Re: [linux-audio-dev] Free Software vs. Open Source: Where do *you* stand?

From: Dave Robillard <drobilla@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Tue Feb 21 2006 - 22:12:35 EET

On Tue, 2006-21-02 at 15:05 +0000, Chris Cannam wrote:
> An irony of both open source and free software is that they make it easy
> to forget that all software is almost always written by decent humans --
> for example, by implying that proprietary software developers are less
> moral and so less significant. If my free software work puts a company
> or its developers out of work, then that's a problem for my conscience.
> It's not a victory for free software.

Yes it is. The world of Free Software (basically the "public domain"
for the sake of argument) has been improved, and the world of computer
users in general is better off. Free software is about the _users_ (who
may also be developers of course), and a free replacement for a
proprietary product is most definitely a win for free software, and the
world.

If someone loses their job because their product was replaced with a
superior alternative, well... this is how markets are _supposed_ to
work. Inferior product? Bubye! In this case, the product was inferior
because of it's closedness (and associated user
repression/annoyance/monetary cost/etc), but the reason doesn't really
matter.

Noone can be blamed for losing their job working on an inferior product
but the people who created the product. It's certainly not MY fault it
can't compete..

-DR-
Received on Sun Feb 26 20:18:14 2006

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