Matthew Garrett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Why should free software support companies in not releasing their > knowledge to the world? Why do we consider the freedom to hoard > information an important one?
I'm not sure we do, and this is somewhat off-topic, but: - The information in question will be made public in due course. It's not like a UK state secret. - If a company is prevented from keeping its plans confidential then it will have a hard time competing with other companies that do keep their plans confidential. - I don't think we should be trying to make a list of all the freedoms that we consider to be important and allowing licences to restrict any freedom that isn't in our list. A better approach, I think, is to be suspicious of any restrictions that are not easily justified as a means of furthering software freedom. In general, I don't think it helps free software for licences to restrict privacy and confidentiality of business plans, hardware designs, etc. However, I don't necessarily claim that such restrictions make a licence non-free; I am undecided about that.
