[Klug-general] slightly off topic?

[J D Freeman]

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On Sat, May 09, 2009 at 09:47:00PM +0100, George Prowse wrote:
> > 
> Open is overrated in the FOSS community, sometimes no-cost is best

I am not so sure. It depends entirely how you define cost. There is more
to it than the purely monetary sense and the purchase price.

Getting software for free, using it for a year, then finding you can't use
it and thus can't get to your data is not great. 

If you have the source you can still access your data, ok you may not have
the skills yourself to use the code, but there is no reason to not take it
to your friendly local code monkey.

This is the whole point of four freedoms as outlined by RMS.

* Freedom to use for any purpose
* Freedom to study how the program works and adapt it to your needs
* Freedom to share with your friends
* Freedom to distribute your improvements.

There is nothing saying that free software shouldn't have a monatary
purchase price. Infact I am happy to spend money on open source software.
But not closed source.

This is all a wonderful indication of how crap the english language can be
at times, 1 million words in the language, and yet we don't have two words
to differentiate libre and gratis. 

J
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