The Free Software Movement... was never about Free Software

http://entrepreneurship.mit.edu/blog/elliotcmitedu/free-software-movement-was-never-about-free-software

by kanebennett • 16 years ago

11 10 16 years ago

entrepreneurship.mit.edu

leoc• 16 years ago

I feel a missive from RMS on the way.

naner• 16 years ago

This is confusing. "Free Software" and "Free Software Movement" alludes to the original GPL and Stallman who manipulated copyright law to enforce his philosophy on software (software freedom and all that jazz).

This appears to be about web sites and business models and not software licensing. Not that I hold it against this guy, but when we don't all use these terms the same way it gets confusing.

bane• 16 years ago

Wait...is this confusing free-as-in-beer with free-as-in-freedom?

Hemospectrum• 16 years ago

Yes.

Stormbringer• 16 years ago

Wait wait wait. Where the *&#$ do I go to get free beer?!?!

briandoll• 16 years ago

I'm not a fan of this strange rebranding of "The Free Software Movement".

This article and apparently the one it directly counters, are discussing the "Freemium Business Model", "Ad-Supported Business Model" and "Platform-Play", while discussing "When Software Should not be Free".

These things have absolutely nothing to do with Free Software. Sorry to get all RMS on this post, but I think it does a disservice to both topics (Free Software and SaaS business models), each of which are interesting, but not when confused with one another.

Deejahll• 16 years ago

Fourteen mentions of "Free Software" and neither this article's author nor the article he mentions seems to know anything about the actual Free Software movement. The author he replies to has even modified his article after being corrected on this point.

tbrownaw• 16 years ago

Bah. I was hoping for something about how it's really about non-proprietary interfaces, or collective laziness (in the LazinessImpatienceHubris sense), or the passivation/consumerization of society, or power hierarchy vs egalitarianism, or... ... but no, it's just about the multiple meanings of "free" in english.

trotsky• 16 years ago

Next on the blogroll, "Social Networking Startups": A review of new bars in my area.

etree• 16 years ago

I wrote the blog post. I suppose you guys are right - poor choice of terminology. I read Kane's post - which was mostly about why he isn't going to release his software for free anymore. I started thinking about the business reasons why i release software for free (which i do sometimes, but not always) and it occurred to me that i use it as a tool to allow me to more quickly test out an idea. That was really the main point i was trying to make. I will try and update the post tonight to make the language more consistent with the point i was actually making (focusing on testing hypotheses to mitigate risks as a startup and using a freely available product to help test those).

The Free Software Movement... was never about Free Software

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