Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: What free software means to me

Author:Joshua Allen
Posted:8/20/2000; 9:27:33 PM
Topic:A History of "Open Source"
Msg #:19862 (In response to 19860)
Prev/Next:19861 / 19863

That's an interesting twist. So when he said: "You seem to use a lot of free software; what have you given back?" you might have replied, "You would not write free software if people did not use it".

Anyway, I read Eric's post to mean that developers should be able to choose between "giving away" or charging for any particular piece of software that they write. And I rather thought that the unethical people of open source were the ones who claim that GPL is the *only* right way to release software. As a developer, I would like to decide for myself which of my skills need payment in cold hard cash, without having the grand inquisitors of GPL breathing down my neck. I'd be really surprised to find that someone as rational as Dave was saying it's unethical to use free software without writing free software in return. If you give it away for free, doesn't that mean you don't expect anything in return? If you really felt that your efforts should be repaid with like efforts, why not stipulate that in the license. Effort is hard to quantify, but you could start with something like "from each according to his ability to each according to his need."

-J

There are responses to this message:

This page was archived on 6/13/2001; 4:56:08 PM.

© Copyright 1998-2001 UserLand Software, Inc.