[BadVista Advocate] [Bulk] Re: Gpl3 and Linspire

[Michael Fötsch]

Matthew Flaschen wrote:
> It's not fair to tar the whole open source community with ESR's views.

Not the whole community. I'm referring to Linspire specifically, because 
as far as I know, Eric Raymond is involved with them. See, for example:

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS2603651519.html

> Linspire isn't an open source company any more than they are a free
> software one.

I'm using "open source company" in the sense it's described in this essay:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html

"In effect, these companies seek to gain the favorable cachet of “open 
source” for their proprietary software products—even though those are 
not “open source software”—because they have some relationship to free 
software or because the same company also maintains some free software."

 > A significant amount of their software is proprietary,
> and that isn't open source or free.

This seems to make them an "open source company" just in the sense of 
the essay.

Anyway, I don't want to criticize Linspire any more than I criticize 
Novell or Xandros, or ESR, for that matter. I don't use their products 
and I don't share their views. I just don't understand why it's 
surprising that Linspire made this move...

Kind Regards,
M.F.