Il giorno ven, 16/08/2013 alle 12.55 -0400, Richard Stallman ha scritto:
[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider
[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,
[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example.
Until today, I was thinking of GitHub as a service, pure and simple, and believed that the programs used to access it are git (which is free) and a web browser (which can be free). Thus, no nonfree software required.
To Richard: I would like a clarification in this respect. If I use a non-free web service (for instance, a web service for which the source code to install it and run it locally is not available), even through a web API, is it really different from linking to a proprietary library from my GPL program? I am talking on *ethical*, not technical grounds. Calling a function inside a proprietary library is just passing in some arguments and awaiting a return value, after the code inside the library does something. Calling a web service is just the same, except I have usually to serialize my values to be passed as parameters, and the code runs remotely instead than locally. But I still don't control what's happening in the middle. Do you think it is ethically acceptable for a free-software program to use a proprietary web service API? Thanks, -- Matteo Settenvini FSF Associated Member Email : matteo member fsf org -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GCS/E d--(-) s+: a- C+++ UL+++ P+ L++++>$ E++>+++ W+++ N+ o? w--- O M- V- PS++ PE- Y+>++ PGP+++ t++ 5 X- R+ !tv b+++ DI++ D++ G++ e++ h+ r++ y+ ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
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