Non FOSS and Fedora

Rui Miguel Seabra rms at 1407.org
Mon Jan 12 10:16:58 UTC 2004


On Mon, 2004-01-12 at 09:51, Adam Kosmin wrote:
> Is it appropriate to encourage people to install non-FOSS software on
> Fedora?

Fedora News is a different project from Fedora.

IMO encouraging people to install non-Free software, regardless of what
operating system you are running on, is extremely bad advice.

You should always look suspiciously towards anyone advising you to
install something is bad for you, and generally evil (for instance, with
Sun's JDK you are not allowed to give a copy to a friend of yours, that
could revoke both your copy and his immediately since only Sun and
authorized distributers can give access to its JDK).

It is true that some non-Free software may perform certain tasks better
than their Free Software counterparts, but remember that non-Free
software brings a social cost that is very bad: social division between
those who can and those who can't.

With a proposed European Directive law that turns copyright infringement
a public crime being actively pursued by guys not at all unlike the BSA,
you might even face jail time for having unlicensed copies.

Remember that even though you can download Adobe Acrobat gratis, you
still have to abide to its license (ie, you have to click I Agree) and
doing so, you agree that you will not help your friend by giving him a
copy of a program in case he needs it.

That's one reason why all software should be Free Software, so you never
do something wrong by giving a copy of some program to your friend.

I think it's totally evil to turn the world upside down, into some
society where you can't legitimately help your friends because you're
not allowed to.

rui

-- 
+ No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown
+ Whatever you do will be insignificant,
| but it is very important that you do it -- Gandhi
+ So let's do it...?

Please AVOID sending me WORD, EXCEL or POWERPOINT attachments.
See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
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