Here is an item from Richard Stallman which I find both compelling and sad. After I have struggled hard with GNU/Linux – I now learn that the kernel nay not be free (in the sense of having all the sources available). I have never seen my foray into this area as solely technical but always as part of a sort of noosphere probe. It still is that of course but what my probe is revealing is how big this battle for freedom is. This is not libertarian freedom either – but freedom for people to be able to work together to be creative. Freedom for one generation to be able to build on the creations of the previous. Which is the exact opposite of the freedom to build private empires.
It is very like theological debate isn’t it. I am not really up with the history of that but I imagine whole churches split over such finery. I know I can’t be that ideologically pure – but I am glad that RMS is.
I am not a programmer but I do make web pages and I’d never have been able to do that without the “source” button actually working. Imagine a web that was not open source in that way. It would not have happened at all. What is closed software preventing today?
