[fsf-community-team] Reply:A first Excercise.

[R.Siddharth]

Hello All , 
This is siddharth . I am novice to the idea of free software and the
intricacies of the  GNU/Linux system , Its been only 6 months since I
shifted from Windows to GNU/Linux . I started with ubuntu jaunty , then
i got introduced to gNewSense when I was browsing the gnu.org site , In
the month of October (this year) I made a shift to gNewSense 2.3 . I
have successfully read the rms-essays and am learning commandline at
present .  


 I have been lurking in this list for sometime . I was  startled by
Dennis O'Reilly's post since I was a reverent reader of his blogs during
my non-GNU days . 


This will be my response to the blog post of his :  

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> Of course, the purveyors of these "free" services assert that there's
> nothing underhanded about their method of doing business. Many are
> up-front about their business model, whether it involves placing ads
> in their products and services, downloading unrelated browser toolbars
> along with their updates, charging only organizations who use the
> software while letting individuals have it for free, or offering only
> dumbed-down versions of the programs for free and requiring payment
> for access to all the products' features.
  
  I think your talking about freewares here and not free softwares , as
far as I know there no free software is  "offering only dumbed-down
versions of the programs for free and requiring payment for access to
all the products' features." Your use of  " 'free' services " is
ambiguous as you tend to combine the services provided through the
Internet with programs that can be download and run natively in the
computer .  
  

> One way to determine whether a program is really free is its use of
> the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License (GPL). The
> GNU GPL stipulates that the software can be used, copied, and
> distributed verbatim without limitation, though it cannot be changed.
> While you can usually get the source code of programs that adhere to
> the GNU GPL, the license differs somewhat from open-source software.

  If have you not read the GNU GPL , the news is : ' A GPLed program can
not only be distributed verbatim but also the modified version of the
program can be distributed gratis or for a cost provided that the
modified version of the program is also GPLed ' .
 
The Open-source software is not a license ! , but is just another
program that is licensed under any one of the free licenses available
today . The Free Software and Open Source Software are one and the
same , what really differs is the programmer's underlying Philosophy of
why they choose to write software that can be freely( free in the sense
of freedom and neccessarily meaning gratis)  used , distributed and
modified .   

The article prominently discusses about softwares that are available for
gratis and little does it shed light on 'Why Free Software?' . 

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I did love to hear comments , critiques about my reply to Dennis . 







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mail me : rsiddharth dot mail at gmail dot com.