Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook

Re:Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook by kstrauser on Monday June 27, 2016 @10:20AM (#11986272)

"It does not have to be", but in practice it usually is (although he accepts BSD, even though it doesn't guarantee users' access to modifications). RMS advocates "liberated" software, or software that is itself free from being locked into a proprietary fork. That's the whole point of the GPL family of licenses. If you read the corpus of his works - I have - he very consistently talks about the importance of software freedom and how that Open Source can refer to many very non-Free things.

> Do people even read this whenever they quote it?

Did you? He writes:

"Yet some open source supporters have proposed “open source DRM” software. Their idea is that, by publishing the source code of programs designed to restrict your access to encrypted media and by allowing others to change it, they will produce more powerful and reliable software for restricting users like you. The software would then be delivered to you in devices that do not allow you to change it.

"This software might be open source and use the open source development model, but it won't be free software since it won't respect the freedom of the users that actually run it. If the open source development model succeeds in making this software more powerful and reliable for restricting you, that will make it even worse."

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Re:Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook by jordigh on Monday June 27, 2016 @01:05PM (#11987557)

Yes, he's talking about a disagreement there with the open source movement. But the overall thrust of the article is that FS and OS are the same thing, overall, but lead people to different conclusions. He explicitly addresses the misconception that people think that only copyleft is free:

    Another misunderstanding of “open source” is the idea 
    that it means “not using the GNU GPL.” This tends to  
    accompany another misunderstanding that “free software” 
    means “GPL-covered software.” These are both mistaken, 
    since the GNU GPL qualifies as an open source license 
    and most of the open source licenses qualify as free 
    software licenses. There are many free software 
    licenses aside from the GNU GPL.

And that's all I want to get across. rms isn't as loony as people who want to disagree with him make him out to be.

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