Aaron tries to wake back up the old (and perpetual) discussion about freedom in software. I can't agree more with his perspective. It will make well over 8 years now that I continuously preach, to anybody patient to listen, the social importance of the essential notions of collaboration ingrained in free software.
Yet, I can't refrain from being somehow pessimist and disappointed about the reflections that I get from the surrounding communities (those that I connect "live" each of my normal days, those outside the KDE or Linux communities that I try to be part of at night, when time permits). I explained (or at least tried to) the essence of what Aaron says, to the best of my capacities, to audiences from one to tens, from students to government heads. Everybody knew that is correct to approve my enthusiasm and meet my invitation to participation and my explanations with openness. But I always saw in the glimmering of their eyes that I was for them a "rara avis", just good for exposition in a circus, unable to take hold of the realities of this world, an utopian dreaming wide awake.
These glimmers, they hurt... But yeah, maybe we're outside of this time. Let's hope that we're not just away, but rather ahead.
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KDE should publicize its Freedom more
I think KDE should emphasize that it is more free than GNOME (Icaza's baby) because KDE has strong copyleft protection from Qt's GPL license. GNOME is built on GTK, which is LGPL, and which big business can use to make GTK-based non-free, closed-source, DRM-infested proprietary applications that lock in users and rip them off like Microsoft. And the GNOME/GTK people (who claim they're free software advocates) are proud of this -- what hypocrisy!
RMS and the FSF should stop supporting GNOME and see them for what they are: sell-outs to the Free Software cause. Instead, the Free Software Foundation should live up to its own standards and support the desktop that really stands for freedom: KDE.
Keep the GNU/Linux desktop free, use KDE!
hypocrisy -= 1
GNOME is built on GTK, which is LGPL [..]
I agree with you, but decided to stay silent about this:
IIRC, The only reason why I have not advertised GPL'd Qt's advantage is that e.g. KDElibs or KOffice, the software I am hacking in is mostly LGPL'd and I can see advantages in LGPL. Freedom to choose a license, after all.
That said, while I prefer to avoid hypocrisy in the camp, with better or worse effects, I can see hypocrisytical people bundling GNOME with Linux and GNU. They could really think once again and advertise using BSD or other kernel instead
In their `consistent' strategy GPL'd Linux should be kicked off...