Although you still find some members of the free software community who automatically view business with suspicion, for the most part the community considers the multibillion dollar open source industry as a validation of its beliefs. Business and free software are so closely intertwined that kernel developers Linus Torvalds and Andrew Morton are employed by the Linux Foundation, a non-profit consortium of corporations. But in recent months, this cooperation is showing signs of becoming strained.
Full story »
aboutblank
15 years 46 weeks 4 days 15 hours ago
The Free Community Is Opposed to Business?
I'm not really certain whether Byfield believes what he has written or whether he is merely reporting the community sentiment. What I do know is that is acceptable to conduct commercial business with free software as long as it is performed in an ethical manner. The point of free software is so that the users of computer software can live in freedom. This cannot happen whenever they are not granted full rights practise to the four freedoms of free software. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
If free software is truly free, then it is up to the organisational unit (individual, non-commercial group project, business entity, other) to decide when to practise freedoms 2 and 3. It is all right to decide to never practise them at all! It is also fine to charge fees associated with practising these liberties; that is perform commercial business with free software.
However, it is not acceptable whenever any organisational unit takes the initiative to *perform freedom 2 or 3* AND **subjugates users during that process**. Subjugating the user is an evil practise that should not be tolerated. We should all do our part to really understand the implications of freedom so that we can communicate to others as to why they should value it.