On Friday 08 August 2003 10:59 am, Andrew Suffield wrote: > On Fri, Aug 08, 2003 at 10:32:07AM -0600, Joel Baker wrote: > > Funny. I thought the FSF was, at least origionally, more or less > > entirely about self-interest, altruism, and politics. > > The organisation might have been founded for those reasons, although > I think it was primarily politics. I don't think you'll find much (if > any) GNU code that was written because of them. Most of it was > written because "I need a foo. I don't *have* a foo, but I *do* know > how to make one". Eh?! The FSF is *all* about altruism and politics. See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/philosophy.html particularly http://www.fsf.org/gnu/manifesto.html If you haven't, listen to the free software song: http://gnuwww.epfl.ch/music/free-software-song.html The FSF and the GNU project is all about ideals, politics, altruim, self-interest, helping your neighbor, etc. If there are people who contribute to it that DON'T believe in those things, well, that's their choice, but it doesn't change what the project is all about. > > So tell us - why *do* people write free software? > > I write software because I can, and I release it as free software > because that makes it better over time. Others will vary (I'm not in > the mood for writing an essay on the subject). While most software might be written because you have an itch to scratch, that doesn't explain why people give it away as free software. I release all software I create as free software of the common philosophical beliefs that I share with the FSF. Simply put: If I make something cool for myself, I want to share it so that other people can enjoy it too. I'm nice. I like to share. I want to help people. And change the world while I'm at it. -- Wesley J. Landaker - wjl@icecavern.net OpenPGP FP: 4135 2A3B 4726 ACC5 9094 0097 F0A9 8A4C 4CD6 E3D2
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