Re: Formation of Gnome-user-foundation

[Philip Van Hoof <pvanhoof gnome org>]

On Mon, 2005-03-14 at 18:44 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote:
>     I really like the slogan of Ubuntu: "Humanity to others". It gives me a
>     valid reason for doing opensource development. An important reason.
> 
> The slogan is a good one.  Sad to say, Ubuntu doesn't entirely follow
> the implied philosophy: it distributes non-free programs with its
> version of GNU/Linux.  I hope that Ubuntu's conduct won't undermine
> the persuasive effects of the slogan.

I'm not convinced that the distribution of some non-free softwares is
currently undermining the persuasive effets of the slogan.

Nevertheless it's good that people, like yourself, care about and guard
the principles of free software. That way, I as a developer can focus on
development. Personally, I've been greatly influenced by the free
software movement.

But I'm also convinced that there's other software projects who aren't
pure free software but still worth considering.

I'm the technical type of person who cares about humanity. There's
different ways to be humane. I know free software is one way. I am,
however, also convinced that various other licensing schemes can also
help being humane.

> If you find that slogan resonates with you, I would guess that your
> views are closer to the free software movement than to the open source
> philosophy.  The free software movement says that we as software
> developers have a moral obligation to respect the freedom of the users
> of our software.  GNOME is a prime example of the free software
> philosophy.  It was founded specifically to prevent non-free software
> from making inroads into our community.

> If you support the free software movement, one easy way to help us is
> by saying "free software" rather than "open source".

Next time, I'll call it "humane software". Then everybody will be happy.

I hope



-- 
Philip Van Hoof, Software Developer @ Cronos
home: me at freax dot org
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http://www.freax.be, http://www.freax.eu.org