Why Would Fedora be Free ? Can it be Trusted?

[Jeff Vian]

Rui Miguel Seabra wrote:

>On Wed, 2004-05-12 at 08:23 -0400, Chalonec Roger wrote:
>  
>
>>1.  Why is fedora free and why would people work on it for free?
>>    
>>
>
>In general you used to have the following freedoms with software:
>
>   0) run the program for any purpose
>   1) study the program and adapt it as needed
>   2) distribute copies
>   3) publish modified versions
>
>  
>
<snip>

>>2. Some people are concerned that since Fedora is open source that they
>>don't know where the software comes from so they can't trust it.  How
>>can they trust it?
>>    
>>
And they should trust a proprietory vendor?  ;-)
Microcoft has lost several lawsuits because of *lifting* other peoples 
work.  IIRC, one in particular was Drivespace (used in dos 5/6, and Win 
95/98) which was lifted from DoubleSpace.

>Well, they don't know where any software comes from unless they study
>the source code, do they?
>
>They can give a certain amount of trust to the guys that are selling
>them copies, but not to the software per se, can they?
>
>With Free Software... look and behold... you have the freedom to study
>the code and adapt it to your needs.
>