frank theriault wrote:
On 4/25/05, glenn murphy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
<snip> Free software means free as in freedom, not free as
in free beer. <snip>
I think that free beer is a type of Freedom.
<snip>. Most people who write and use free software are more
likely to describe themselves as libertarian than anything else. <snip>
The word "libertarian" is a pretty wide-ranging one. Most people (I
would guess) think of it as a whacko-right thing, but many on the left
consider themselves to be "leftist libertarians", Chomsky likely being
the best known.
Not disputing what you said, Glenn, just expanding or commenting on
the word itself is all...
cheers,
frank
Feel free to add, comment, disagree or anything else you'd like. Yes,
free beer is a kind of freedom, I was just making the point that the
founder of the Free Software Foundation stresses the freedom of ideas
over freedom from paying for something. There is nothing in the GPL that
prevents people from making money from software, it just says everyone
else gets the same opportunity, and no one can take away the freedom the
original author has granted as far as the use of his/her work. My
original post was just saying that linking free software to a particular
economic system or philosophy is kind of silly if that evaluation
doesn't take into account what the people involved in creating and using
it actually believe. Yes, "libertarian" is a pretty vague term, but that
just fits the wide range of viewpoints of the people who use the label
for themselves, and you could never neatly fit the entire free software
community into one neat little pigeon-hole, libertarian or otherwise.
Glenn
