[pp.int.general] Why Free Software misses the point

[Mikko Särelä]

On Mon, 17 May 2010, Richard Stallman wrote:
> I don't think the Pirate Parties have endorsed the free software 
> movement's position that all software ought to be free.  And I am not 
> asking them to go that far (though I would not reject their support).
> 
> Someone began attacking the free software movement here, so I responded 
> to defend it from those attacks.
> 
> The free software movement does not propose to prohibit proprietary 
> software, at least not under present conditions where many people want 
> to use it.  I would like to see a world without proprietary software, 
> but laws prohibiting something that many people want tend to cause a lot 
> of pain and resistance.

I agree. 

As a side note, I believe copyright should only be available for 
software that has been published with source code. If the purpose of 
copyrights is, as with patents, to give incentives to produce things - 
to enrich public domain, then no legal protection should be given to 
closed source software. 

-- 
Mikko Särelä
"It is through exchange that difference becomes a blessing, not a
curse", Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain