I got an opportunity to listen Dr. Richard Stallman. He clarified what "Free Software" actually meant and also tried to remove some misconceptions that has crept in. My motivation behind this post is to give my personal response to what I heard. In doing so I also try to convey what "Free Software", the philosophy that Dr. Stallman upholds mean.
First of all, the "Free" in "Free Software" is about freedom and not about the price. More precisely, it values the following four freedoms of a citizen - to use, learn, copy, modify and redistribute - the software. The freedoms of being able to learn the working of the software and to modify/redistribute it entails the freedom of access to source code. (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html). To reiterate the idea, here is an extract from the GNU GPL (Version 3, 29 June 2007), the license used by the majority of software that are considered "free" - "Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for them if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs, and that you know you can do these things." (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html, look out in the "Preamble").
Following is my personal response to this philosophy. It would be great if all our programmers followed this. But I doubt if I can remain faithful to the philosophy when I develop some software myself. Here is the reason. Even if I could distribute my software as "Free Software" and still charge for my efforts, the condition on having to make the source code simply stops me from making any considerable money, Why ? Now that the source code is available, the "opportunistic" public can buy one single copy of my software and subsequently make it available free of cost to every one out there ! Hence, my worry is, the philosophy doesn't seems to be economically sustainable.
If someone has a clarification about this, I would be happy to listen.
First of all, the "Free" in "Free Software" is about freedom and not about the price. More precisely, it values the following four freedoms of a citizen - to use, learn, copy, modify and redistribute - the software. The freedoms of being able to learn the working of the software and to modify/redistribute it entails the freedom of access to source code. (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html). To reiterate the idea, here is an extract from the GNU GPL (Version 3, 29 June 2007), the license used by the majority of software that are considered "free" - "Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for them if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs, and that you know you can do these things." (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html, look out in the "Preamble").
Following is my personal response to this philosophy. It would be great if all our programmers followed this. But I doubt if I can remain faithful to the philosophy when I develop some software myself. Here is the reason. Even if I could distribute my software as "Free Software" and still charge for my efforts, the condition on having to make the source code simply stops me from making any considerable money, Why ? Now that the source code is available, the "opportunistic" public can buy one single copy of my software and subsequently make it available free of cost to every one out there ! Hence, my worry is, the philosophy doesn't seems to be economically sustainable.
If someone has a clarification about this, I would be happy to listen.
Comments
Post a Comment