[Fsuk-manchester] Re: Canonical's bad decisions

[Bob Ham]

On Wed, 2009-06-17 at 20:14 +0100, Lucy wrote:

> Canonical don't make a profit and aren't expected to for another few
> years. They are using some proprietary software to try to make some
> money, a business model which is becoming outdated.

And this proprietary software damages users' freedoms and the cause of
free software.  It doesn't matter what else they've done, this act alone
puts them in conflict with the principles of free software, and the
cause.

Arguing that it's OK to release proprietary software while profitability
is achieved is like saying "everyone can have freedom of speech except
for this one guy who's not allowed to say anything bad about the
government, just while we fight these enemies."  (Why does Brian Haw
come to mind?)

It seems that Canonical are committed to the future possibility of free
software as opposed to actual free software.  You can't open intentions
in emacs.


The question I have to ask is: will this software be released under a
free license if and when they become profitable?  I would be surprised
if that happened.  I'd love to *be* surprised, of course.

I recall that there was a similar situation with a company called
TransGaming and a product called Cedega.  Promises were made that this
proprietary fork of Wine was only temporary, no freedoms were really
being trodden on because their forked source code would be freed once
they achieved a profitable state.

I looked at their website a few years later.  Miraculously, all mention
of releasing their tree had disappeared.  It's been some 8 years since
the fork and they seem to be pretty profitable.  They have contributed a
few bits of code to Wine.  On occasion.  Cedega is, of course, still
proprietary.


I'll be watching Canonical.


-- 
Bob Ham <address@hidden>

for (;;) { ++pancakes; }

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