Nicolas George <nicolas$george@salle-s.org> wrote:
> There are people who cut themselves while peeling vegetables: that is not a
> reason to blame knifes, is it? As long as no one significant tries to
> confuse people, you can not blame the FSF if stupid authors use it without
> being sure they understand correctly.

  However, I *do* blame the FSF from dissing (if not even outright attacking)
any license which prohibits monetary profit, and calling it "not free",
with a pejorative tone of voice.

  They should understand that some people want to contribute to the free
software world, but they might really not want anyone making money from
their hard work.

> And, by the way, I do not consider the wish of the original author as
> something sacred. The society chose to grant the authors exclusive rights on
> their work because it is supposed to help them to earn a living from it,
> thus allowing to produce more work for the greater good of the whole human
> species. But there is no fundamental right to restrict the diffusion of a
> work, just a compromise between unrestricted distribution and author
> remuneration.

  The author has all the moral, ethical, philosophical and legal right
to prohibit people from making money by selling his hard work he is
himself distributing for free.

> >   I still have the opinion that even if you restrict your software
> > license so that it cannot be distributed for money, it can still be
> > called free.

> I have the opinion that you should stop writing "free" altogether in this
> thread, and always use either "gratis" or "libre".

  I would really like you to say the FSF that!

> Let me rephrase your
> sentence:

> #   I still have the opinion that even if you restrict your software
> # license so that it cannot be distributed for money, it can still be
> # called GRATIS.

  Wrong. I still think the software can be considered free, as in freedom,
as in libre (and of course as in no-cost) if the author doesn't want anyone
making money by selling it.

  If you want *absolute* freedom, that is, that anyone can do *anything*
they want with the software, then you must allow things like including
the code in proprietary software, removing any copyrights, etc.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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