Re: An open letter to the open source community about the security of open source pr

[Horms <horms@verge.net.au>]

On Thu, Dec 11, 2003 at 09:45:58AM -0500, Richard Stallman wrote:
>     An open letter to the open source community about the security of open 
>     source projects.
> 
> Please don't think of the GNU system as an "open source project".  GNU
> is a free software project, part of the free software movement.  "Open
> source" is the label of a philosophy that we disagree with.  I don't
> know whether anyone reading this is an really advocate of open source;
> the names that I recognize mostly are free software advocates.
> 
> The GNU Project is willing to work with the proponents of open source
> on practical issues like this one, when that is practically useful,
> provided that we can do so without appearing to endorse the open
> source philosophy itself.  If the activity is labeled as "free
> software and open source", or "FLOSS", that solves this problem.

Richard,

I think that you have missed the point. I don't believe that the
intention of the discussion was to size-off the merits of Open Source
and Free Software. Rather, my reading of the message was that it proposed
that different projects work together to offer greater protection
against security threats. I don't think that your reply addresses the
issue at hand in any way. Other than perhaps to imply that that the FSF
isn't interested in working with Debian or other Free Software or Open
Source projects on this issue. I sincerely hope that this is not the case.

-- 
Horms