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Joseph Graham has written a very short blog post about software freedom and the direction we might take to achieve it.
The free software movement, founded in the 80s by Richard Stallman and supported by the Free Software Foundations 1, 2, 3, 4, preaches that we need software that gives us access to the code and the copyright permissions to study, modify and redistribute. While I feel this is entirely true, I think it's not the best way to explain Free Software to people.
I think the problem we have is better explained more like this:
"Computer technology is complicated and new. Education about computers is extremely poor among all age groups. Technology companies have taken advantage of this lack of education to brainwash people into accepting absurd abuses of their rights."
Source : The Free Software movement is Barking up the wrong tree
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @11:35PM (2 children)
Microsoft refers to a lot of their software as "open source"
The correct term is "open core".
In order to run their "open" stuff, you will need to pay M$ for -something-.
Typically, that's a Windoze license at a minimum.
...and any time you go to get their "open" stuff, take note of the PATENTS.TXT file that comes with that.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2017, @04:55AM (1 child)
No.
"Open core" refers to software whose core functionality is open source, but which also has proprietary additions available. Often such a product is mostly useless for its intended task without the proprietary parts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2017, @06:58AM
We're very close to agreeing.
You say "available"; I say "mandatory".
Without the payware, you can look at the code all you want but it won't be able to actually do anything useful for you.
It's the reason that a new term needed to be invented.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]