Toolkit

Story: My response to Richard Stallman

Posted by: John Carroll (Friday 9 January 2004, 5:12 PM)

> It's all about choice. I choose to
> use free software because I
> enjoy the amount of customization
> it affords me.

Fine. I like Gruyere cheese. Should I then go about and say that anyone who eats anything but Gruyere is bad, evil, and not worthy to share the table with Gruyere cheese eaters?

My point is: you will buy based on access to source code. That, however, is a subjective value choice. For you, that matters, but it doesn't make your choice objectively better or more moral than anyone else's.

> If you don't agree with Stallman, great.
> But I wonder why you care so much; is
> Stallman forcing you to do something
> you don't want?

I don't know, why does Stallman care so much about the fact that proprietary software exists in the world? Does it affect him? I'm not saying that we should ONLY have proprietary software in the world, and I make that pretty clear in the article. In contrast, Stallman is saying that we should ONLY have open source, and probably GPL, code in the world. That's a pretty extreme response, and I responded with moderation, not a statement that said open source should be wiped from the face of the earth.