[PD] Is open source better?

[Simon Wise]

On 11/02/14 04:40, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:

> Unfortunately the open source definition was designed to subtly hide the
> ethical reasons for doing open source development.  The reasoning for this
> was quite straightforward-- "share with your neighbor" doesn't attract
> business dollars.  So open source advocates focus on efficiency, like the
> ability to plug a 3-clause BSD-licensed library into just about any device
> you want, even a device that is locked down and requires the final app to be
> proprietary.

If you consider attracting business dollars actually spent on ongoing 
development of open source code then the GPL, explicitly stating its aims and 
with strict copyleft terms has been quite successful (not denying that BSD, 
Apache and similar have also, in many cases) ....

> If anyone wants to read a principled statement on user freedom, it's here:
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
>
> -Jonathan