I have been quiet about Linux this week because I have been busy trying several new versions. In the process, I have learned quite a bit more, and started to think about the philosophy behind Linux, operating system choices, and Free / Open Source software in general.

What the argument over the names often boils down to is philosophy, not just attribution or credit. GNU was created with software freedom in mind. Linux, in its genesis, was proprietary until it adopted the GNU GPL licence and then became mainstream.

"...«Piracy,» Stallman said during his public speech in Bangalore on Saturday, «is totally wrong, because it is wrong to attack ships on sail.» If the person posing the question happens to get smarter and asks specifically about software and music piracy, Stallman gave an even better answer: «Pirates never attack ships with software and music, they do it with guns.» ..." --

"...The Free Software Foundation Europe, and the Royal Institute of Technology organized a lecture with Dr. Richard Stallman. Mainly the session was about the free software movement and the GNU/Linux operating system. Richard Stallman spoke about the goals and philosophy of the Free Software Movement, and the status and history of the GNU operating system, which in combination with the kernel Linux is now used by tens of millions of users world-wide..."

Rick, you miss one point: free software is about freedom, not price. Hackers insist on freedom even when it is inconvenient...

My mission today is to teach you to value these freedoms... Please, try to learn this philosophy. Free Software is a movement that one day you will rejoin ;)

Freedom is worth a sacrifice - (RMS)

christophe

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

"...On this page we list user groups that are centered on variations of the GNU operating system [...] We also do not list groups which focus on ‘open source’, since we are not part of the open source movement, but rather the

“Open Source” advocate: «...I associate much more with the "Open Source" (also as Richard defines it) camp, and am open to the existence and use of proprietary software...» --

"Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement. For the free software movement, free software is an ethical imperative, because only free software respects the users' freedom. By contrast, the philosophy of open source considers issues in terms of how to make software “better”—in a practical sense only. It says that non-free software is a suboptimal solution.

"...The first step towards acknowledging the Free Software Movement is to understand that `Free Software’ and `Open Source Software’ are two different entities. And that we, in the media, have been quite unjust to the movement by using the terms `Free Software’ and `Open Source’ interchangeably..."