Re: Hurd advocacy?
On Wed, Aug 20, 2003 at 11:25:38PM +0200, Farid Hajji wrote:
> > > Code Reading: The Open Source Perspective
> > > Diomidis Spinellis
> >
> > Ugh, because we seek freedom, we don't believe in "Open Source" philosophy:
>
> Ugh? Please don't judge a book by its title. Code Reading is a
> technical, not philosophical book. It contains numerous examples, from
> NetBSD, Apache, Perl, XFree86, etc...
Freedom is a question of ethics for me, not of mere pragmatism. The
"Open Source" concept is the pretension that freedom is merely a practical
issue, hence it reduces it to the technical ground.
> Diomidis stopped short of using
> the term "Free Software Perspective", because not every example is
> GPLed. But as far as code reading skills are concerned, BSD-style
> Licenses or Artistic are just as fine as GPL: they don't matter
> w.r.t. understanding code.
BSD-style licensed software is still free software (untill it's hoarded
and becomes propietary, of course), which is the point of it. The fact
that the parents of the free software movement have the GPL as their
license of choice doesn't mean that only GPLed software is free.
> Again, this is not a book on Open Source vs. Free Software. It is a
> book on reading and understanding code, not only from small projects,
> but also very big ones as you can see.
Then "The Open Source Perspective" is probably not the best title for
such a book either.
--
Robert Millan
"[..] but the delight and pride of Aule is in the deed of making, and in the thing made, and neither in possession nor in his own mastery; wherefore he gives and hoards not, and is free from care, passing ever on to some new work."
-- J.R.R.T, Ainulindale (Silmarillion)
Reply to: