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Re: [Fsfe-uk] Why FS is a Good Thing: Draft 3
From: |
Vanessa Conchodon |
Subject: |
Re: [Fsfe-uk] Why FS is a Good Thing: Draft 3 |
Date: |
Fri, 29 Mar 2002 16:12:37 +0100 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.8) Gecko/20020214 |
Hi!
Good job :o) But I have few remarks ;o)
Sorry if my remarks have already been discussed on the ML
(I have still lots of FSFE-UK mails to read...).
Ramin Nakisa wrote:
(...)
> The Free Software Foundation,
founded by Richard Stallman in 1984, exists to write and support
Free Software through it's spearhead project known as GNU (GNU's Not
Unix) which is a collection of programs for a Unix-like operating
system, and a software licence known as the GNU General Public
Licence (GPL).
I would have said "GNU whose goal is to develop a complete Unix-
like operating system by writing a collection of programs" or
something like that.
By writing "for a Unix-like operating system" at the end of the
line, people can think about "unix-like OS"=linux.
But linux is not a GNU project. The GNU kernel is hurd.
Most of people talk about linux or GNU/linux as they know
applications are GNU. But few knows that writing a kernel
is also a GNU project.
Besides "a free software licence"
Btw I would have added something like "The Free Software
Foundation was the first association related to Free
Software. Founded by Richard Stallman in 1984, it..."
as FSF is not the only association who defends free software
and who wants to write Free Software.
But they were the first to give so much importance to it
and the GNU project and the GPL gave ideas to lots of people
and most of all, gave a definition of Free Software.
Free Software such as that distributed under the GPL ensures four
freedoms: (i) the freedom to run the program, for any purpose, (ii)
the freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your
needs, (iii) the freedom to redistribute copies so you can help
others and (iv) the freedom to improve the program, and release your
improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
I suggest a list (itemize) instead of writing all in the same
sentence. More visual. These 4 freedoms are VERY important
to understand.
The Association for Free Software supports the use of Free Software
because:
Adding "(AFFS)" could be nice.
\item Most software is written in-house and never sold, and in this
case software patents are a hindrance. Free Software is not a
commodity, it is more like infrastructure -- freely available to all
businesses and an enabler of progress and innovation.
I'm not sure to well understand what you mean and that talking
about patents here is a good idea.
\item Support for Free Software is often much better than support for
proprietary software. Mailing lists, bulletin boards and newsgroups
exist where users post questions and receive prompt and helpful
replies. People are encouraged to report bugs and these are quickly
fixed.
What is exactly "bulletin boards"?
\item [GNU] which provides the bulk of basic utility programs.
Is GIMP basic?
\item [KDE, Gnome, GNUstep, and XFCE] a selection of desktop
environments with attractive and easy to use graphical interfaces.
\item [OpenOffice] a word-processing, email, spreadsheet and
presentation package that is compatible and visually similar to
Microsoft Office.
Similar in functionalities too (not only visually).
Several things are missing on my opinion:
- free software is a gage of inovation as people could look
at the code, learn to do things, improve them and even
create something new according to the experience of others
FS projects.
- companies can also modify a programm in a commercial context.
They can modify a FS to correspond to their needs without
asking the author "can I do this?", according to the
licence.
That is not possible with lots of proprietary software:
they have to contact the company to ask for a new
feature that could take a long time to obtain.
- (Although I think free software is the *right* thing)
Even if a company wants to keep their main product
as proprietary, they could turn parts of their products
as free software and still use them (under LPGL for
example). The company will receive help for the free
software parts of their products.
- I don't have seen anywhere that Free Software was
not limited to linux. I mean that we can find lots and
lots of free software on Windows system or mac or
other and that is really an advantage for a company
to use it as they won't be limited by one specific OS
(a secretary can use the same openoffice as an engineer
but one is on Windows, the other on Linux).
Even if for economic or other reasons they can't
change now their OS, they can use Free Software.
If I said something that was previously discussed,
just ignored me ;o)
--
Vanessa Conchodon ^ee^
(_/ `-^-.
e-mail : nessie'at'little-monster"."org .`___ \
(_) (_) \_^_.