Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Whither open source

Keith Casey has an excellent discussion on the problems posed by GPL3. Clearly Stallman has decided it is all or nothing and may very well get nothing.

I had the privilege of seeing Stallman speak. He is emphatic that living in freedom means using free software. Having looked at the controversy over the voting machines and assorted spyware controversies, I am not sure Stallman is wrong.

On the other hand, companies want to be paid for their work. How can you provide for that in the absence of copyright?

One thing I do know, software is too important to leave to the techies and this is a discussion we all need to follow.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, I think the problem is a bit bigger than GPL3 by itself. In my post, I point out that there is a new interpretation of GPL2 going around that fundamentally changes the game.

I'm not saying stay away from either... I'm saying that this interpretation - along with its implications - has to be established as accurate or not. Right now, it's all up in the air.

Alice said...

You know more about this than I do. My main point is that it behooves non-geeks to pay attention to this.