Rage Callao wrote: > You use OSS tools because its practical for you. The > people who created most of those tools you find practical > didn't make them just for practical reasons.
What other reason would there be to write a piece of software? To spread a political idea? I'm afraid a piece of software written with that primary goal in mind is not likely to be very succesful. Case-in-point: There was an extremely annoying and 'preachy' GCC Objective-C message relating to the usage of the #import directive. The so-called warning will bug you no end by emitting the same excessive 4-5 lines of philosophical sermonizing of why using that directive is not wise. This is NOT egoless programming. I suspected it would have been someone with a mindset like Stallman's who would put such a verbose message in a compiler (and it turns out he was indeed the guilty party) instead of compressing it to a single concise line. Good thing that was eventually fixed by the other people working on GCC. Why did they remove it? Because that error message would have otherwise made it *impractical* to use GCC had you wanted to rely on that (very useful) directive. > If these tools you find practical to use were created simply > because it seemed practical, how do you explain the motive of > sharing it with the rest of the world? You seem to be deliberately ignoring (in order to artificially prop up your argument) one of the primary and oft-repeated rationale for open sourcing code: so that [a large number of] other people can look at and contribute to and improve it. That is a rationale borne out of practicality, not ideology. > You're free to use whatever tools you like and whatever you > find practical. No one is taking your freedom to use closed > source tools. Don't get me wrong, I do prefer open to closed source. But look at the sentiments behind provisions of the GPL that expressly make it more difficult for code under that license to interoperate with code that is closed. To say that this is about promoting freedom (rather than taking away from it) is double-talk. Something that commies are famous for. I think the GPL is desirable, cool and useful in certain ways. Double-talk and disingenuous characterizations, however, are not. > First of all, writing is an "act" hence a service. If someone > were to hire you to write a piece of software you are essentially > rendering a service. To require someone to render a service for > free is illegal. I'd rather not get into some of the dodgier issues stated above, so let's just agree that it all boils down to the concept of 'ownership' of code. Do you believe that it is ok for someone or some entity to 'own' a piece of code (after having either written it themselves or paid money to have it written) in the sense of not being required to reveal it to others? I believe there is nothing wrong with the above, but at the same time I find it uncreasingly unenlightened and untenable to do so. A 'commie', however, would be someone who believes that the above is NOT ok solely out of "principle". And if you don't believe Stallman and Co. are of this mindset, you are either being deliberately dishonest or you fail to read their manifestos properly (bad disciple, bad...). Now, while I may categorically disagree with that sentiment, I don't necessarily feel the need to convert or change the minds of such people. What I really do have a *SEVERE* beef with is when such people start appropriating the meanings of everyday words like 'freedom' in a dishonest attempt to ennoble themselves and frame it in terms of a war between 'good' and 'evil'. >> In fact, ideology and politics only play a minor role in OSS' >> global success today. Stallman and Co. are essentially just >> glomming onto the 'Net phenomenon like they did Linus' kernel. > > The "net phenomenon" was built on FOSS. Think about that for a minute. I'm very much aware of that but that is largely a non-sequitur. Besides, especially at the beginning of the internet boom, most software powering it was BSD-licensed and/or derived from code licensed under such. Think about *that* for a minute. _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [email protected] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Read the Guidelines: http://linux.org.ph/lists Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
