Comments on: The Christian Ethos of Freedom Software

By: Ted Carnahan

Ted Carnahan — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 22:09:47 +0000

@BE!: Many of them are employed by corporations who finance their development in order to take advantage of the software themselves or to use it as part of their “solution” packages. IBM, Novell, Sun, etc. all do this. Some of it is independent wealth - Shuttleworth at Canonical is an example. Many other companies offer support, implementation, customization, etc. as their business model, e.g. MySQL AB, Redhat. A small amount of freedom software is supported by donations, but much of it is a labor of love.

I’ve argued in other places that the cost factor is not the most important issue to churches, but instead freedom is. I don’t mind people earning a living from creating software - I even (partly) do that myself. Freedom software isn’t necessarily any cheaper for churches.

The Freedom is not that there already are other programs to read your Freemind files, the freedom is that the code to Freemind and the format used is open and freely documented so that such other programs can be developed, and even if the author of Freemind goes away, you can still distribute your data and the software to read it. Your speech remains unrestricted by the choices of a developer.

By: BE!

BE! — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:47:59 +0000

Hmnn…. how do the creators of free/freedom software eat and even party? Independent wealth? Donations…. It seems to me, as you have said, the greatest issue is proprietary software, not whether or not it is paid for. Still, even Freemind and other open software seems to have its (their) own .xxx and can’t be opened by just anything.

By: Ted Carnahan

Ted Carnahan — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 19:35:21 +0000

Frankly, there are some who do make that argument. Even Richard Stallman is on record saying that there is a moral component to the choice between freedom and proprietary software. I don’t think that “paying = bad” represents the well-informed FSF-guided viewpoint, but it is out there. I suspect that some of it is motivated in part by what are, in the US, alternative economic theories (communism/communalism, pseudo-anarchism, etc.)

Still, though, I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush, and most of the argument between Freedom and Proprietary software comes down to what you can do with it, not whether you forked over money for it. Thanks for your comment!

Edit: Fixed a really ambiguous sentence!

By: Blaise Alleyne

Blaise Alleyne — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 09:52:43 +0000

Great post!

Though, I take issue with one line: “Over-zealous Freedom Software enthusiasts will sometimes argue that all proprietary software is evil - that paying for something is intrinsically wrong.”

Those, like the FSF, who argue that all software should be free are not arguing that “paying for something is intrinsically wrong;” you can sell free(dom) software. The argument that all software should be free is more of an argument that proprietary software places unfair restrictions on its users.

The way you phrased seems to me like a bit of a mischaracterization.