On Saturday 29 September 2001 16:39, Matthew C. Weigel wrote: > I can only disagree with this. RMS has never said that free software > was unpragmatic, or that a pragmatic person would necessarily choose > non-free software. The argument is that, pragmatic *or not*, free > software is the answer on social grounds.
You're not seeing the forest through the trees. The "invisible hand" is the forest. Certainly the FSF lists pragmatism as one of the virtues of Free Software, and the OSI lists sharing and community spirit among the features of Open Source. But there is no denying that many folks in both camps go out of their way to distance themselves from the other. The point of my post was that no matter how hard you try to do the socially right thing, you end up being pragmatic, and no matter how hard you try to be practical, you end up helping the community. The customer doesn't care if the grocer is selfish or altruistic, he only cares that the apples are cheap. The software user doesn't care if the license is open source or free software, he only cares that his software has is not restricted. -- David Johnson ___________________ http://www.usermode.org -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
