non-free software

[Rahul Sundaram]

Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-10-14 at 19:43 +1300, Martin Langhoff wrote:
>> On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 7:09 PM, Ralf Corsepius <rc040203 at freenet.de> wrote:
>>>> The free
>>>> availability of binaries is never a requirement for any of the free and
>>>> open source licenses.
>>> This is what RedHat propaganda is telling you.
>> I've done several papers in Law School specifically on software
>> licensing and analysis of GPL and related licenses. Rahul's statement
>> is correct -- no licenses require availability of binaries.
>>
>> Might be awkward or less than helpful, but it's comfortably within the
>> rules of the license.
> I am not doubting this: It's a different definition of free.

It is the most commonly accepted definition and well established within 
the free and open source software community. Free software and non-free 
software have a very specific meaning in this context. You are well 
aware of that. Using it in another way deliberately is just misleading. 
If you try to redefine it to mean commercial instead of proprietary, 
then, that would lead to the interpretation, that say Debian or 
RPMFusion non-free repository packages are only available for a fee 
which is clearly not true. Confusing betwen proprietary and commercial 
is a classic mistake we shouldn't be propagating.

Rahul