.. it used to be a movement of “creation”, build things up. With faith.
.. currently, argueably, it is more or less a movement to pressure “evil” companies to release their propietary code into a FOSS-compatible license.
(FOSSifying the code can be viewed as a “blessing”, turns “evil” code to be a “saint” code immediately, amazingly.)
Any company that don’t do opensource will automatically be an evil to some of the FOSS “followers”.
(Have you ever call your local food stall guy an evil? He never gives you a recipe along with your Pad Thai or whatever dish.)
I know this is not always the case for the movement leaders and most of the followers. Those guys still continuing create innovative things.
But more and more FOSS followers are doing exactly what I’m saying. Mourning for free software. Sadly as it is, these voices are loud.
IMHO.
4 responses to “Definition of Free/Open Source Software movement”
I think some reason is we read FOSS site (with FOSS evangelists e.g. /.) too much. So we hear and see much flaming on non-FOSS as "evil" and finally we think it is common thing.People in pure business (who read WSJ only) may think different than us.
Proprietary softwares are evil. Though, it is not just the developers that are evil. It is also the users who sacrify their own freedom along the rest of the others that are evil. Free software is nothing about innovation, it's just a political movement that attemp to eliminate proprietary system with Ahinsa [1] path of thought, as it is the neccessary foundation of liberative communism and/or anarchism idea. And please notice that I am not talking about open source software.1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahinsa
but I don't think taking what doesn't belong to you is a good thing a'.(in this case, for example, we have two people A and B, and A owns an X software. B asking A to free it. I think A has a right to say no, as long as he get that X with merit (say, do not violate other people rights by means of getting X)).if things go with Ahinsa, that's fine. but I think sometimes people just gone too far.
It's official by FSF that they don't support such state law that enforce individuals to release their software as free software. All they would do is by /requesting/ (or criticizing/flaming well.. you picked the word). I'd suggest you not to take the issue emotionally but intentionally, it's just a political science, it's a peaceful revolution, not a crusade.