One person who I feel is mainly interested in profiting from the community is posing as a leader of the community. Most free software merchants know better than to get in a conflict of interest like that.
I don't get your point. If a program source remains free, copylefted, whatnot, it's anyone's right to interpret the behaviors of the end-product, the running program, and to put it in his own manuals or books...AND to release that verbal interpretation for free or for his profit...right?
In the end, who should care? The hackers can never truly lose control, since the source code can't be hidden. So what if someone makes money from a book; isn't that the *idea* of Free Software -- to create an ecosystem around an open product?
Seems to me that one could keep running with the "everything must be free" argument until we'd all convinced ourselves that charging for consulting work on a copylefted OS was immoral.
Anyway, it bothers me that we're not discussing technical merit (e.g., "some manuals are unclear/incorrect") but just about a yearning of how the ecosystem should or should not be structured. Meanwhile, buckshot gets fired at allies who'd help grow FreeSoft mindshare.
Heh, maybe so if they were just a mean little company. But now that they're a mean big company (read: market-grabbing monopolist), the gov't *should* pay attention to the competitors' complaints. Microsoft earned the attention they got from the authorities, but now want to cry about it.
And finally, donating $ to political campaigns wouldn't have helped as much as evincing a little humility. This whole case probably could have been forestalled/avoided if Microsoft had made some good-faith gestures when that door was open to them. Instead, they chose the in-your-face, criticise-by-ridicule route. Typical.
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I don't get your point. If a program source remains free, copylefted, whatnot, it's anyone's right to interpret the behaviors of the end-product, the running program, and to put it in his own manuals or books...AND to release that verbal interpretation for free or for his profit...right?
In the end, who should care? The hackers can never truly lose control, since the source code can't be hidden. So what if someone makes money from a book; isn't that the *idea* of Free Software -- to create an ecosystem around an open product?
Seems to me that one could keep running with the "everything must be free" argument until we'd all convinced ourselves that charging for consulting work on a copylefted OS was immoral.
Anyway, it bothers me that we're not discussing technical merit (e.g., "some manuals are unclear/incorrect") but just about a yearning of how the ecosystem should or should not be structured. Meanwhile, buckshot gets fired at allies who'd help grow FreeSoft mindshare.
Heh, maybe so if they were just a mean little company. But now that they're a mean big company (read: market-grabbing monopolist), the gov't *should* pay attention to the competitors' complaints. Microsoft earned the attention they got from the authorities, but now want to cry about it.
And finally, donating $ to political campaigns wouldn't have helped as much as evincing a little humility. This whole case probably could have been forestalled/avoided if Microsoft had made some good-faith gestures when that door was open to them. Instead, they chose the in-your-face, criticise-by-ridicule route. Typical.
...for coming back to the Socket-7 format, yet making their new mobos incompatible for no good technical reason! Grr.