Re: What so special about PostgreSQL and other RDBMS?

"Galen Boyer" <galenboyer_at_hotpop.com> wrote in message news:u65adfg6r.fsf_at_standardandpoors.com...
> On Mon, 31 May 2004, hjr_at_dizwell.com wrote:
> >
> > You and Galen happen to have decided amongst yourselves, in
> > that scratch-and-match way you described in another part of the
> > thread, that "free" means "costing nothing", and nothing
> > else. As we discovered elsewhere in the thread, you did much
> > the same for the word "sell".
>
> Well, I'm just trying to explain what I know the free software
> society defines as free. To the regular Joe, say the word free
> and it means no money passed hands,

I realise that. Richard Stallman, however, has a different opinion on the matter, unless I'm much mistaken. And what about the 'free software foundation'? Your regular Joe will of course think that free=no cash. But in the IT world, it should be known that 'free' means other things. And unless I'm much mistaken yet again, this is an IT forum.

>so that is how the word has
> morphed, but "free software" has in its contract, the "GNU
> General Public License" and in that document, there is very
> little about money, and all about making sure the code stays
> "free" of software patents.
>
> I know the market uses the term "free software", but they are
> almost always talking about open-source software.

And as you hint in that final sentence, open source and free are not always the same thing. As the free software foundation itself says, "Another group has started using the term "open source" to mean something close (but not identical) to "free software". We prefer the term "free software" because, once you have heard it refers to freedom rather than price, it calls to mind freedom". As they also state, "open source", on the other hand, simply means 'source code supplied'.

This whole thing has gotten completely out of hand in this thread, in any case. All I'm pointing out is that you can indeed sell free software. It depends what you mean by sell, perhaps. And what you mean by free, perhaps. And I would have thought that it would have been entirely unobjectionable to say so. As http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html directly addresses this issue, I rather hope that's an end to it. In particular, regarding your claim that the GPL says very little about money, that page I've linked to says, explicitly, "Actually we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can". They go on to say, it is true, that one ought to say 'distributing free software for a fee' rather than "selling free software". But that's only because they initially state that "strictly speaking, selling means trading goods for money". And strictly speaking, that's not true unless you ditch 5/8ths of the dictionary renderings of the meaning of that word. As they also go on to say, if you're going to say 'sell free software', you'd better draw your distinctions carefully. Which is precisely what a dictionary is there to help you do, provided you don't play scratch-and-match with it, of course.

In any event, if someone were to tell me they sell free software, I'd have a pretty good idea of what they do, why they do it, and their motivations in doing it. I'd even suspect they had a beard whilst doing it. So obviously that phrase can convey real meaning, and isn't just a moronic construction of a semantic looney. And it therefore has validity.

Regards
HJR Received on Sun May 30 2004 - 23:50:45 CDT