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Re: re: freedom


I can't resist the opportunity to say a few things.
Sorry to those sick of hearing the arguments about free software.

On Wed, Apr 02, 2003 at 05:41:05PM +0200, Gangolf Jobb wrote:
> that's the way it works! thinking about a problem in your institute all 
> the day while you are getting paid from public money, and then typing it 
> into your computer at home. that's theft. how much spare time do you 
> have, anyway? is that enough to work on such a large project? i doubt ..

This has nothing to do with the license issue.

> >Morever, you argument is completely wrong, at least for France. In
> >France, there are special laws about university work that allows
> >reasearchers to make commercial uses of their work, as long as the
> >university receive part of the money. Commercial uses of a software as
> >understand by most french universities is not compatible with free
> >software. This means that if my work had been conducted at my
> >university, you will not even think about using it.

> i wrote "... support commercial use ... ", and not "giving away for 
> free". taking a fee for good software is ok. we have similar laws here 
> in germany, and i am not completely uninformed. however, in most cases 
> the scientific work can be used for free. 

This is not scientific work, it is a computer program.  The
underlying theories can indeed be used for free.  But if you want to
use the code, you must obey the authors' license.

> the problem with the gpl is, that it does not offer the
> possibility to buy a license. 

Actually, authors can sell licenses independently of releasing code
under the GPL.  It's just that many choose not to.  I could write a
program, GPL it, and sell you a non-GPL license to incorporate it
into your commercial software if I wanted.  With a group project,
though, it's hard to get all authors' permission to do so.

> it even prohibits commercial use - in the sense of selling software.

No, selling software is fine.  It's just that the customers get
access to the source and are allowed to copy it after they buy it.
Red Hat sells GPL software, and even gets many customers to buy
multiple licenses.  If you want to sell copies of GNU Emacs, that's
your right (see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html).

> why not selling software? this is nothing else than selling computer 
> hardware or other things. why don`t we have a "free hardware foundation" 

Groups are working on various hardware projects.

And one other issue.  There's a significant difference between the
free software community and Communism.  Using free software is
voluntary.  If you don't like it, you are free to ignore it and find
some non-GPL scientific computation package.  Many people have
contributed their efforts to this free(GPL) software.  They asked
for nothing except that their work shouldn't be used to turn a
profit in non-free software.

Here's my (not-all-inclusive) rant on why I like free software:

It's annoying to have some great program that does almost what you
want, but not be able to modify it because you don't have the code.
The manufacturer may not have the expertise or willingness to make
changes for one customer, and even if they do, it would cost much
more and take longer.  Using free software allows customizability.
Having the source does this, but science requires reproducibility.
If I make a change to the source of proprietary software, I can't
share that with the community to verify my results.  Also, sometimes
it's hard/impossible to get additional licenses for an older version
of a program which is no longer supported.  Or maybe you want it on
a different computer system.  Maybe you changed jobs and want to use
the software you are used to, but the manufacturer went bankrupt and
the new owner doesn't even know they own the program.  With free
software, you just keep a copy around and use it as desired.  With
non-free software, you have to spend more money to pay more
programmers to write a different program to replace functionality
that you had in the first place.  There are many benefits to free
software that non-free software just doesn't have, and when
programmers choose to give users these benefits, that's their
freedom.

-- 
Jeff Spirko   spirko at lehigh dot edu   spirko at yahoo dot com   WD3V   |=>

The study of non-linear physics is like the study of non-elephant biology.

All theoretical chemistry is really physics;
and all theoretical chemists know it. -- Richard P. Feynman 


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