Stallman And Bero Interviewed

Juraj Bednar writes: "I have done two interviews: one with Bero from RedHat and one with Richard Stallman, the GNU and FSF founder. I usually write in my native language, but since these interviews were done in English, I asked myself why not to share them" Readers may want to also visit Bero's shared-source.com, and bookmark it as a FUD antidote.

Comments

Re:Who is to write software, then?

[ctid]

It amazes me how eagerly people will believe that the kool-aid they are being fed doesn't contain poison. Why do you find my points to be so controversial that I need to back them up? Have you never bothered to think about these issues yourself?

Just as a general point, you'll find that people are more likely to listen to what you say if you don't use hyperbole. Kool-aid? Poison? What are you talking about?

As for this:

Free as in Speech is clearly a misnomer, as Free Software has little if anything to do with Free Speech. It's a rather poor attempt to misdirect criticism by wrapping oneself in the flag.

Surely you're joking? They're not talking about "free speech". They're talking about the use of the word "free" to mean something other than "at no price". Freedom as in liberty (to say what you want, or to modify the code on which you depend), rather than free from price, which they don't particularly care about.

As for your quote from the GNU Manifesto, you've said yourself that later statements have modified it. But the fact that they leave the original there suggests they are not attempting to deceive anyone, surely? As I said, the information is there for people to interpret. Clearly you see things differently to the way I do. However, you still haven't explained why prefer to believe that the FSF is against charging for software, when they say explicitly that they are not against it. If they were trying to deceive us, why would they leave the original documents there?

Andrew

Failure is its own reward.