On Tue, Jan 05, 2010 at 03:39:42PM +0000, Neil Jerram wrote: > 2010/1/5 Viktor Lindberg <l...@leth.yi.org>: > > > > The Open Source Movement have instead choosen to abandom the ethical > > principle of freedom and only promote the use of Open Source software > > that might not be libre (free as in freedom), which is not the same > > idea as the Free Software movement has. [...] Not just open for anyone to > > examine as is the case with Open > > Source. > > FWIW, that is not my understanding. I believe that the practical > requirements of Open Source and Free Software are mostly identical. > The difference is one of philosophical emphasis: the Open Source > movement chooses to emphasize practical and tangible benefits from > using and working on their projects, whereas the Free Software > movement emphasizes freedom, even if it means working in the short > term with an inferior product.
I don't wish to be rude but you're not actually contradicting anything i'm saying afaict thought you are putting the words diffrently to emphasis that Open Source would have a better technical solution, i'm not sure that is the case, it might be true to some extent yes. But when you have virtues and value ethics highly you might have to avoid certain methods which you consider evil to some extent. And frankly to use any GNU/Linux distribution as an example, Free Software is not that technically inferior. In fact most GNU/Linux systems are have a much higher rate of free software as part of the system then non free open source software. There are even distributions that have strict policies agains including non free software that works perfectly well with perhaps the small exceptions of some few hardware drivers, in this case you can just avoid buying hardware from vendors who completle ignores the call for free software. Not to forget OpenBSD which is 100% Free Software and is renown for being a really good technical solution. Yes it is true that the Open Source movement likes to focus on the technical advantages of Open Source Software, but it's not true to say that good technical solution is ignored by the Free Software movement. However the big diffrence lies as you said in the philosophical part, that ethical apsects of software freedom, thus somtimes the Free Software movement is sometimes happy with a suboptimal solution for the sake of moral issues. (in my case i consider linux a subotpimal technical solution, but it allows for me to run a fully free OS) > I hope that's useful to someone (and correct!) ... > > Neil > > _______________________________________________ > Openmoko community mailing list > community@lists.openmoko.org > http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community