[maemo-developers] Is mauku open source, i.e free or is in non-free?

[From: Aldon Hynes]

I am sorry that you wish to stop discourse.

While there are some in the free software movement that hold to various
definitions of what 'free' means as well as many different licenses that
people argue about, to most people buying cellphones, those discussions are
meaningless.  When most people attempt to load an application on a
cellphone, they are concerned with a much different definition of 'free'.
Do they have to pay money to download the application or not.

maemo developers are welcome to hold to a religious view of what 'free'
means.  In doing so, they may condemn the most open cellphone out there
(with the exception of the FreeRunner which seems to be dying off), to the
same obscurity of the Freerunner.

I strongly encourage the maemo community to think more seriously about how
it talks about things like free software in a manner that fits with the
broader world.  I would hope that repositories that refer to 'free' or
'not-free' fit more closely the common usage of those words amoungst all
cell phone users, and not just those that belong to some specific software
movement.

My two cents.

Aldon

-----Original Message-----
From: maemo-developers-bounces at maemo.org
[mailto:maemo-developers-bounces at maemo.org]On Behalf Of Mikhail Gusarov
Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 11:01 PM
To: maemo-developers at maemo.org
Subject: Re: Is mauku open source, i.e free or is in non-free?



Twas brillig at 14:18:26 26.01.2010 UTC-05 when Aldon.Hynes at Orient-Lodge.com
did gyre and gimble:

 AH> Software can be free, but not open source.  (e.g. anyone can download
the
 AH> software, but they can't download the source)
 AH> Software can be Open Source, but not free (This is rare, but can
happen.
 AH> You have to pay for a license to run the software, but you can view the
 AH> source used to create it)

Stop it.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd

--
  http://fossarchy.blogspot.com/