GNUStep: An Apology for Announcing Donation of Proprietary Software to the Project

[Laurent Julliard]

FYI.

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-12-21-005-20-OP-CY

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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)


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Laurent JULLIARD - Xerox R&T/XAC/XPA - Open Source team
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