Linked by Sean Cohen on Tue 13th Apr 2004 06:52 UTC
Today I'm going to talk about why software - any software, all software - actually matters, what the different types of software are, and why you should care about its properties (no matter who you are, or what you do).
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Also, as Richard Stallman clearly also states on his website and in other places, Open Source software is not the same thing as what he envisages as Free Software. *Most* Open Source developers are not developing based on an interest in the ethical or spiritual ramifications of their development model. They want to share source to be productive, foster ideas, speed up development and allow contributions from many people. This is only a subset of what Free Software is about... ie, that people have an ethical and spiritual right to access and alter software, not just because it is more productive but because it is a reflection of their birthrights.
I see a lot of people equate Open Source with Linux and with the kind of content in this article, but in fact they are not the same anyway. Similar, but not the same. Unless you share your code on grounds that it is ethical to do so, rather than that it has development benefits, you're not on the same wavelength as what he is saying.