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Sun's COO Distorts Free In Free Software
sebFlyte writes "Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's COO and president, said at JavaOne that 'the most important initial in free and open source software, to me, if you want to reach the broadest marketplace in the world there's one price that works for everyone, and that's free". As you can imagine, this interpretation of 'free' in terms of software has angered a few people somewhat, including Richard Stallman..." From the article: "The free software movement stands for 'free' as in freedom. The open source campaign doesn't present freedom as an ethical issue, but it still formulates its criteria in terms of what users are permitted to do,"
It cannot be!
Lets end all these issues by calling OUR definition of free by a different word. Take their power away.
Suggestions?
Look, you can't just go out and define a word to mean whatever you want. Free means freedom and costless depending on the context, wether you're talking about software not. Getting upset that someone used the word 'free' to mean 'no cost' while talking about software is simply idiotic. Its one thing to educate people, but its an entirely diffrent thing to try to own a word, especialy one thats been around for centuries. Words can have more then one meaning.
Idiots like ESR tried to do this with "hacker", to mean only what they wanted it to mean so that they could call themselves "hackers".
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Wookey, a Debian developer, shared Stallman's view and accused Schwartz of deliberately twisting the definition to justify not releasing Java as open source.
If anything, he probably did it because a large percetange of the population (and especially the business world) don't care to understand "free" in any terms other than money.
Free Software (as RMS believes) is something that is way too radical for most businessmen. I'm sure that Schwartz was just trying to interact with his audience on their level.
Yes, it's wrong and yes it negates all the crazy stuff RMS has talked about over the years but I really don't think it was meant to hide or purposefully deceive anyone. Then again, RMS wouldn't have anything to get his name in the news about then, would he?
Richard Stallman nominates GNU/Free.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Many open source projects are mimics of commercially available software. They were adopted because they were free for the most part - not because the source code was available. Very few people and companies customize the software or utilize the source code in any way.
Id hazard a guess that for 99% of the people who take advantage of the 'free software' movement do so precisely because its zero purchase cost, not because it gives them freedom of code. Seriously, how many people using apache do so because of the open codebase as opposed to the fact that they got an enterprise level web server for zero cost? MySQL? Perl? Linux? How many people that you recommend a GPLed application to dabble with the code? How many would have paid for that software instead of using something else?
I suggest we use "gay". Here's a good slogan:
"SOFTWARE FREEDOM IS GAY!"
That way, the gay software movement can encourage people to make their software gay, too. When people ask you what you do, you can say "I'm a gay software developer".
Come on, it would be funny. Let's start a petition.
Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?
He didn't distort the definition. He just stated what he admitted was his own opinion on what the most important part of free software is.
From TFA:
Now just to relay my bias, if you had to ask me what's the most important initial in free and open source software, to me, if you want to reach the broadest marketplace in the world there's one price that works for everyone, and that's free...
Somehow I just don't care.
Sun may be shooting themselves in the foot by refusing to join the FOSS movement. Simply offering software for free is obviously not good enough; they need to make it totally accessible for it to meet its potential.
But this doesn't matter, really. If Sun decides that they're going to keep their toys to theirselves, the FOSS community will come up with something to rival it. It happened with lots of other programs, and now we have OpenOffice, Linux, MonoDevelop, Audacity, PDFCreator, GiMP, Blender, Firefox, 7-Zip, and more. It can happen with Java, too.
Regardless of the fact that the new alternatives would no doubt mimic Java, the fact that their source would be universally available would give them an edge over the original.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
free (adj.)
O.E. freo "free, exempt from, not in bondage," also "noble, joyful," from P.Gmc. *frijaz (cf. M.H.G. vri, Ger. frei, Du. vrij, Goth. freis "free"), from PIE *prijos "dear, beloved" (cf. Skt. priyah "own, dear, beloved," priyate "loves;" O.C.S. prijati "to help," prijatelji "friend;" Welsh rhydd "free"). The adv. is from O.E. freon, freogan "to free, love." The primary sense seems to have been "beloved, friend, to love;" which in some languages (notably Gmc. and Celtic) developed also a sense of "free," perhaps from the terms "beloved" or "friend" being applied to the free members of one's clan (as opposed to slaves, cf. L. liberi, meaning both "free" and "children"). Cf. Goth. frijon "to love;" O.E. freod "affection, friendship," friga "love," friðu "peace;" O.N. friðr, Ger. Friede "peace;" O.E. freo "wife;" O.N. Frigg "wife of Odin," lit. "beloved" or "loving;" M.L.G. vrien "to take to wife, Du. vrijen, Ger. freien "to woo." Sense of "given without cost" is 1585, from notion of "free of cost." Of nations, "not subject to foreign rule or to despotism," it is recorded from 1375. Freedman "manumitted slave" first recorded 1601. Colloquial freeloader first recorded 1930s; free fall is from 1919, originally of parachutists; free-hand is from 1862; free-thinker is from 1692. Freebie dates back to 1942 as freeby, perhaps as early as 1900. Free-for-all "mass brawl" (in which anyone may participate) first recorded 1881. Freebase (n. and v.) in ref. to cocaine first recorded 1980.
What I say does not represent the views of my employers, my friends, my cats, or myself.
He's GNU/Angry!
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
Not that I particularly care, but since you're being such an arse about it...
According to the OED, "Free" as in freedom dates back to around 900 AD and was first used to describe persons living in a household by bonds of kinship rather than slavery. By about 1300 AD, it was specifically applied to ideas of personal liberties. "Free" as in free-of-charge dates to just before 1500 AD.
Check the dictionary before you rant, please.
I was lucky enough to go to JavaOne, and was sitting in the room as he said this, and it indeed annoyed me.
Politics aside, Richard Stallman makes a very clear distinction between Open Source software and Free software. When people refer to FOSS (Free Open Source Software), they have added BOTH "free" AND "open source" to their acronym - this is to make a clear distinction between software that is merely open source, and software that is both free (as in speech) and open source.
Sure, free means "free of charge" as well as "free speech". I wouldn't dare argue that one definition is more valid than another.
But in the context of "FOSS" or "F/OSS" or even "FLOSS" (Free/Libre Open Source Software), the whole reason to add "Free" to the more traditional "OSS" was to convey "Free as in speech."
Why does it matter? I think Sun wants to confuse the community, and make people think that they are on a bandwagon that they *are not on*. I think Jonathan Schwartz knows what the "free" in FOSS means, and intentionally misused it to make people think that he was really buying into FOSS, when in fact, he hasn't, at least with respect to the the JVM and class files. This is the exact reason Apache Harmony was created.
If this doesn't make sense, try downloading the "Free" Sun JDK from anywhere other than java.sun.com. Try getting it to come bundled with a Linux distribution. You can't do these things, because it *isn't* free, they just don't make you pay for it (at least, for now).
The only other point I want to make is that the "free beer" definition buys you something right *now* - the ability to download the Sun JDK without them charging you for it. If you're getting it without paying, what's the big deal? The big deal is that tomorrow, they *could* start charging for it. And then you can only run as long as it takes for you to need some new feature, or support for new hardware or a new OS. Then you pay.
If it were really free, you don't just get it now, but you also get a guarantee that it will always be available free in some form, as long as people need it and are willing to work on it. And really, that is a big difference.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
sig?
You mean, as in GAY Ain't Younix (or GAY Ain't Yours)? It's a little "redneck" for me, but otherwise okay.
Carthago delenda est!
RMS has spent most of his life at a college, and many of the people he works with are students or workers at the college. For students, beer is a very common item to get for free (ie at a party), yet it has enough value that they are willing to pay for it when free beer is not available.
I'm sorry... but he's right. Do you think that most of the people are adopting open source software because it's better? No, they're doing it because it saves cost in the majority of cases. Look at that story submitted just a few below this one. If software came out that was very restrictive but cheaper with a lower tco and a complete win-win-out-of-the-box-market-penetrating-razzle-d azzle whatever people would jump on it. For people that build ON free software, freedom matters more, for people that build WITH free software, price matters more. In the corporate world, most people build WITH free software. This is the market that Sun's COO is addressing.
Just have a look at this article that says:
This is just another story people are using to bash Sun. Just like the whole JDS thing. Sun made a lot of moves to try and push a linux desktop. They went a little bit with it even though everyone was bashing them for it. Then they woke up and realized... The corporate world isn't ready for linux on the desktop yet. Boo em when they're trying to push linux on the desktop and then Boo em when they stop.Open Source Java DAO Generator