I was wondering if anyone has read the book: "Free Software, Free Society" by Stallman?

If not, I would encourage you to read it, or at least parts of it. You might find out some interesting things, such as "free software" and "open-source software" are not the same thing.

What is your take on Stallmans views? Are they reasonable or is he just too much?

What do you think?

Thanks, I was getting bored, and I finally found something to do.


Extreme Coder

I saw an essay of Stllman's in The Guardian last week, he seems to be more of a journalist than a programmer now

I haven't read the book but I've read a few of his essays that I've came across on the Internet, like one on the open document format, and one on DRM.

His views are OK to me, but sometimes they are too extreme...

And as for the book - no I haven't read it, but I hope that I will

I've got a signed copy at home from his lecture in Göteborg this week. I guess it is more or less the same thing as his lecture. He is a skilled rhetorician and from what I remember, I agree on everything he said. I think it was a special twist for Sweden to talk about Piratpartiet and copyright. His ideas on both were great.

I'm not convinced though that it matters if a company without any insight into it, needs to use free software. If they do use free software you don't have a clue how they use it. So for me it feels like two different worlds. Desktop users and public administration should use free software, but I am not convinced when it comes to business. Any arguments to convince me?

I originally posted this in another thread, here on this forum:

You could get paid for your work. Someone hires you and you make software. They get software, you get the software and you got paid. This program was created to better the world. A seed of knowledge has been planted. You share this knowledge. You use the knowledge. Someone else might use it. You talk about it, exchange ideas, and work on it. You create something better. Someone hires you. You both know the conditions. You, as a computer hacker, build their computer systems, and everybody are entitled to the knowledge obtaint in the progress. You could gather your best fellow computer hackers and do the work together.

Nothing in the GNU license requires you to disclose your clients.
Everything you write is your work. You own it. So when a guy sells a program you made half of and he made the other half, you are legally entitled to half the money. You just have to prove that you actually made half the work. Unfortunately the Free Software Foundation (FSF) only have the funds to enforce its own work, and not individual works.
I am not a layer, so I do not know precisely how the text read. But I know you as a individual have som form of legal protection.

Companies might want to initiate their own project. Because they have greater needs, they will need a lot of people working on their software. The company is in a position to sketch the lines, and use their influence to guide the progress. What they get for this is software specificly tailored to their needs, for no price at all but the time they invest, and everybody gets acces the knowledge obtained in the progress. If a company had thousands if coders working on the project and they (the company and project leader) provided the correct guidiance, the system would be far better for them than any propitary system could ever be. Because they made it themselves.

The thought behind free software basicly asks you if you want to control your software or you want other to control your software. And the answer of course is, you want to control your software because no one knows better what you need than you .

Well, that was interesting reading. So you can earn money using GPL by making the code available just for yourself and the buyer. Is that your point?

How do you convince a private company to agree to that you should have your share of the program when the market in general works that the buyer gets everything?

And also, normally it is a competitive advantage that other companies do not know how other companies programs work. If the programs are released (and made publicly available?) using GPL they have to compete using other means. Right?

My point is that, for many private companies the only thing that counts is to maximize the shareholder value.

FSFS was my gift for joining the Free Software Foundation.

Cheers,
El Casey
FSF Member #5288

What is his take those guys?