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Sun's COO Distorts Free In Free Software

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the he-got-free-as-in-beer-mixed-up-with-free-as-in-freedom dept.

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,"

3 of 346 comments (clear)

  1. Richard Stallman angry? by Exitar · · Score: 5, Funny

    It cannot be!

  2. Re:Actually.... by Glomek · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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

    ...and they get better software because the other 1% does use their freedom.

  3. Re:He is quite right by ComputerSlicer23 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Curious, that's precisely why we use it. We run pretty much all RedHat derivative stuff (either a version we purchased, or a one of the rebuilds). I use the source fairly frequently to track down bugs. I apply small bug fixes to problems I run into. I know we have a machine we have patched: xpdf, ghostscript and apache on.

    I have patched various machines with little kernel fixes (adding PCI_ID's to support the i810 chipset).

    I've used the source when someone posted error messages to various mailings lists to see what section of the kernel was generating certain errors to troubleshoot the problem.

    I've added lines of code to e2fsck and mount to support new functionality I wanted to simplify my problems.

    I could run Solaris, but when I have a problem, I can't track it down. I can't read the source to see how critical an area the bug is or if there is a way to work around it. I can't ask the author's of the code if they can fix it by e-mailing them directly.

    I know that the plural of annecdote isn't data. However, a lot of technical people I know feel the same way. We aren't the majority of people. However most sysadmin's I know would much prefer to have the source, even if they are never going to edit, or re-compile it. A lot of the people who support the users would much prefer they used open source. I'm a developer not an SA, but I play an SA from time to time.

    I'm happier as a user if I am using free software, if only because I'm not beholden to the keeper of the secret source to provide me with a fix. If I feel like it, I can pay someone else to do it, or I can investigate the problem myself. If it is important enough, I'll fix it.

    Kirby