Il giorno domenica 12/05/2013 11:32:53 CEST Narcis Garcia <[email protected]> ha scritto:
> If I sell G.Icecat, I'm converting this project to non-free software? No. Not by the license terms. Respect to the license, free software means the four rights are kept. But respect to people's freedom, selling a software could make it not "free" as people whitout the money to buy it cannot take any benefit from the four rights! If you sell Icecat and I have no money to buy it, how can I get the "freedom 0" to run a program I cannot buy? Or the "freedom 2" to redistribute copies of a program I cannot buy? So, if we mean "free software" is *just* the respect of the four rights, then things are as you said. But, if we say "free software is a matter of liberty" [1], then - I think - we should also consider it a matter of price! And thus avoid commercial uses, which are something very far and different from cooperation, collaboration, sharing. GPLs licenses have been modified to the version 3 to avoid the limitations due to patents, drm etc. [2] That is good. But... having to pay for a program is a limitation too, and by this point of view GPLs licenses appear to me incoherent. Yes, I know, I am erethic... > And if I sell Emacs to someone, and he/she copies it to a friend, which > copy is free software and which one is not? > > I want to note that the license doesn't set the price. I know it. Free software licenses just assure the four rights are in. But (for the reasons I have said above) the four rights become virtual rights when people have to pay for a program: how can I "have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software" [1] if I cannot pay to buy the program? > OpenOffice was made with paid developers and, although people downloaded > it with no direct payment, that was a paid project under free software > license. This is a different aspect. When I say people should not have to pay for a program, it means the license should avoid a price to pay for the software (that is one of the main reasons for copyright existence...). It does not mean people's work should not have a remuneration. Coming back to Firefox... If we mean "free software" is just the respect of the four rights, then FF is non free software as Mozilla branding does not allow freedom #2 on a commercial basis. But Firefox has also a lot of serious privacy issues, suggest and/or install by default a lot of proprietary and/or non-free addons, plugins and javascripts, and suggest a lot of patented/closed/proprietary/DRMd formats. All these things are, I think, a lot more dangerous in terms of freedom/liberty than the branding issue... But none of these things make it non-free software (respect to the license)! So, if "free software is a matter of liberty", then I think there is something wrong and incoherent here. Do not you agree? Regards A [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html [2] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/rms-why-gplv3.html -- al3xu5 / dotcommon Support free software! Join FSF: http://www.fsf.org/jf?referrer=7535 ______________________________________________________________________ Public GPG/PGP key block ID: 1024D/11C70137 Fingerprint: 60F1 B550 3A95 7901 F410 D484 82E7 5377 11C7 0137 Key download: http://bitfreedom.noblogs.org/files/2010/08/dotcommon.asc [ Please, DO NOT send my key to any keyserver! ]
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