On Fri, 28 Sep 2001, David Johnson wrote: > back about people having their heads in the clouds. The pundits on > both sides have stipulated a choice between morality and pragmatism.
I can only disagree with this. RMS has never said that free software was unpragmatic, or that a pragmatic person would necessarily choose non-free software. The argument is that, pragmatic *or not*, free software is the answer on social grounds. The argument of the OSI is that free software is the answer on technical merits. The disagreement lies in the differences between FSF-free software and OSI-open source; surely, if they were the same, RMS would not argue that the free software and open source communities are different (he would still argue, I'm sure, that the OSI trivializes what he considers the most important aspects). Certainly, there are OSD-compliant licenses which are not free software licenses according to the FSF - accordingly, claiming that pragmatic open source is every bit as free, and social free software is every bit as pragmatic, can not be supported. -- Matthew Weigel Research Systems Programmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] ne [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3