OSNews

Remind me again how "free" I am...

I think we have enough people reminding us how "free" we are, how proud we should be of that, and how important it is that we bring this "freedom" to the rest of the world.

I think we should have more people reminding us how "unfree" we are, how concerned we should be, and how we should learn to coexist peacefully with those that have a different idea of what it means to be free.

There have been early skirmishes on the border of free software and proprietary software, and the GPLv3 intends to clear things up. You can choose to accept or reject the idea of exclusive patent agreements and live on the corresponding side of the fence. You have to choose. You can't mix exclusive patent licensing with free software.

This is a problem that needs to be solved today, while the two cultures are first learning about one another. If we let the proprietary culture infect the upper echelons of the free software community, we will be divided, we will be marginalized, and we will become radicalized.

We don't have to like each other. We don't have to agree on what it means to be free. We can have different visions for the future of software and computing. We can compete with each other, but we have to compete by playing our respective games.

The commercial Linux elite can make a lot of money by playing the proprietary software game. But free software is our community's valuable resource. We can't watch as our corrupt commercial representatives sell our rights away so that everybody but the free software community gets to benefit from the legal use of our software.