Linked by Henrik Nilsen Omma on Tue 9th Mar 2004 05:48 UTC
You, the reader, are hereby invited to participate in a celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) on August 28th this year. On that day we will stage public events to inform the general public about the virtues of FOSS. We invite you to form local teams and set up tables in town centers, shopping malls, or wherever there are likely to be lots of people on a Saturday.
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Free software exists for the same reason blogs exist, for the same reason some people post their poetry and short stories on their websites instead of trying to get them published. They're having fun.
Why does everyone become a zealot on this issue? It just so happens that a lot of free software is very good, and so it gets a lot of support from the public. Just like I might think my friend's novel--though unpublished--is better than the crap Stephen King churns out on a regular basis for $$$mulah. Is my friend a communist because he gives his novel away for free? No. Is Stephen King a Stalinist? No.
Look to Lawrence Lessig and his wonderful brainchild Creative Commons for an understanding of why Free Software matters. It matters because it creates an open culture (a commons) in the sphere of technological development that isn't obstructed (too badly) by things like Intellectual Property law. Everyone is free to look at software, modify it (remix it), and get it redistributed. No one profits, but everyone wins, in a sense.
I think a lot of people who think Free Software is "crazy" don't really get it. It's crazy when Free Software developers claim that there should be NOTHING PROPRIETARY, or that their theory of software development is the One True Theory. But evangelists aside, Free Software is nothing more than a bunch of people who find programming enjoyable and challenging, and love the idea of creating an open, common project. This is a good thing. The world needs more projects like this (think Wikipedia, and how amazing that is; imagine what Diderot would say about _that_ project!).
Stop being zealots. Free software isn't communism, unless you think all creative acts are communism (in which case, you're just so short-sighted this post won't even help you).