Firefox market share bounces back 6710

On Mon, 05 Dec 2005 19:48:25 -0600, Lin¿nut

I see. To take an extreme example, if your interests were served by a group that was intent on doing something evil (note, i'm not saying the FSF wants to do evil, i'm just using an extreme example), but you knew that they could never achieve those goals, would you still support them?

That's called "situational ethics".

If you support the FSF, yet you don't believe in their goal of making it impossible to protect your rights as an author (for the good of the community), then you're simply piggybacking on them to get your own intersts satisfied.

No, I think the FSF, through deception and misrepresentation can do a lot of damage to intellectual property rights, and make it very difficult ot make a living.

Look carefully at this exchange. It happens all the time. Someone like yourself says "no compulsion is necessary", to which I provide examples of how it is, to which you then say 'but you don't need to use it'. That's beside the point and doesn't address the original statement.

I find that the open source model, while vastly cheaper, produces software at a far slower rate than commercial software. Commercial software, by its nature, produces software that people will pay for, ie what the end users want. open source models produce software that the DEVELOPERS want. Occasionally those intersts insect, but more often than not, they don't.

By turning the world into a forced "Free Software" environment, you create an environment where users don't get what they want.

Because they have no other choice at this point in time.

RMS created the FSF, and thus it's goals.

RMS is very good at writing things which get people motivated to help him achieve his goals, but it's only seldomly that he seems to let his real intent out. He's hooked you by pandering to your intersts, just like any politician would, regardless of his true goals.

While I disagree that it's a social model, I do agree that things have to change. I just don't agree that the GPL is the right answer.