> No. Not unreasonable. Patronising, possibly. Okay. Could you point to which paragraph my tone was off?
Mm - the first line. "Have you heard of "Free Software"? I expect you have heard of "OpenSource" software. " Maybe it's just me but it came across as someone explaining the concept on CBeebies. I'm sure it wasn't intended as such and so I apologise if I was a bit snappy.
Many people have heard of 'open source', but confusion can arise because they don't understand the difference between 'free software' and 'open source'. This is mainly because 'open source' isn't totally honest about whats going on here. The views espoused by 'open source' culture dont explain why it is essential to replace all 'closed source' software with 'open source'; it just explains why its might, perhaps, make more reliable/powerful software in certain cases. In this particular case, 'open source' people are able to "make use of Flash-based functionality all over the net" because they have no objections to using the Flash player that Adobe makes available for GNU+Linux. But I object to it because it is not Free Software, and believe that it is essential to use Free Software, because non-free software is unethical and unsustainable.
And that's where we disagree. Non-free software isn't unethical in itself, and it's certainly not unsustainable. If it was unsustainable, software companies - whether one man businesses, or giant companies like Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe and EA just wouldn't exist by now. I'd argue the exact opposite - free software is a far less sustainable business model, and while the free and open source movements aims and ideals are laudable, and an excellent alternative option, I don't believe that all software can ever, nor should ever be free (as in Free Speech). I liken it to vegetarianism. If you want to cut meat out of your diet entirely, then that's entirely up to you, but is arguably a dangerous and ethically suspect move. My stance is that there are good reasons to cut down on red meat and to move to more ethically produced food - but cutting all meat out of a diet is, I believe a bad thing. I certainly don't want an extreme position being rammed down my throat and being abused for not agreeing with it - which has happened in the past. Same with software. Anyway - this isn't the place to get into this discussion, although if anyone would like to take this off list then I'm more than happy to bang on about the analogy above until the hand reared, free range Jerseys come home. Cheers, Rich. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
