Re: [fsf-community-team] Why should we talk about the freedom?

[Ted Smith]

On Wed, 2009-12-16 at 23:06 +1300, Simon Bridge wrote:
> really the four freedoms mainly apply to the freedom of programmers. 

the Four Freedoms, as I can recall them:

[0] Freedom to use the software for any purpose
[1] Freedom to study and modify the software to suit your needs
[2] Freedom to share the software
[3] Freedom to share modified versions of the software

The only one of those that could be said to require any programming
knowledge is [1]. Even that's a stretch; one can understand how a
program works without understanding exactly how those concepts are
implemented in a programming language.

When users don't have these freedoms, they face things like wars against
sharing, "home" and "pro" versions of software that are identical, but
configured differently, nagware, "non-commercial" licenses, etc. It's
quite clear how these hurt users; conversely, it's clear how their
express prohibition helps users, without ever coming into the realm of
users with any programming knowledge.

***

I feel like this is a short, clear critique of the main point of the
argument, and refutes it efficiently and concisely. One thing I've seen
on this list is a tendency towards verbosity; that's almost never
necessary in my experience and tends to hurt one's argument.

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