Subject: Re: help! absolute beginner From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1998/12/12 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3122429737934433@naggum.no> * Gareth McCaughan <gjm11@dpmms.cam.ac.uk> | I'm puzzled. I can see rabidly anti-commercial attitudes in the "free | software" movement, but not *recently adopted* ones. The only really big | recent changes I can think of are (1) Netscape going into "free | software", and (2) the whole "open source" business. How is either of | those "rabidly anti-commercial"? ok, so maybe I have not been paying 100% attention for the past year or so, but in my opinion, the Free Software Foundation has changed its view on commercial software. it used to be that GNU/Linux was good because it was free software. _something_ has changed to make it bad for commercial operators to use GNU/Linux and to ship commercial (non-free) software for GNU/Linux. this came as a surprise to me, as did the pronouncement that non-free software was "evil". I don't want to be evil, and one way not to be is simply to leave the people who might call me that. "open source" (whatever it actually _is_) is a competitor to the Free Source Foundation, for good or bad. I'm beginning to think that maybe people lost track of their real purpose, like the IRS has lost track of financing the government, and government in general has lost track of providing for people's safety. in becoming institutions, something died. I'm frankly worried that Open Source is a symptom of something that doesn't really work rather than a cure for a problem. #:Erik -- man who cooks while hacking eats food that has died twice.