Re: Questions for the board election candidates



Hi,

On 05/22/2012 09:58 AM, Robert Nordan wrote:
1) "Open Source" or "Free Software"?

This is about personal philosophy: Do you prefer the pragmatism of the
Open Source Initiative or the political idealism of the Free Software
Foundation? (Some of the candidates have already flagged a stance on
this.)

Please don't equate Open Source and "pragmatism", and Free Software and "idealism". This suggests that Free Software is not also pragmatic, or that Open Source developers are not idealists. This is a pet hate of mine, and frames anyone who calls themselves a Free software developer as not living in the real world. Free Software is all about pragmatic idealism - using the system against itself to give users rights we feel they should have as software authors.

And, in fact, Open Source is also about pragmatic idealism - using a different brand for the same thing to avoid an unfortunate ambiguity doesn't change the fact that Open Source developers also care about giving users rights they would not otherwise have.

Thanks,
Dave.

--
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dneary gnome org
Jabber: nearyd gmail com


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