[HCoop-Discuss] Think of free speech, not free beer.

[Clinton Ebadi]

"Justin S. Leitgeb" <leitgebj at hcoop.net> writes:

> With the recent talk about hosting rates, I think that we may be 
> neglecting what could be one of the most significant cooperative 
> movements in recent history -- the open source movement.  In open source 
> software, the mantra, "Think of free speech, not free beer", has been an 
> important aspect of the movement.  I want to spend a moment thinking 
> about how we can use the same philosophical orientation to benefit HCoop 
> in our own pricing schema.

Dude, you're thinking about the Free Software and not the Open Source
movement. Please get your history right! Open Source does not care
about freedom. Freedom is for dirty GNU hippies. Open Source merely
notes that the open development model of Free Software produces better
software.

> The other part of the open-source mantra cited above claims that we 
> should de-emphasize the notion of something being free in terms of 
> monetary price.  As everyone involved in HCoop is aware, hardware, 
> bandwidth, and (occasionally) professional services do cost money, and 
> in this sense particularly our cooperative cannot be free (pending a 
> unexpected, huge donation from a benevolent member or outsider).

Again, this is a tenet of the Free Software movement and not Open
Source.

History matters. Ignoring the importance of the Free Software movement
is very dangerous because Open Source does not care one way or the
other about freedom, and will one day result in its followers losing
their hard gained freedoms.

(sorry for the OTish rant, but this is a *very* important thing to
remember, and one of the things that grinds on my nerves when I see so
many people attributing the philosophies of the Free Software movement
to the watered-down philosophy-is-for-losers Open Source movement).

-- 
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