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[isthisthingon]

Wonderful writeup that expresses precisely how I feel about the issue: Why software should not have owners.

And, above all, society needs to encourage the spirit of voluntary cooperation in its citizens. When software owners tell us that helping our neighbors in a natural way is “piracy”, they pollute our society's civic spirit.

"Cooperation is more important than copyright"

[vibratingquickly]

I tend to agree more with Torvald's view on FOSS and Stallman,

http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2008/11/black-and-white.html

If there was no economical incentive to make cutting edge software I highly doubt that the computing world would be what it is now (no Gui's, for example). Computers certainly won't be as popular as they are right now and far out of reach from the average person.

Co-operation, freedom and all that is fine and FOSS is what I prefer given the choice but I feel there's nothing wrong with buying or selling proprietary software; they're essential for making progress or atleast getting more people involved in computers.

[isthisthingon]

I hear what you're saying about Stallman's "black/white" ness, though I think it's less of a blind ON/OFF approach to the world and more of an adherence to his core beliefs about humanity and freedom.  I kind of expect it from him since he's basically a man on a life mission.  Linus reminds me of Woz in many ways.  He'll be in Toyota commercials soon enough.  He's already become a Nexus One cheerleader.

But I think these people are extremely different.  Stallman is about freedom and equality first, software and everything else later.  Torvald is just another brilliant geek who marked his tech-territory in the world.  The only reason we even use the term "open source" is because businesses refused to embrace something called "free software."  However, "open source" devolved into a term that's used by companies to strengthen their quality image - even if the source is closed.  It's good enough for some people to say "well, it began with open source so it's, well... um, it's kind of open source."  And she's kind of pregnant 

What could be cheesier than leveraging open source for the cost savings and proven stability then closing it up and outlawing anyone from reading your changes to the code?  That's the main difference.  Frankly I'm in support of having a license that protects the software itself from the greedy hands of those who would gladly exchange our literacy for their profits.

The reason has always been that I don't like single-issue people, nor do I think that people who turn the world into black and white are very nice or ultimately very useful. The fact is, there aren't just two sides to any issue, there's almost always a range or responses, and "it depends" is almost always the right answer in any big question.

I guess we know how he feels about Gandhi.  Linus is Spock with Captain Kirk's ego.  Stallman is a mammal, a real bleeding heart communist liberal of a mammal

BTW,  to the Cache  vibe

[vsloathe]

His economic arguments are what we've tried to articulate over and over to anyone who would listen, and in my opinion they quash any sort of arguments for the concept of "intellectual property".

But his idea that has always resonated most with me, and the one that would seal the deal EVEN IF EVERYTHING ELSE HE SAID WAS 100% FALSE is:

Society also needs freedom. When a program has an owner, the users lose freedom to control part of their own lives.

That right there. I am just not naive enough to trust my livelihood to some software that I cannot examine. I'll play games on it, but I'm not doing anything mission-critical on it. This is a requirement for my employment as well. If you require me to run a closed-source OS on my workstation, I wish you luck in your quest for a qualified candidate.