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Stallman Unsure Whether Firefox Is Truly Free
Slatterz writes "Among the theories Stallman bandies about in this Q&A are: Facebook may not share private data with the CIA, Firefox isn't really 'free software,' and his dreams of a day where nobody is involved in developing or promoting proprietary software. Agree or disagree?"
Thus the reason he is labeled a ZEALOT.
The man is delusional and just needs to go visit any communist/socialist society and live in it to discover that his ideals just don't work because human nature will not allow it.
Stallman's definition of "free": stuff he likes. His definition of "not free": stuff he doesn't like.
And what's the difference from them doing that with a GPLed program? Claiming patents on bits of it and suing you?
It's not the publicly available prior art. Nope. The BSDed project has that too.
It's not the major attorney fees from defending yourself from the bullshit suit. Nope. Both have that problem too.
Yeah, the patent system in this (and several other) country is fucked up. But that's orthogonal to the claimed issue of "freedom"
You also gain nothing from their work. The BSD license gives you more freedom to simply hand out your work and not have to worry where it goes to, but the GPL gives you the opportunity to see some benefit out of someone else deriving your software.
So it's not a question of "freedom" so much as "entitlement." Gotcha.
Your freedom remains intact when someone derives your code and slaps an EULA on it, but not the user's or the code's (if you believe software has rights of it's own.)
MY code's freedom remains unchanged (if you believe in that sort of thing). If my BSD code is out there, someone modifies and closes it, then further developers are still just as free to download my original code and make the changes of their own.
Neither the GPL or the BSD license is there to save your ass, it's to protect the end user.
Bollocks. Both BSD and GPL are about distribution rights. Neither has a damn thing to do with usage rights, so the end user is a non-involved party. Down-chain developers are involved, and they are free to start from my code and build, just like the guy who did so and closed it off.
and now we must all ruminate ad infinitum on his true divine meaning so that it may guide us in our respective technological paths.
or, its a fat antiestablishmentarian with a beard and a flute whos been kicked off planes, pisses off BSD devs, and makes us all generally uncomfortable.
heres some other tripe that stallman approves of:
Contribute funds to avoid a ban on selling hallucinogenic mushrooms in the Netherlands.
Boycott Coca Cola Company for using paramilitaries to murder union organizers.
how is this guy still relevant?
Good people go to bed earlier.
Open source is really starting to get on my nerves. I'm really getting tired of these losers who have produced nothing but 3rd rate junkware with bad documentation at best, telling the rest of us that somehow we're all bad people if we charge money for the fruits of our labor.
I used to like Stallman but now he's becoming to nazi'ish about open source. To be honest, Firefox is one of the very few open source software packages out there that actually works well. Who cares about the license! Its a free download, it works well and that's that!
When Richard Stallman produces software that "everyday people" actually use, without having to go to a news group and ask questions, then he can open his mouth.