Re: [Fsfe-uk] Re: GNU Business Network Definition

[Chris Croughton]

On Fri, Jun 09, 2006 at 08:40:01PM +0100, Dave wrote:

> On 09/06/06, Shane M. Coughlan <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> > Exclusivity of use and support should perhaps be secondary.
> 
> I basically agree, but instead of it being secondary it should be of
> primary status, with non-exclusive members allowed but given overtly
> secondary status.

I disagree, making it a secondary status will still put off businesses
who may have most of their work in Free Software but have obligations to
support old proprietary software, or for that matter may be
transitioning to Free Software.  Fanaticism shoots itself in the foot,
it puts off more people than it encourages (I've seen this with the GPL,
with companies putting a blanket ban on any GPL source being used
anywhere in case it infects things which they are contractually required
to heep secret, where they can quite happily use BSD and other free
licenced code because it doesn't insist that their stuff also be made
free).

The point of freedom is freedom.  Saying "you can't belong to our club
of free people unless you do everything the same way as we do" is not
freedom of people in the club (except in the same way as "give me
liberty or give me death", people are free to not join your club at
all).

(I wouldn't be joining the GNU Business Network under those conditions,
I work for companies which are not allowed to release most of their
source code for contractual reasons, even though some of them do make
valuable contributions to Free Software and do allow their employees to
work on Free Software in work time...)

Chris C