Re: [Fsuk-manchester] RMS on Swedish Pirate Party vs Free Software

[Paul Waring]

On Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 04:06:17PM +0100, Pater Mann wrote:
> This was a piece of
> software that is only of interest to businesses (only large companies
> use EDI) so the only result from releasing the source would be to make
> it much more difficult for the company to recoup its costs in
> developing it - the software would be of no use to the "public".
> Therefore I cannot agree that *all* software should become free.

Actually, it's not just large companies that use EDI - small companies
who want to "talk" to the large companies also have to use it. Never
underestimate how useful a piece of software can be - Linus probably
didn't think that his kernel would be much use to anyone else when he
first wrote it, yet it is now responsible in part for the functioning of
a huge and diverse range of systems.

Paul

-- 
Paul Waring
http://www.pwaring.com