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GNUStep: An Apology for Announcing Donation of Proprietary Software to t
From: |
Laurent Julliard |
Subject: |
GNUStep: An Apology for Announcing Donation of Proprietary Software to the Project |
Date: |
Fri, 21 Dec 2001 10:45:05 +0100 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.6) Gecko/20011120 |
FYI.
http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-12-21-005-20-OP-CY
----------------------
GNUStep: An Apology for Announcing Donation of Proprietary Software to
the Project
Dec 21, 2001, 07 :07 UTC (1 Talkback[s]) (933 reads)
By Adam Fedor, Chief Maintainer of the GNUstep Project
The GNUstep project would like to apologize for announcing that we had
been given, as a donation, a license for a proprietary program. We made
a mistake in announcing this, but the first mistake was in asking for a
donation of that kind. The GNU Project gladly accepts donations of
computers, money, and other services, and gladly thanks the donors for
them. But we can't accept a copy of a proprietary program, because we
criticize proprietary software on ethical grounds and we have to live by
our ethical principles. And we can't advertise a proprietary program no
matter how grateful we feel towards its developer.
How did we make the mistake of asking for a donation of that kind? We
were so absorbed in looking for ways to improve GNUstep that we forgot
the larger goal and principles of the GNU Project. We forgot that
"donating a license" for a non-free program is just making a special
exception to a general policy of restricting all the users. We're
supposed to be working on changing this restrictive situation for
everyone, not obtaining a special exception for ourselves. We're
supposed to be taking the proprietary software off our machines, not
putting more of it on.
Announcing this problematical donation was a further mistake, because it
had the effect of advertising the proprietary program. Our principles
say we should only help publicize a software package if it's the sort of
package that we're trying to encourage--that is, a free software package.
This just goes to show how people working on a technical project need to
recall the larger context--the long-term goals and ethical
principles--and not get lost in the details of the specific technical
problems to be solved today.
We hope you can learn from this mistake. Please consider the benefits of
free software that respects your freedom. And if you find a non-free
program that you really would like to use, don't try to get a copy.
Write a free replacement for it instead!
Related Stories:
GNUstep Receives Help from VMware(Dec 11, 2001)
--
Laurent JULLIARD - Xerox R&T/XAC/XPA - Open Source team
>> Host your Xerox Software project on CodeX: http://codex.xerox.com
>> Linux@Xerox community: http://xww.linux.world.xerox.com
- GNUStep: An Apology for Announcing Donation of Proprietary Software to the Project,
Laurent Julliard <=
- Re: GNUStep: An Apology for Announcing Donation of Proprietary Software to the Project, Jeremy Bettis, 2001/12/21
- Re: GNUStep: An Apology for Announcing Donation of Proprietary Software to the Project, Nicola Pero, 2001/12/21
- Re: GNUStep: An Apology for Announcing Donation of Proprietary Software to the Project, Richard Frith-Macdonald, 2001/12/21
- "external" frameworks (was: Re: GNUStep: An Apology for Announcing Donation of Proprietary Software to the Project), Chris B . Vetter, 2001/12/21
- Re: "external" frameworks (was: Re: GNUStep: An Apology for Announcing Donation of Proprietary Software to the Project), Richard Frith-Macdonald, 2001/12/21
- Re: "external" frameworks (was: Re: GNUStep: An Apology for Announcing Donation of Proprietary Software to the Project), Chris B . Vetter, 2001/12/21
- omni frameworks (was: Re: "external" frameworks (was: Re: GNUStep: An Apology for Announcing Donation of Proprietary Software to the Project)), Jay McCarthy, 2001/12/21
- Re: omni frameworks (was: Re: "external" frameworks (was: Re: GNUStep: An Apology for Announcing Donation of Proprietary Software to the Project)), Chris B . Vetter, 2001/12/21
- Re: "external" frameworks, Pedro Ivo Andrade Tavares, 2001/12/22
- Re: "external" frameworks, Chris B . Vetter, 2001/12/26