That free beer analogy has never made any sense and never will. I honestly wonder why people keep repeating it.
On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 12:32:56PM +0100, Peter Kay (Syllopsium) wrote: >> From: "Julian Acosta" <j.acost...@gmail.com> >> Hello! >> >> I'm from the Postgraduate Departmen of the ITCC University from Mexico, >> >> Really we need to contact with Richard Stallman, just for give us his >> opinion and answer us some questions about free software, >> How can I contact him? >> What's his real email? > You'd be better contacting the FSF rather than Stallman directly - don't you > think that's overkill? > > He also may have conducted just one or two interviews and written a couple > of articles - just google. > > Bear in mind that their favoured GPL 'free' software license is not free. > It is > effectively free as in beer, but not as in free speech[1]. Their definition > includes being forced to give away source code, which whilst I understand > the viewpoint (of increasing free code), is by any measure a restriction of > your freedom. > > BSD licenses, on the other hand, do not restrict what you can do, > although it's > good karma to contribute back when using a large amount of free code from > others. > > [1] The GPL allows products to be sold, but seeing as this must include > source code, after one sale it only needs someone with a compiler to > distribute > it freely (as in beer). > > Peter
