Why We Shouldn't Begrudge Commercial Open Source Companies

Thinkcloud writes with a followup to recent news that Mozilla is once again looking into a do-not-track mechanism after having previously killed a similar tool, allegedly under pressure from advertisers. Canonical COO Matt Asay wrote in The Register that this is not necessarily the case, nor is Mozilla's decision necessarily the wrong one. "It's quite possible — indeed, probable — that the best way for Mozilla to fulfill its mission is precisely to limit the openness of the web. At least a bit. Why? Because end-users aren't the only ones with rights and needs online, a point Luis Villa elegantly made years ago. It's not a one-way, free-for-all for end-users. Advertisers, developers and enterprises who employ end-users among others all factor into Mozilla's freedom calculus. Or should." OStatic adds commentary that "Like it or not, commercial open source companies are still companies, and the economics of the online world have everything to do with their present and their future.

Comments

RMS got this in the 80s

[ciaran_o_riordan]

Richard Stallman was selling tapes of Emacs and GCC back in the 80s and made sure the GPL allowed selling.

Here's his essay about how to do it but at the same time ensure it doesn't end up funding proprietary software:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html