[Discuss] OSHW & Economics

Javier Serrano Javier.Serrano at cern.ch
Wed Nov 20 19:42:46 UTC 2013


On 11/19/2013 11:09 PM, Matt Maier wrote:
> The "open source" community, in the sense that it excludes the "free"
> community, does not have a problem with licensing their work to allow
> others to do anything they want with it. That's actually the whole
> point. The "free" community, on the other hand, is defined by the fact
> that they place restrictions on what other people can do with their
> work...for moral reasons.

>From the GPL preamble:

"To protect your rights, we need to prevent others from denying you
these rights or asking you to surrender the rights. Therefore, you have
certain responsibilities if you distribute copies of the software, or if
you modify it: responsibilities to respect the freedom of others."

This sounds reasonable to me, and I of course respect anybody who disagrees.

> I think you're viewing this situation through a "free" lens but
> mistakenly calling it "open source." The values of the "free" movement
> aren't all that popular in the software world, and they are even less
> popular in the hardware world, since it's so much harder to do anything
> for free. 

I can only speak for our case at CERN BE-CO-HT. We were more inspired by
Free Software than by Open Source Software. The only reason we don't
call our stuff "Free Hardware" is that it's even more misleading than
"Free Software". The "free" in "Free Software" is of course about
freedom (not price), a subject which is not the main focus in Open
Source. Both stands are respectable, of course, and we feel at ease in
both families, but one thing is for sure: the choice of the word "free"
has caused endless confusion. Even if you are aware of what the "free"
in Free Software means, as I am sure you are, it's too damn easy to fall
into the trap of talking about "free beer" when criticizing Free
Software, as you just did in the preceding paragraph.

Cheers,

Javier


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