Re: software libre?

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Re: software libre?
by Richard Dale on Thursday 06/Dec/2007, @08:33

I think 'Software Libre' is a really good name for what the KDE community produces. If we use the term 'Open Source' it makes it much easier for big business companies, such as Microsoft, to coopt the term and invent other names like 'Shared Source', which aim to blur the difference between communities like KDE, and aggressive businesses which are only in it for profit. Microsoft could never describe themselves as 'Free Software' and so we can differentiate ourselves from them by using terms like 'Free Software' or 'Software Libre' - if we describe ourselves as 'Open Source' it would make it harder to make that distinction.

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Re: software libre?
by matt on Thursday 06/Dec/2007, @22:56

umm isn't internet explorer free?

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Re: software libre?
by jospoortvliet on Friday 07/Dec/2007, @03:11

well, yes, free as in free beer, but not free as in free speech... It can be downloaded without paying any monetary costs, but you DO pay in terms of surrendering your freedom to MS.

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Re: software libre?
by Rasmus Larsen on Friday 07/Dec/2007, @13:51

Not true, an Internet Explorer license is tied to a Windows License, as such it is not free, in either sense.

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Re: software libre?
by she on Sunday 09/Dec/2007, @07:03

Propaganda aside, this is not true.

The MS licenses are almost ALWAYS only available for paying people.

So in fact, you pay to get screwed and became slave to the software of a huge company with different interests than yours and a tradition of spending more money to their CEOs and buy off competition, than to improve their products.

Internet Explorer is NOT free anywhere, not even a free beer (once you drink the beer, you kinda "own" it until you digested it... you can NEVER do anything similar with IE!)

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