of money, of course, though they would have to change their fee structure to accomidate a GPL-ing. But, while IBM is slowly seeing the free software light, they're still all about control.

But what if, in some sort of multi-way exchange for GPLing our software, we got the guys who provide our speech recognition software to GPL their stuff? I'm the guy tasked with integrating the Nuance speech reco stuff into our code, and man! Having source access would have saved us hundreds of hacker-hours and tens of thousands of dollars. We'd still need to pay Nuance for support and for further development, but being able to instrument their code, to source-level debug a core dump happening in their API, to not have to wait for patches...it would be wonderful. And profitable. Multiply by several times for the text-to-speech software, the software for the switch, and so on.

Would Verizon or SBC get to use our software for free if it were GPLed? No way. IBM isn't going to put it up on a web site for download. Sprint isn't going to give them a copy. And if somehow someone slipped them a bootleg CD, the support required to use the software is considerable. (Not to mention the potential legal issues - Sprint would have the right to share, use, and modify the software, but I don't think that entitles a disgruntled employee, or someone to whom he sends an "unauthorized" CD, to do the same.)

Everyone involved would benefit if all the software involved here was GPLed. But no one wants to be first.

I could have sworn that it [the GNU LGPL] did [prevent proprietary derivatives].

No, the GNU LGPL does not prevent proprietary derivatives. One may link LGPL-covered software to proprietary software and distribute the linked union without distributing source code to the proprietary part. Therefore any software proprietor can extend the utility of their software by linking in LGPL'd code. This is why GNU changed the acronym "GNU LGPL" from "GNU's Not Unix Library General Public License" to "GNU's Not Unix Lesser GNU Public License"—the LGPL does less to protect software freedom than the GNU GPL.

Everyone claims that it does [prevent proprietary derivatives]... What's the story?

I know of no such claim. If you want more information about the strategic weakness of the LGPL, please read "Why you should not use the Library GPL for your next library".

http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Template-Instant iation.html

GCC code is slow.

I code computationally intensive number crunching code and I had to buy Intel's compiler for Intel and Compaq's compiler for Alpha just to get some performance. And I'm talking about 10-20% difference.

Then you should like GCC 3.1. Here is a snippet from the changelog (you can see the entire list of changes at http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-3.1/changes.html):

• According to the SPECInt2000 results on an AMD Athlon CPU, the code generated by GCC 3.1 is 6% faster on the average (8.2% faster with profile feedback) compared to GCC 3.0. The code produced by GCC 3.0 is about 2.1% faster compared to 2.95.3. Tests were done using the -O2 -march=athlon command-line options.
• The compiler now supports MMX, 3DNow!, SSE, and SSE2 instructions. Options -mmmx, -m3dnow, -msse, and -msse2 will enable the respective instruction sets. Intel C++ compatible MMX/3DNow!/SSE intrics are implemented. SSE2 intrics will be added in next major release.
• Following those improvements, targets for Pentium MMX, K6-2, K6-3, Pentium III, Pentium 4, and Athlon 4 Mobile/XP/MP were added. Refer to the documentation on -march= and -mcpu= options for details.
• For those targets that support it, -mfpmath=sse will cause the compiler to generate SSE/SSE2 instructions for floating point math instead of x87 instructions. Usually, this will lead to quicker code -- especially on the Pentium 4. Note that only scalar floating point instructions are used and GCC does not exploit SIMD features yet.
• Prefetch support has been added to the Pentium III, Pentium 4, K6-2, K6-3, and Athlon series.
• Code generated for floating point to integer converisons has been improved leading to better performance of many 3D applications.

If you're a contractor, and not an employee, you almost surely are considered to have "distributed" the derivitive work.

Don't think so. gpl-faq :

For instance, you can accept a contract develop [sic] changes and (...) release your changes to the client under the GPL, but agree not to release them to anyone else until the client says ok. In this case, too, no GPL-covered code is being distributed (...)

If I've the copyright myself on a code, I don't need the GPL and am not bound to it.

Everything clear? The GPL does not require everyhing to be always open, that's FUD, often spread by people who don't really understand the license in detail.

An obvious example is clause 2a of the GPL, which implicitly covers things like plugins or kernel modules (or so the FAQ says, anyway.)

Another example is the making of the readline library GPL, rather than LGPL, and the reasons for it. Use of the library creates an interesting tail-wagging-the-dog effect, as far a licensing is concerned.

It is worth examining the license in detail ...

If I've the copyright myself on a code, I don't need the GPL and am not bound to it.

Everything clear? The GPL does not require everyhing to be always open, that's FUD, often spread by people who don't really understand the license in detail.

An obvious example is clause 2a of the GPL, which implicitly covers things like plugins or kernel modules (or so the FAQ says, anyway.)

Another example is the making of the readline library GPL, rather than LGPL, and the reasons for it. Use of the library creates an interesting tail-wagging-the-dog effect, as far a licensing is concerned.

It is worth examining the license in detail ...

Provide a secure and private system

Create scalable and reliable software

Offer a non-commercial, non-partisan voting alternative

Use the GPL to create an open system that Internet users will trust

Release a system that can be used to support the growth of effective democracy anywhere in the world Additionally, in support of our wider development community, the project aims to:-

• Advocate the free software paradigm
• Evangelise the use of technology to strengthen democracy within a holistic understanding of the current malaise i.e. Internet voting alone isn't going to solve turnout problems

Provide a secure and private system

Create scalable and reliable software

Offer a non-commercial, non-partisan voting alternative

Use the GPL to create an open system that Internet users will trust

Release a system that can be used to support the growth of effective democracy anywhere in the world Additionally, in support of our wider development community, the project aims to:-

• Advocate the free software paradigm
• Evangelise the use of technology to strengthen democracy within a holistic understanding of the current malaise i.e. Internet voting alone isn't going to solve turnout problems

Or use wget which can do most that GetRight can, but without the GUI. It is avaiable for most POSIX-compliant UNIX boxes. The only feature it lacks (at present) is the ability to download different sections of the same file from different mirrors, but it does do resume-downloading, recursive gets, etc...

I've been subscribed to the plex86 mailing list for around 6 months and there really isn't anything of interest going on. What happened was the lead developer, Kevin Lawton, was sacked from Mandrake and disappeared. As far as I can tell he didn't leave anyone with check-in access to the CVS tree, and the whole thing just stopped.

Not that it was ever that great, it really is a pain to install and try and use compared to Vmware. It's now moved to here (for one of those very Stallman-esqe reasons sourceforge wasn't "free" enough or something) and apparently Drew is working on getting the latest CVS with patches up and running, but don't hold your breath.

it could be a good project, just needs some more effort from people. i personally thought there would have been more developer interest.

Yes, free software existed before GNU.

But free software was dying when GNU came along, and RMS was one of the few who refused to accept that. The PDP and ITS were dead; UNIX et al. were dominant. BSD was around, but not yet free. Stallman found that software was moving away from open development, and into binary-only form, with all sorts of lawyerly conduct.

So he founded The GNU Project, to write a free operating sytem, which didn't exist at the time.

Read his 1983 Usenet announcement, or any number of the documents on gnu.org explaining why GNU was founded.

Sun also announced that as future Sun-lead specifications are finalized it will allow compatible alternate implementations (including J2SE, J2EE and J2ME) under Open Source licenses.

Your title is odd, bordering on insulting. As for the content of your report, I wonder which movement you are focusing on—the older, ethics-based Free Software movement that speaks to all computer users, or the freedom-dismissing, development methodology-centered Open Source movement which speaks primarily to businesses? Were you aware of the difference between the two movements? Some people use the term "Open Source" without understanding the ramifications of that term. You simply cannot understand what's going on with the Open Source movement until you first understand what drove RMS to make the Free Software movement and what the Free Software movement advocates.

The question is: which vocal, intelligent, [San Francisco] bay area and vicinity OS insiders should be on the show?

A better question to ask is "Who can speak well on the topic we're looking to make our radio show about?" without limiting it to a particular region. There is so much valuable insight to be had from everywhere, it seems silly to limit it to just the SF bay area. A cursory analysis of the Free Software community (which is the same community you're referring to as "Open Source") shows that where people are physically located is irrelevant. RMS would be a good person to include on a discussion of Free Software since he founded the movement (which predates all work done on the Open Source movement by roughly 13 years) and (as far as I know) he lives in or near Boston. If you asked him he might be willing to talk to you.

If you haven't already, please read Congressman Villanueva's letter to Microsoft for some guidance about what you should be talking about on this program (including terminology—notice he talks only of Free Software because that is the movement that jibes with his ethical approach to making sure the government doesn't force its citizens into a single-source software provider by the data formats it chooses). The same issues affect the USA. His analysis is a brilliant denial of Microsoft's lies, so well-worded many have noted it should be required reading. Congressman Villanueva is from Peru. Again I stress: there are all sorts of people all over the world you need to talk to and learn from in order to really understand the Free Software community enough to do a good report.

Have you also considered that many people who talk about "Open Source" don't understand what that means? If you think it's all about seeing the source code, you're wrong. Some of the licenses the Open Source movement advocates support allow proprietary derivatives to be made. This is a major issue for the two movements. But members of the two movements get along too: they work on software projects together and the Open Source movement proponents create a lot of valuable software that are genuinely worthwhile Free Software contributions.

Your post doesn't indicate how much research you've done to understand what's going on, so forgive me if this seems like a repeat of what you already know. I hope you understand the community of developers and users that started in 1984 has more to say than just "don't believe everything Microsoft tells you".

However, this is RMS' personal requirement when accepting a speaking engagement. Actually, other FSF speakers often speak to groups that call themselves "Linux" groups. We ask only that the advertising and press material about our particular speech call the system, GNU/Linux.

Of course, when I and other FSF speakers make a speech, one of the items on our agenda is to ask such groups, as a favor to the GNU project, to change their name and/or documents to say "GNU/Linux" consistently. While it is RMS' personal demand that the name change occur as a term to accept the engagement, the FSF does not, as an organization, demand such name changes. We simply request them.

Comparing it to Microsoft's tactics is out of proportion. FSF firmly stands for free speech rights. We assert your right to call the operating system anything you like; we request as a favor that you call it GNU/Linux.

RMS is a highly sought-after speaker. As it turns out, since he is not (nor never has been) paid a salary by the FSF, he collects speaker fees to help pay for his living expenses. As with any speaker, it's his prerogative to set the terms of his speaking engagements. Indeed, every speaker has his or her own set of requirements. (AAMOF, ESR's are available online.) Personally, I have a rule that there must be vegetarian restaurants that someone can take me to in the towns I visit. Of course, FSF doesn't take a position on vegetarianism, but it's a personal need of mine that I can't ignore---even when I am speaking on behalf of FSF.

While RMS won't come to speak for your group if it's called a "Linux" group, I'd be happy to come, as would many of the other FSF speakers. While I am there, I am, of course, going to ask you to change the name of the group. But, please note the key point here: just because RMS sets a personal rule doesn't mean it is ipso facto FSF policy.

I think that point gets to the center of the problem with Barr's article. It seems to suggest that every position that RMS takes is automatically FSF policy. Of course, as our president and founder, many of RMS' personal positions match FSF policy exactly. But, most of them don't; RMS' personal website is full of personal positions that aren't FSF policy.

Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director of the FSF

P.S. Finally, there is a factual error in the article. the GPL is the "General Public License". The G stands for General, not GNU. I usually say "GNU GPL" to make that clear.

However, this is RMS' personal requirement when accepting a speaking engagement. Actually, other FSF speakers often speak to groups that call themselves "Linux" groups. We ask only that the advertising and press material about our particular speech call the system, GNU/Linux.

Of course, when I and other FSF speakers make a speech, one of the items on our agenda is to ask such groups, as a favor to the GNU project, to change their name and/or documents to say "GNU/Linux" consistently. While it is RMS' personal demand that the name change occur as a term to accept the engagement, the FSF does not, as an organization, demand such name changes. We simply request them.

Comparing it to Microsoft's tactics is out of proportion. FSF firmly stands for free speech rights. We assert your right to call the operating system anything you like; we request as a favor that you call it GNU/Linux.

RMS is a highly sought-after speaker. As it turns out, since he is not (nor never has been) paid a salary by the FSF, he collects speaker fees to help pay for his living expenses. As with any speaker, it's his prerogative to set the terms of his speaking engagements. Indeed, every speaker has his or her own set of requirements. (AAMOF, ESR's are available online.) Personally, I have a rule that there must be vegetarian restaurants that someone can take me to in the towns I visit. Of course, FSF doesn't take a position on vegetarianism, but it's a personal need of mine that I can't ignore---even when I am speaking on behalf of FSF.

While RMS won't come to speak for your group if it's called a "Linux" group, I'd be happy to come, as would many of the other FSF speakers. While I am there, I am, of course, going to ask you to change the name of the group. But, please note the key point here: just because RMS sets a personal rule doesn't mean it is ipso facto FSF policy.

I think that point gets to the center of the problem with Barr's article. It seems to suggest that every position that RMS takes is automatically FSF policy. Of course, as our president and founder, many of RMS' personal positions match FSF policy exactly. But, most of them don't; RMS' personal website is full of personal positions that aren't FSF policy.

Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director of the FSF

P.S. Finally, there is a factual error in the article. the GPL is the "General Public License". The G stands for General, not GNU. I usually say "GNU GPL" to make that clear.

Quoting from

One CD-ROM vendor found that in their ``Linux distribution'', GNU software was the largest single contingent, around 28% of the total source code. Linux itself was about 3%. So if you were going to pick a name for the system based on who wrote the programs in the system, the most appropriate single choice would be ``GNU''.

So 72% (which I understand to be the majority by far) of said system is NON-GNU software and 97% is NON-LINUX software. Wouldn't the most accurate name for this be "NON-GNU/NON-LINUX system"?

I think it is sad that 72% of the projects that make a Linux distribution what it is are denied credit. RMS in fact wants to take the credit for their work for the GNU project.

I am a developer and I don't see why I should have to sign over my copyright to the FSF to get credit for my work.

Sarcastic? Moi?

[Thank you.] Very nicely done reply.

I'm glad I could help. There are some uses of terminology I'm not used to seeing; I might misunderstand what you're getting at because of a miscommunication somewhere. Also this discussion is getting long, perhaps we should consider taking it to e-mail.

1: Copyleft should still compete with non-copyleft software and licenses--including proprietary software.

There is no competition to speak of between "copyleft" and "non-copyleft software and licenses". Free Software, whether copylefted or not, competes with non-free software (including proprietary software).

A bussness[sic], ideally, should choose somewhere between pure copyleft (where everything down to the company's trademark are free for the taking) and pure copyright (where they don't even use interfaces that they don't totally own.)

All computer users have very good reasons to want software that can be modified by multiple people and organizations; this was one of the major points in the Peruvian Congressman's letter. Proprietary software is a monopoly for support. Proprietary software can't provide the advantages of free market competition, only Free Software can. When you find a bug in Microsoft Word, only Microsoft can fix it. Unless you're a particularly big customer, Microsoft doesn't have much incentive to listen to you (and my experience, which I posted to /. a while ago but I can't find now, is Microsoft won't listen to you without payment in advance). When you find a bug in a Free Software word processor, you can fix it yourself or hire someone to fix it for you. You might even be able to report the bug somewhere and get it fixed for free.

I find no moral problem with Apple creating an excellent GUI and configuring it to run atop a "non-copyleft" (BSD) licensed software. Especially when the major relevant copyleft licenses (GPL) would require them to reinvent their business plan into something far less profitable.

The problem isn't with creating a GUI to run atop non-copylefted Free Software. The problem is that Apple's GUI is non-free. People need the freedoms of Free Software for all their software. You can't tell a priori where a bug will be, what will need changing, what software will violate your privacy, or a dozen other problems that crop up. Also, it's not at all clear that Apple would be less profitable selling a Free Software OS because they make their money from hardware sales and people buy their systems for a complete package of hardware and software. But, more importantly, it's not the job of anyone outside Apple to look out for Apple's profit (that is solely Apple's responsibility). Like other important social movements, the Free Software movement lays down ethically-based arguments about why it harms society to do something (in this case distribute non-free software), and then they take on the huge task of changing society to make its goals real. This means writing the Free Software needed so people don't have to lose their software freedoms by using non-free software.

Absolute freedom runs rampant over unpopular rights (How many people pay for Winzip? Since they have the "Freedom" of using it at the cost of either their conciense[sic] or their checkbook, many people simply do not pay for it.)

The Free Software movement details four specific freedoms when they talk about Free Software or software freedom. They are not advocating "absolute freedom" (which makes little sense to me because there are so many freedoms and some conflict). I don't see how Winzip's business plan enters into a discussion on software freedom except to note that Winzip is proprietary. There is no issue of software freedom involved in whether to use Winzip without paying versus using it with payment—either way, that user is selecting the same master: Winzip. Fortunately there are Free Software replacements available (I'm told).

Besides which, the FSF seems to work on moral authoirty[sic]--and moral authority has more credence when the line is "you should give these rights to everyone else" rather than "you must give these rights to everyone else."

The Free Software community does both. The Free Software community says "you should give these rights to everyone": that is one of the reasons why they write Free Software! They also have the power to demand "you must give these rights to everyone else" because copyright grants the power to control derivatives of one's copyrighted work. The genius of the GNU GPL lies in returning to users most of the power copyright takes away by default, then making sure those rights are not lost for users of derivatives by requiring anyone who shares copies to pass on those rights with the software.

If the GPL were modified to allow for all-new, non-derived components (like a GUI) to be added to GPL'd copylefted software components which could never be closed again, it would be a better license and many of the objections to the GPL would vanish, while still allowing it to retain all of its assets and moral authority.

I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at here, but it sounds like what you're asking for is something the GNU GPL already allows. One can either call GPL'd software as a separate program (for example, the bash shell running the mutt MUA) or one can modify GPL'd software to do something differently. Those are the only two functional things you can do with any program. The bulk of the GPL doesn't come into play for software that calls GPL-covered software as a separate program. So, your non-GPL'd shell can run mutt (a GPL'd MUA) without the GPL having any say in the licensing of that shell. But if you were to add a GUI to mutt by modifying mutt to incorporate the GUI code, you would be making a derivative of mutt which means copyright power comes into play. The GNU GPL (mutt's license) says your mutt derivative must be GPL'd.

Is java open source?

yes.

Java isn't an open standard, nor is it open source in the truest sense.

How many senses of the words "open-source" are there? Either the code is available to the public, or it isn't? Remember, Open-Source != Free.

There has been a fair number of posts about whether or not Java is really an "Open-Standard". The first thing to remember is where this article originates, Business 2.0.

Taking that into account, Java is an open standard. Are there other compilers for Java? Yes. Are there multiple interpreters for Java? Yes. Is the standard published on how it works? Yes (Addison-Wesely publishes several books on it). So, for the average intended reader of business 2.0, Java is an open standard.

I'm probably going to get flamed for this, but something doesn't have to be controlled by an international standards organization to be open.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go prepare for flames as I've posted something that people are going to have problems with.

Linus didn't right the whole OS, you know.

They managed to get other important parts of the GNU system to work in time, though.

If you pay full price for it and keep it, the book depreciates on your shelf until the data in it is out of date and worthless.

As you mentioned, a literature textbook does not depreciate. Neither does a history textbook nor a Newtonian mechanics textbook (for Physics I).

With E-Books, you pay for it the time you use it. Presumably at a much cheaper price than what you would pay for the dead tree version.

Except in practice, monopolistic effects ensure that you won't see your "much cheaper price" for electronic textbook rental once dead-tree textbooks are driven off the market. There is an inelastic demand for textbook rental, and basic microeconomic theory predicts that inelastic demand + no significant competition = high prices for students.

I'm also afraid that you'll also see EULAs on such electronic textbooks: "You may not use a Braille terminal to read this book." "You may not allow more than one person to read this book." "You may not read this book off campus." Richard Stallman explains it better than I can.

I said: I haven't ever used their distro

the response: So how could you possibly have a valid opinion on the subject?

More of what I said that you conveniently left off: I have read a lot about them and have helped some people that use their distro, so I do know about the subject.

If I read from countless sources that Ford Explorers with Firestone tires are dangerous to drive, hear countless stories about how accidents have been caused by such a combination, and know a friend who was in a car wreck because his Firestone tires fell apart on his Ford Explorer, then I think I would know a bit about the subject. I suppose according to you I should start driving Ford Explorers with Firestone tires just to see if I can get in an accident.

what insecurities are you talking about? I mean -- find me a Linux distro that has no exploits.

Obviously you are clueless. Read the SecurityFocus Vulns Stats note the table marked "Number of OS Vulnerabilities by Year". Now lets see you tell me that RedHat's distro is just as secure as other Linux distros. Compare the figures with MS NT/2000--they look close to me...

Qualify that. How do they do things the same way as Microsoft?

Geee...so many choices--where to begin. How about their "configurator" program. I only had to deal with it once--but it was a nasty experience. For one, everytime it was run it would reset the real settings (edited by me in the /etc directory) to whatever it's internal system said they should be--apparently from some other RedHat config file--they made it so that anyone who learned on a normal Linux system would have their settings clobbered as soon as RedHat's program started up.

How about the fact that they use a single script file for every service run at startup? This makes booting any RedHat system painfully-ass slow. That's just like when Microsoft uses single files per item for their "favorites" and cheap symbolic link substitutes.

What about the whole gcc 2.96 mess? Read about it here and here and here

Have you ever used Linux in a professional setting? Package management is essential.

Do you know anything? Slackware uses tar files for their packages--I've never seen any problem with Slackware's package management system.

It doesn't keep track of dependencies, however I usually have to do nodeps with rpms because the program only checks what it has installed--not anything compiled from source or installed through other packaging systems. However, tar could contain a package dependency file inside if it was necessary.

They don't have an apt-get, however that just checks dependencies and downloads files--it could be done using tar files if need be.

A really great packaging system would check the binaries to see what libraries they required and go from there. "This executable requires libuberssl.so.2--not present on system, but found in package ubernetlibs. Do you wish to download and install?" Unfortunately I haven't seen a packaging system like this, and I know the rpm program doesn't do this--it uses the files in /var/lib/rpm and complains if the dependencies aren't listed there.

Does this mean that you resent .debs too?

I would if nearly every Linux developer insisted on using .debs to distribute their binaries, therefore requiring me to install the packaging system on every Linux computer I use, just for the ability of installing binaries.

You can build and install tar'ed & gziped source just like with any other *nix.

Obviously you haven't tried to compile many programs from source. Not only does it take lots more time (try installing XFree86, Mozilla, or GIMP this way), there are also quite a few programs that take much time dicking around with them to even get them to compile. They'll be written for every OS under the sun and very tempormental. Or they'll have stupidly written makefiles. Or they'll have straight out errors in the makefiles/compile scripts/code that takes an hour to correct the problem. Etc. etc. etc... "./configure; make; make install" doesn't always work!

I can go on and on about how dumb your post is, and how unsubstantiated your opinion on RedHat seems to be, but its pretty clear that you're a troll and trying to get a rise out of me.

The same can be said about you. I could go on and on about how idiotic your ideas about what a decent distro is and how to run it. Like how it is bad to just add patches to the kernel for some newfangled gee-whiz buzzword and put it in a major distro. Those patches should only be added by people who really need them--everyone else can wait until the patch goes through the review process and is confirmed stable.

I'm glad I've still got my HP48G because I'm pretty sure they stopped making them. Such a great calculator!
I spent hours programming that thing (while I should've been doing my math homework).

And if it wasn't for the 48G introducing me to RPN, I wouldn't have known wtf to do when I discovered dc in my /usr/bin.

Ah, fond memories.

Interesting note: If the head of the math department has an HP48 program that he distributes (via IR) to all incoming students, and a student can get their hands on the teacher's calculator and replace said program with a slightly trojaned version that quietly installs a timebomb (as an "alarm", so even if the home directory is emptied it remains) with an offensive message to be displayed long after said student graduates from school, well, I wouldn't know what happens, because I don't go to school there anymore. But I bet that at 8.30am if a bunch of calculators started beeping and displaying anti-compulsory-education propaganda all at once, it would be a pretty funny sight.

You didn't say much about copyleft--at least, nothing in opposition to what I said.

Copyleft is one of the qualities of licenses that separate the Free Software movement from the Open Source movement. The Free Software movement mostly backs copylefted Free Software licenses (primarily the GNU GPL). The Open Source movement mostly backs non-copylefted Free Software licenses (primarily the X11 and new BSD licenses). Copyleft refers to a Free Software license's ability to maintain the fundamental software freedoms of Free Software for derivatives—the ability to run, copy, modify, and distribute software at any time to anyone.

So when you share copylefted Free Software with your friends, your friends get the same freedom to share and modify the software you had. You can't pass on a copy of GNU Emacs that your friends are prohibited from modifying and distributing. If you shared non-copylefted Free Software, your friend can add some of her own improvements to what you gave her and not share her new improvements with you. She can do this by changing the license to make the changes non-free or by patenting her changes, for example. Microsoft and Apple do this with portions of BSD systems (some of Microsoft Windows' network tools come from BSD, and MacOS X is based on a BSD operating system). In a particularly bad case, someone can "embrace and extend" the non-copylefted Free Software by distributing derivatives that are purposefully made to be incompatible with the software they derive code from.

The copyleft concept is useful when talking about competition (as you were) because copylefted Free Software licenses allow competition in a way non-copyleft licenses do not. Copylefted Free Software licenses prevent uncooperative people/organizations from making proprietary derivatives. The copyleft concept grew from the Free Software movement's attention to software freedom. The Open Source movement, by comparison, dismisses all talk about software freedom including evaluating licenses on whether they are copyleft or non-copyleft licenses. Thus, if you value competition as you said you do, it would be wise to back the Free Software movement because the Free Software movement values competition by paying so much attention to software freedom. Copyleft is the evidence of this attention.

You didn't say much about copyleft--at least, nothing in opposition to what I said.

Copyleft is one of the qualities of licenses that separate the Free Software movement from the Open Source movement. The Free Software movement mostly backs copylefted Free Software licenses (primarily the GNU GPL). The Open Source movement mostly backs non-copylefted Free Software licenses (primarily the X11 and new BSD licenses). Copyleft refers to a Free Software license's ability to maintain the fundamental software freedoms of Free Software for derivatives—the ability to run, copy, modify, and distribute software at any time to anyone.

So when you share copylefted Free Software with your friends, your friends get the same freedom to share and modify the software you had. You can't pass on a copy of GNU Emacs that your friends are prohibited from modifying and distributing. If you shared non-copylefted Free Software, your friend can add some of her own improvements to what you gave her and not share her new improvements with you. She can do this by changing the license to make the changes non-free or by patenting her changes, for example. Microsoft and Apple do this with portions of BSD systems (some of Microsoft Windows' network tools come from BSD, and MacOS X is based on a BSD operating system). In a particularly bad case, someone can "embrace and extend" the non-copylefted Free Software by distributing derivatives that are purposefully made to be incompatible with the software they derive code from.

The copyleft concept is useful when talking about competition (as you were) because copylefted Free Software licenses allow competition in a way non-copyleft licenses do not. Copylefted Free Software licenses prevent uncooperative people/organizations from making proprietary derivatives. The copyleft concept grew from the Free Software movement's attention to software freedom. The Open Source movement, by comparison, dismisses all talk about software freedom including evaluating licenses on whether they are copyleft or non-copyleft licenses. Thus, if you value competition as you said you do, it would be wise to back the Free Software movement because the Free Software movement values competition by paying so much attention to software freedom. Copyleft is the evidence of this attention.

You didn't say much about copyleft--at least, nothing in opposition to what I said.

Copyleft is one of the qualities of licenses that separate the Free Software movement from the Open Source movement. The Free Software movement mostly backs copylefted Free Software licenses (primarily the GNU GPL). The Open Source movement mostly backs non-copylefted Free Software licenses (primarily the X11 and new BSD licenses). Copyleft refers to a Free Software license's ability to maintain the fundamental software freedoms of Free Software for derivatives—the ability to run, copy, modify, and distribute software at any time to anyone.

So when you share copylefted Free Software with your friends, your friends get the same freedom to share and modify the software you had. You can't pass on a copy of GNU Emacs that your friends are prohibited from modifying and distributing. If you shared non-copylefted Free Software, your friend can add some of her own improvements to what you gave her and not share her new improvements with you. She can do this by changing the license to make the changes non-free or by patenting her changes, for example. Microsoft and Apple do this with portions of BSD systems (some of Microsoft Windows' network tools come from BSD, and MacOS X is based on a BSD operating system). In a particularly bad case, someone can "embrace and extend" the non-copylefted Free Software by distributing derivatives that are purposefully made to be incompatible with the software they derive code from.

The copyleft concept is useful when talking about competition (as you were) because copylefted Free Software licenses allow competition in a way non-copyleft licenses do not. Copylefted Free Software licenses prevent uncooperative people/organizations from making proprietary derivatives. The copyleft concept grew from the Free Software movement's attention to software freedom. The Open Source movement, by comparison, dismisses all talk about software freedom including evaluating licenses on whether they are copyleft or non-copyleft licenses. Thus, if you value competition as you said you do, it would be wise to back the Free Software movement because the Free Software movement values competition by paying so much attention to software freedom. Copyleft is the evidence of this attention.

Have you seen GNU Octave? It's not as featureful as the absolute latest version of Matlab, but it was more than sufficient for me for my neural networks class. In fact, I used it last night on my final exam.

If you know Perl (or want to learn), another alternative is the Perl PDL Perl Data Language module. I used that for a semester project, and it worked great.

• Ggradebook "Fully-featured GNU gradebook: an application for tracking student grades for teachers. It uses GTK+ and can optionally be compiled to use for GNOME." Unfortunately it looks like the GNU pages for it have not been updated for about a year.
• GNU Educational programs aren't the worlds biggest focus, but some do exist. This will experience the 'network effect', more people use the systems, more people want better software and increase demand, better software gets built.
• GNU Scientific Visualization tools. These would be useful for HS science teachers in the spcecific areas, but the network effect should kick in as more schools move over.
• GNU Mathmatics software has some good selections, a few of which I have seen used in a HS math class. (Okay, I set the computer up for my wife, who teaches math, but I did see it used.)

Hopefully as schools begin to use the platforms, and since RedHat has promised support for these schools, these areas of GNU software (and non-GNU, free software) will grow and improve.

• Ggradebook "Fully-featured GNU gradebook: an application for tracking student grades for teachers. It uses GTK+ and can optionally be compiled to use for GNOME." Unfortunately it looks like the GNU pages for it have not been updated for about a year.
• GNU Educational programs aren't the worlds biggest focus, but some do exist. This will experience the 'network effect', more people use the systems, more people want better software and increase demand, better software gets built.
• GNU Scientific Visualization tools. These would be useful for HS science teachers in the spcecific areas, but the network effect should kick in as more schools move over.
• GNU Mathmatics software has some good selections, a few of which I have seen used in a HS math class. (Okay, I set the computer up for my wife, who teaches math, but I did see it used.)

Hopefully as schools begin to use the platforms, and since RedHat has promised support for these schools, these areas of GNU software (and non-GNU, free software) will grow and improve.

• Ggradebook "Fully-featured GNU gradebook: an application for tracking student grades for teachers. It uses GTK+ and can optionally be compiled to use for GNOME." Unfortunately it looks like the GNU pages for it have not been updated for about a year.
• GNU Educational programs aren't the worlds biggest focus, but some do exist. This will experience the 'network effect', more people use the systems, more people want better software and increase demand, better software gets built.
• GNU Scientific Visualization tools. These would be useful for HS science teachers in the spcecific areas, but the network effect should kick in as more schools move over.
• GNU Mathmatics software has some good selections, a few of which I have seen used in a HS math class. (Okay, I set the computer up for my wife, who teaches math, but I did see it used.)

Hopefully as schools begin to use the platforms, and since RedHat has promised support for these schools, these areas of GNU software (and non-GNU, free software) will grow and improve.

• Ggradebook "Fully-featured GNU gradebook: an application for tracking student grades for teachers. It uses GTK+ and can optionally be compiled to use for GNOME." Unfortunately it looks like the GNU pages for it have not been updated for about a year.
• GNU Educational programs aren't the worlds biggest focus, but some do exist. This will experience the 'network effect', more people use the systems, more people want better software and increase demand, better software gets built.
• GNU Scientific Visualization tools. These would be useful for HS science teachers in the spcecific areas, but the network effect should kick in as more schools move over.
• GNU Mathmatics software has some good selections, a few of which I have seen used in a HS math class. (Okay, I set the computer up for my wife, who teaches math, but I did see it used.)

Hopefully as schools begin to use the platforms, and since RedHat has promised support for these schools, these areas of GNU software (and non-GNU, free software) will grow and improve.

gcc 2.96 is actually more standards compliant than any other version
of gcc released at the time Red Hat made this decision (3.0 is even more compliant, but not as stable yet).
It may not be "standards compliant" as in "what most others
are shipping", but 2.96 is almost fully ISO C99 and ISO C++ 98
compliant, unlike any previous version of gcc.

gcc 2.96 has more complete support for C++. Older versions of gcc could
handle only a very limited subset of C++.

Earlier versions of g++ often had problems with templates and other
valid C++ constructs.

Most of gcc 2.96's perceived "bugs" are actually broken code
that older gccs accepted because they were not standards compliant - or, using
an alternative term to express the same thing, buggy.
A C or C++ compiler that doesn't speak the standardized C language is
a bug, not a feature.
In the initial version of gcc 2.96, there were a couple of other bugs.
All known ones have been fixed in the version from updates - and the version
that is in the current beta version of Red Hat Linux. The bugs in the initial
version don't make the whole compiler broken, though. There has never been
a 100% bug free compiler, or any other 100% bug free non-trivial program.
The current version can be taken from Red Hat Linux 7.2. It will work
without changes on prior 7.x releases of Red Hat Linux.
Since a lot of people claim 2.96 is buggy because of the accusations
found in MPlayer documentation, I have
included the facts that led them to incorrectly believe that 2.96 is buggy
here.

gcc 2.96 generates better, more optimized code.

gcc 2.96 supports all architectures Red Hat is currently supporting,
including ia64. No other compiler can do this. Having to maintain different
compilers for every different architecture is a development (find a bug, then
fix it 4 times), QA and support nightmare.

The binary incompatibility issues are not as bad as some people and
companies make you believe.
First of all, they affect dynamically linked C++ code only.
If you don't use C++, you aren't affected. If you use C++ and link statically,
you aren't affected.
If you don't mind depending on a current glibc, you might also want to
link statically to c++ libraries while linking dynamically to glibc and other
C libraries you're using:
g++ -o test test.cc -Wl,-Bstatic -lstdc++ -Wl,-Bdynamic
(Thanks to Pavel Roskin for pointing this
out)
Second, the same issues appear with every major release of gcc
so far. gcc 2.7.x C++ is not binary compatible with gcc 2.8.x. gcc 2.8.x C++
is not binary compatible with egcs 1.0.x. egcs 1.0.x C++ is not binary
compatible with egcs 1.1.x. egcs 1.1.x C++ is not binary compatible with
gcc 2.95. gcc 2.95 C++ is not binary compatible with gcc 3.0.

Besides, it can easily be circumvented. Either link statically, or
simply distribute libstdc++ with your program and install it if necessary.
Since it has a different soname, it can coexist with other libstdc++ versions
without causing any problems.
Red Hat Linux 7 also happens to be the first Linux distributions using
the current version of glibc, 2.2.x. This update is not binary compatible with
older distributions either (unless you update glibc - there's nothing that
prevents you from updating libstdc++ at the same time), so complaining about
gcc's new C++ ABI breaking binary compatibility is pointless. If you want
to distribute something binary-only, link it statically and it will run
everywhere.
Someone has to be the first to take a step like this. If nobody dared
to make a change because nobody else is doing it, we'd all still be using
gcc 1.0, COBOL or ALGOL. No wait, all of those were new at some point...

gcc 3.0, the current so-called "stable" release (released quite
some time after Red Hat released gcc 2.96-RH), fixes some problems, but
introduces many others - for example, gcc 3.0.1 can't compile KDE 2.2
correctly due to bugs in gcc 3.0.x's implementation in multiple inheritance
in C++.
Until another set of 3.0.x updates is released, I still claim 2.96 is
the best compiler yet.

since when is open source about a single platform?

Open Source has never been about a single platform. Free Software isn't either (GNU/*, *BSD, AtheOS, the former OpenBeOS, etc. are all free) but it does have a concept of a "free system" that contains no proprietary software.

since when is open source about a single platform?

Open Source has never been about a single platform. Free Software isn't either (GNU/*, *BSD, AtheOS, the former OpenBeOS, etc. are all free) but it does have a concept of a "free system" that contains no proprietary software.

Richard Stallman's already made a pretty good start at one, at least with respect to electronic books. I would like to think he's had a significant role (along with Adobe shooting themselves in the foot) in preventing that evil fair-use disabled crap from catching on.

I don't think the World Trade Organization wants to tangle with open source software. It's about free speech.

No, the Open Source movement is about convincing businesses to leverage the peer review process to have better software. The Free Software movement is about allowing every computer user to share and modify software. Please learn the difference between the two movements.

MS needs to grab their ankles on this market and learn to enjoy the experience.

Microsoft has no problems with the Open Source movement, they very much like it when that movement strongly encourages developers to use the non-copylefted Free Software licenses (namely the X11 and new BSD licenses). Microsoft hates the GNU GPL (a copyleft Free Software license) because the GNU GPL preserves software freedoms for everyone. That is why Microsoft targets the GNU GPL by name.

Not because OSS is best in *every* situation...

Apparently you are under the mistaken impression the Congressman's letter or the bill spoke of "Open Source" software. It does not. The letter made it quite clear the bill talks about Free Software which is the appropriate term and philosophical ground for refusing Microsoft's request. For good reason: The Open Source movement and the Free Software movement are not the same thing and the difference is of the utmost relevance here. If you're unaware of the difference, there are plenty of good essays in the GNU project's philosophy section to help you.

Ah, competition. How I love thee.

If you genuinely enjoy competition, I suggest you back the Free Software movement which places emphasis on copylefted Free Software licenses (primarily the GNU GPL) and not the Open Source movement which backs non-copyleft Free Software licenses (such as the X11 and new BSD licenses) which sometimes result in embrace and extend where competition is made much more difficult.

Don't forget your software freedom.

They removed linuxconf (good text console based configurator). You can get it here. RedHat still hasn't learned to use a real GCC release and instead they continue to use that lame 2.96. (so you will have to get GCC 2.95.3 for Linux 2.5 kernel compiles (per the directions in their docs) and get GCC 3.0.4 for everything else. This is getting ANNOYING, RedHat. ANNOYING.) "kgcc" (gcc 2.91.66-egcs.1.1.2-release)is still there for 2.4 builds.

KDE 3/ XFree 4.2 had some video corruption for me on a cheesy ATI card in a server, but no show stoppers. Seems like more goodness from the KDE team.

Good - they use glibc 2.2.5 - a standard GNU release, but they compiled it with the LAME 2.96 compiler. We shall SEE if they got the compiler It has been said that if a broken compiler compiles a library the library can be strangely broken and very difficult to debug. This goes to show RedHat why they shouldn't do this, and properly couple GLIBC 2.2.5 with GCC 3.0.4 as intended by GNU. Bero seems adamant about maintaining a 2.96 fork, which is costing time and resources and annoying users. I wouldn't care so much if 1.1.2, 2.95.3, 3.04 and RH-BROKEN.296-special were all included, but such is not the case. Lame.

Now that 2.2.5 can be compiled by GNU GCC, as well as KDE, RedHat is just being spiteful and not properly deprecating GCC 2.96X.

I give this a 5/5, because it's not a bad system, but it will require a man's touch. Mandrake and SuSE are starting to give this a run for its money, for sure.

NOTE: RedHat, please, just make it easier to play with the system and include the stuff that we all will go and download 20 seconds after install. Please. This compiling compilers like 2.95.3 and 3.0.4 is a waste of my time.

All in all, its good to upgrade at this point if you run a server to not have to do all the updates.

Note: About my insinuations about GCC 2.96 brokenness, I work side by side with a person who used to be on the GCC/GNU team, and has found strange bugs in certain version of the glibc that has been compiled by the 2.96 series. It went away when using release glibc compiled by release GCC. I personally have seen evidence that this is not FUD concerning GCC 2.96 - so please, all the flaming Bero zealots explain why is it now better to have a kluged compiler when the GCC team has far superceded it?

They removed linuxconf (good text console based configurator). You can get it here. RedHat still hasn't learned to use a real GCC release and instead they continue to use that lame 2.96. (so you will have to get GCC 2.95.3 for Linux 2.5 kernel compiles (per the directions in their docs) and get GCC 3.0.4 for everything else. This is getting ANNOYING, RedHat. ANNOYING.) "kgcc" (gcc 2.91.66-egcs.1.1.2-release)is still there for 2.4 builds.

KDE 3/ XFree 4.2 had some video corruption for me on a cheesy ATI card in a server, but no show stoppers. Seems like more goodness from the KDE team.

Good - they use glibc 2.2.5 - a standard GNU release, but they compiled it with the LAME 2.96 compiler. We shall SEE if they got the compiler It has been said that if a broken compiler compiles a library the library can be strangely broken and very difficult to debug. This goes to show RedHat why they shouldn't do this, and properly couple GLIBC 2.2.5 with GCC 3.0.4 as intended by GNU. Bero seems adamant about maintaining a 2.96 fork, which is costing time and resources and annoying users. I wouldn't care so much if 1.1.2, 2.95.3, 3.04 and RH-BROKEN.296-special were all included, but such is not the case. Lame.

Now that 2.2.5 can be compiled by GNU GCC, as well as KDE, RedHat is just being spiteful and not properly deprecating GCC 2.96X.

I give this a 5/5, because it's not a bad system, but it will require a man's touch. Mandrake and SuSE are starting to give this a run for its money, for sure.

NOTE: RedHat, please, just make it easier to play with the system and include the stuff that we all will go and download 20 seconds after install. Please. This compiling compilers like 2.95.3 and 3.0.4 is a waste of my time.

All in all, its good to upgrade at this point if you run a server to not have to do all the updates.

Note: About my insinuations about GCC 2.96 brokenness, I work side by side with a person who used to be on the GCC/GNU team, and has found strange bugs in certain version of the glibc that has been compiled by the 2.96 series. It went away when using release glibc compiled by release GCC. I personally have seen evidence that this is not FUD concerning GCC 2.96 - so please, all the flaming Bero zealots explain why is it now better to have a kluged compiler when the GCC team has far superceded it?

I understand your smiley may indicate you're joking, but this is incredibly important particularly in the context of the Congressman's letter.

If you bother to read the letter, which you apparently haven't read very closely, you'll note he does not call the operating system "Linux", he calls it GNU/Linux. I'm willing to bet the Congressman understands far better than you do that it was the GNU project that brought us the concepts of Free Software, copyleft, and the importance of defending software freedom. The Free Software movement continues to talk about software freedom and ethics and apparently moved the Peruvian government to consider this bill. All of the issues of the Free Software movement are at the heart of the bill that is the subject of the Congressman's letter.

It's a simple matter of how socially inferior "humans"(I put this term in quotations because these people rarely show any humanity) act under certain types of pressure. They attach themselves irrationaly to a concept, product, brand name, or in this case, fad. We've seen it with OS/2 Zealots, BSD Zealots, BeOS Zealots, and Amiga Zealots. We see it everyday on the news with Christian Zealots like John Ashcroft and George W. Bush.

You see, certain types of socially inept people have a tendency to attach themselves to something and refuse to let go with zeal. As the fad dies out and the rest of the world moves on, these zealots will hold on to their idol with alarming tenacity. You do not want to be around these people, but unfortunately it is sometimes out of your control. Therefore, I have prepared some advice in the form of various situations should you ever come upon a Linux Zealot.

Situation 1: On the Internet
This is where the majority of Linux Zealot attacks occur, since Linux Zealots have no social life and rarely leave their computers. Fortunately for you, this type of situation is the easiest to avoid with the use of a little precaution and common sense. First and foremost, stay away from known Linux Zealot sites like Slashdot and Kuro5hin. These sites are well known for promoting software theft and music piracy, among other kinds of law-breaking activity. Do not take this warning as an invitation to go to Slashdot and try to change the minds of the wayward Linux Zealots. Many intelligent people have tried this and failed miserably, for Linux Zealots are extremely close-minded and will not listen to logic. It doesn't matter how many times you tell them that Windows 2000 and WindowsXP don't crash and that Linux sucks for the desktop, they will not listen to you. Instead you will be lost in a sea of angry Linux Zealots. Also, do not get depressed thinking that your options on the Internet are now limited, there are many fine sites featuring intelligent conversation available.

Situation 2: At work/school settings
This situation is the potentially most embarrassing and damaging to your life. The situation usually plays out thusly: you are at work or school when a co-worker or acquaintance tries to introduce you to a Linux Zealot. Often-times this Linux Zealot will try to move in on your social activities. Do not let this happen. This is very important. If you let a Linux Zealot be seen with you in public, it WILL ruin your life. You will lose all your friends, and no girl will ever talk to you again. How do you identify a Linux Zealot? This is very easy - Linux Zealots will either be extremely scrawny or extremely obese. They will be very dirty, poorly dressed (many times with ill-fitting Linux or Thinkgeek shirts), and the odor will be unbearable. If a Linux Zealot tries to befriend you, you must make it clear that you are better than him and that you will not socialize with him. Ridicule him, let him know his lower status in society. Call security or threaten to sue for harrassment if he doesn't leave you alone. Don't be afraid to use violence if it becomes necessary.

Situation 3: Random public encounters
These are probably the rarest of Linux Zealot encounters, and are usually pretty easy to avoid. If you see a Linux Zealot walking down the sidewalk or hallway, do not make eye contact. Turn your head away from the Linux Zealot. If he tries to engage you in conversation, do not respond. Continue walking away from the Linux Zealot at a brisk pace. If the Linux Zealot persists, call for help from the nearest security guard or police officer. If you are female, it is advisable to carry pepper spray and/or a stun gun at all times. Linux Zealots are very skittish around females and their behavior will be erratic.

Now you should know everything you need to know to keep yourself safe from Linux Zealots. Good Luck!

I wanna see a movie about my super-heros.

It is, actually, according to rms

He then goes on to describe the advantages of open sourced software.

No, he goes on to explain the advantages of Free Software, naming it by name repeatedly (and taking the time to correct the Microsoft representative who uses the wrong term). Although he doesn't explain the difference between the two movements in the letter, given his obvious mastery of the concepts involved and the ethical basis of the responsibility the state has to its citizens (resulting in using strictly unencumbered formats, for instance), I think it's very likely he knows the difference you apparently missed. Briefly, the Free Software movement is the movement concerned with ethics, software freedom, and building and maintaining a software commons for all computer users by allowing sharing and modifying software. The Open Source movement speaks primarily to businesses about a development methodology wherein the business can enjoy faster, cheaper, more advanced, or less buggy software. The Open Source movement dismisses software freedom and backs licenses that sometimes result in embrace and extend. You'll find some of the same practical benefits in both movements but only Free Software talks about the issues from the ethically-minded standpoint of maintaining freedom.