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Re: Free software...
Hi Raj!
Ok. Ok. I have blabbered enough on this topic before too, and I know I
got to shut up.
On Wed, Mar 21, 2001 at 08:01:02AM +0530, Raju Mathur merrily said:
> Sandip, if the philosophical baggage makes you tired, please just
> ignore it. Just as you have the choice to ignore things, please grant
> the same choice to others -- to ignore or not to ignore.
I agree. But you GNU afficiandos are so vocal in your
philosophies(reminding me of a company which says "my product is good"
so many times that 90% of the world have started agreeing) that
sometimes I have seen newcomers to this field having the view that GNU
is the only way to go. This sometimes gets my goat. New folks(and even
older ones) should know all the options before them. If GNU becomes
prevalent just because it's people have been speaking too many times
about it, and other options suffer because they concentrate more on
work than philosophy, IMHO it is a tragedy.
>
> No one has lectured anyone on the philosophy during the course of this
> thread. No one has taken anything away from you. No one has forced
> you to swallow ideas which may be unpalatable to you. No one has
> bulldozed you. All I did was to point out that there's a difference
> between open source and free software. Is that what you object to?
> If not, what are you complaining about?
>
My apologies. By that statement I didn't mean to single out your
remarks or anybody's in THIS thread. It was just a general statement
on some people on this list who keep speaking on these issues.
I would also request GNU people to use their expression of freedom
with Freedom (note the capital F). This is to avoid hijacking of this
perfectly english word and confusing users. The GNU concept of Freedom
is different of common notion of the word and should not be confused
as such.
As the FreeBSD manual says - "While GNU GPL is more restrictive than
the BSD license, the restrictions is more regarding enforced access
than otherwise". That's the good news and I welcome it.
- Sandip
--
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Sandip Bhattacharya
sandipb @ bigfoot.com
http://www.sandipb.net
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