Re: OT: was Re: STARTTLS support in SM??

Tony Mechelynck <antoine.mechelynck@gmail.com> wrote:

[followup set to mozilla.general]

> The word "free", in electronic data processing, may have two
> different meanings:
> 
> - "free as in beer", or rather, as in "free beer": you
don't pay for
> it, for instance because someone else pays for it, maybe as a form of 
> advertisement or (like here) as part of product support.
> 
> - "free as in speech", or rather, as in "free speech":
you can use it 
> with full freedom (and repeatedly) once you have it, but you may or
> may not have to pay to get it, and when redistributing it, you're
> usually allowed to charge for it if you think the market will bear
> it. What you're not allowed to do is restricting other people's
> freedom to use and redistribute it, not even your customers'. This
> latter meaning is the one usually used in "free software".

The "not allowed to restrict others' freedom to use and redistribute
it" part is copyleft, independent of the "free as in speech"
concept.
E.g., BSD software is free software, but generally without the copyleft
that would preserve freedom as the software moves further downstream.

»Q« wrote:
> Tony Mechelynck<antoine.mechelynck@gmail.com>  wrote:
>
> [followup set to mozilla.general]
>
>> The word "free", in electronic data processing, may have two
>> different meanings:
>>
>> - "free as in beer", or rather, as in "free beer":
you don't pay for
>> it, for instance because someone else pays for it, maybe as a form of
>> advertisement or (like here) as part of product support.
>>
>> - "free as in speech", or rather, as in "free
speech": you can use it
>> with full freedom (and repeatedly) once you have it, but you may or
>> may not have to pay to get it, and when redistributing it, you're
>> usually allowed to charge for it if you think the market will bear
>> it. What you're not allowed to do is restricting other people's
>> freedom to use and redistribute it, not even your customers'. This
>> latter meaning is the one usually used in "free software".
>
> The "not allowed to restrict others' freedom to use and redistribute
> it" part is copyleft, independent of the "free as in speech"
concept.
> E.g., BSD software is free software, but generally without the copyleft
> that would preserve freedom as the software moves further downstream.
>
> <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html#CopyleftedSoftware>

OK. Let me correct what I said:

What you aren't always allowed to do is restricting other people's 
freedom...


Best regards,
Tony.
-- 
Computers will not be perfected until they can compute how much more