I attended Richard Stallman’s talk at Lehigh University on Tuesday, March 27, 2007.
I agreed in “idea” with most of what he said, although I found his
comments about religion and politics unnecessary (admittedly his joke
that “vi-vi-vi is the editor of the beast” was pretty funny)
What I agreed with most is that schools and universities should use
FOSS every place they can and teach students that there are
alternatives to proprietary software.
I disagreed with his statement that it is better to break a license
agreement and make a copy of proprietary software for your friend than
to honor the agreement you’ve made. I personally think a person’s
“easy willingness” to break an agreement greatly hurts the idea of
Freedom and Democracy.
I also think that his belief that “the whole world should use ONLY
FOSS” would hurt programmers and developers more than the “tiny
amount” he thinks. I personally know people who make a living
writing proprietary software. These people have homes and families
and would definitely be hurt financially if their company suddenly
went FOSS.
In closing I think the world is a better place with Richard Stallman
and the FSF in it. I personally use FOSS where ever I can; and Linux
will continue to be my preferred OS…ooops I mean GNU/Linux.
