Stallman On the State of Free Software 25 Years On

TRNick writes "What's the state of free software, 25 years after GNU's birth? TechRadar has an interview with Richard Stallman to find out. Stallman thinks free software is making good progress: 'Nowadays hardware developers are also increasingly likely to publish the interface specs so that we can develop free software that works with the hardware. Perhaps we are turning the corner, but we still have a big fight on our hands before all computer users have freedom.' But how many of us actually run an operating system that Richard Stallman would consider free? Many of the more popular GNU/Linux distributions, including Mandriva and Ubuntu, bundle proprietary code with their free software packages. Perhaps free software has reached a large enough install base that companies are happy to use it for their own gain, but aren't quite so willing to make their own commitments to free software development. How important this is to the success of free software depends on how strong your stance is on freedom is."

obligatory

[ionix5891]

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/open_source.png [xkcd.com]

Re:Free NOT EQUAL TO freedom

[BrokenHalo]

Fortunately, the concept of 'Free Software' has nothing to do with 'being able to have a thing or service for free'.

Indeed. And we are equally permitted to choose our preferred "degrees of freedom".

Which is why there is nothing shameful about using proprietary drivers from nVidia (to use a particularly useful and pertinent example) on our Linux or BSD machines, since they are simply providing commercial support for a truly "free" platform. If one wants to sit on a high horse and pontificate about the purity of our freedom, that is fine, but if we don't want to be treated as lepers, it makes sense to meet commercial interests halfway.

Re:Free NOT EQUAL TO freedom

[3-State Bit]

>The term 'free' is an unfortunate consequence of there being no more specific word in English.

That might have been true 25 years ago, but today you can just call it "freedom software".

(with the added bonus that if it's not freedom software it's terrorist software -- a pretty good description of the crap a convicted monopolist pushes).

Re:Free NOT EQUAL TO freedom

[abigsmurf]

Unfortunately that term results in "Who's libre?" responses.

Re:Richard S. Raymond && Eric Stallman?

[osu-neko]

OMG. This is no joke: I thought Richard Stallman and Eric S. Raymond were the same guy, for the last YEARS! I never thought that there would be two crazy bearded men loving weapons and GNU!

Really? I suspect half the population of /. fits that description (I do). :p

Re:Free NOT EQUAL TO freedom

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

In Germany, we have 3 different words for "free" when used as in beer, and a law defining what each word means, when used in business.

In Germany ... free ... beer ?!

Sign me up!