Toolkit

Story: My response to Richard Stallman

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The "Open Source" debate has many sides, and usually discussions about the subject try to view every side of it. I like the article in that it is a simple statement: Open Source (or, more precisely, the GPL) is a pretty uncertain base to base a business on. I tend to agree.

However, there are many other issues, ranging from "I shouldn't have to pay for anything" via "I don't want to pay for something which I am explicitly forbidden to tinker with" up to "I can't read your document because I don't have the right tool, which even if I wanted to pay for it, wouldn't run on my platform, nor will anybody tell me how to read your document my own software, and it is also illegal to reverse-engineer."

The latter is, in my opinion, a much more important issue than whether someone, somewhere is making money off a particular program or not.

Unfortunately, all these aspects usually get mixed up during discussions.

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