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Re: [LUG] GLUG - free and non-free



On Monday 11 October 2004 1:28 pm, Martin Howitt wrote:
Writing code costs time. For most people, that == money. For the lucky
ones, it doesn't.

That makes an awfully large number of 'lucky' developers! No, it's not luck, 
it's a choice. In a lot of cases, it is a choice prompted by a respect for 
those who wrote the GNU code that we all rely on. We're talking about 
compiled code mostly, and that - on GNU/Linux and numerous embedded platforms 
- means gcc. Gcc could easily have been a proprietary compiler owned by MIT 
and sold for hundreds of dollars per copy. It is free software because of a 
choice that was made. We all have that same choice.

Take games for example. There are plenty of (relatively small) GPL games
out there, but to bring this conversation back to where we started, there
are AFAIK no GPL games on the scale of Doom, because the resources and
management required to bring a game of that level of complexity out cost a
lot of money which couldn't be recouped if a GPL licence was used.

That may be true for games, but it doesn't apply across the spectrum - GnuCash 
is a large project, Gnome is huge, then there are other free software 
projects that are compatible with the GPL, like Apache. Debian, KDE, these 
are not small projects but are all supported as free software.

There is a simple reason why games are not keeping up:

Hardware lock-in.

The 'advanced' 3D features of most graphics cards have been locked away under 
EULA and NDA for years now - some are finally coming through but it is common 
to hear the refrain from users that they can get X working but not the 3D 
acceleration etc. Where this barrier was not put in place by proprietary 
attitudes of 'I/We own this and you'd better grovel for a copy', development 
has leapt forwards.

Nobody owns software, least of all the author.
Nobody has the right to stop me getting a copy of any software freely.
Code is NOT a material object and cannot be considered alongside physical 
objects that require materials to be consumed by production. Rules that apply 
to a car or a sandwich do NOT apply to speech or code.

We take free speech for granted and many have grown up with the idea that code 
was never free - here's the news: It always was free and there are no legal 
grounds to prevent such freedom. Freedom of code is a legal principle the 
same as freedom of speech.

We're used to people quoting:
"I don't agree with what you say but I will defend your right to say it"

What we believe about speech is and always has been true of code, itself just 
a subset of speech.

We've been spun a lie by the proprietary dominance and we risk forgetting the 
reality. Reclaim the freedom of code - it hasn't gone away but it is often 
forgotten.

Code IS Free, make your choice and reclaim your freedom.

-- 

Neil Williams
=============
http://www.codehelp.co.uk/
http://www.dclug.org.uk/
http://www.isbn.org.uk/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/isbnsearch/

http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x8801094A28BCB3E3

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