Re: RE: About the article

[Cees de Groot <cg@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>This is confusing, we'll need a dictionnary if word do not mean what a
>dictionnary tell us what they mean :-)
>
<OffTopic>
Didier,

Are you maybe native French-speaking? It doesn't seem to me, from your
writing, that you're native English. My French isn't worth a penny, but
I seem to recall that you can translate "Free" in two ways: "Libre"
and "Gratuit". "Free Software", as per the definition of the term's
inventor, Richard Stallman, uses "Free" in the meaning of "Libre", 
like in "free from restrictions on copying, use, etcetera".

Read up on this - I think the file MOTIVATION in the GNU Emacs distribution
(you're likely to find this with archie or ftpsearch) has a lengthy
explanation of the ideas behind freeware.

"Open Source" is a term, in my eyes, that has been invented to make the
concept digestible by suits who couldn't cope with the fact that people
actually want to share software; as such, it has been become quite
contaminated in the year or so the term exists, so I think we should stick
with "freeware". The difference lies in the numbers of "you may think it is
open source but we've got you by your balls anyway" licenses invented by
corporate lawyers at places like IBM, Sun and Apple.

See the Debian Free Software Guidelines at www.debian.org for more information
on the (quite strict) definition of free software.
</OffTopic>

-- 
Cees de Groot               http://www.cdegroot.com     <cg@xxxxxxxxxxxx>


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