Messages in this thread | | | From | Richard Stallman <> | Subject | Re: Bitkeeper outrage, old and new | Date | Mon, 21 Oct 2002 23:12:53 -0400 |
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Nobody's evil or stupid or naive just because they make a certain licensing choice.
It is a stretch to conclude anything about the general attitude or character of a person from one action, so I would not say the people who distribute non-free software are "evil people" in a general sense. I will say they have done one thing that is evil: distributing a non-free program.
Non-free software licenses are designed to divide and dominate the users, denying them the basic freedoms for software users. That's what makes them non-free, and that is what makes it wrong. Non-free software is a social problem, one that we need to solve if computer users are to have freedom.
There are many different ways people make money; some are ethical while others involve mistreating others. If we accept "making a living" as a valid excuse to mistreat people, we will be mistreated constantly. There comes a time when we have to say that we are not impressed by the argument that "We need to do this to people in order to make a living."
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