Subject: Re: Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Encyclopedia
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net>
Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2001 00:47:14 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3213910032404080@naggum.net>

* kaz@ashi.footprints.net (Kaz Kylheku)
| The most common definition used in the consumer marketplace is that free
| means you don't have to pay.  Since you can obtain GNU-type software that
| way, this interpretation holds true.

  No, it does not.  If I get some gizmo for free, it is mine to use, abuse,
  destroy, take apart and use the parts for something else, etc.  If I get
  some GNU GPL'ed source code for "free", if I take it apart and use the
  parts for something else, I suddenly owe somebody else something.  This
  is _not_ what "free" means.  If I modify the free gizmo and find a way to
  make some better gizmo, I owe nobody anything.  If I do the same with a
  GNU GPL'ed program, I must give the new, better idea back to whoever gave
  it to me for "free".  I think there is an old idiom, "Indian giver" or
  something, which applies to people who do not _really_ give things away.

| For instance, a GNU program is *at least* as free as Internet Explorer,
| which Microsoft claims is free for download.

  Well, yes, as long as you do not use the source code, which is supposedly
  the whole point with the GNU GPL.

///
-- 
  Norway is now run by a priest from the fundamentalist Christian People's
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