FSF sets a bounty on non-free software

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Freedom, is in fact, GNU/Socialism, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Socialism. GNU is not freedom unto itself, but rather a full socialist agenda built on abuse of contract law. As a rule it's biggest advocates are stoners, dirty hippies, communists, career educators, career lecturers and students still having life paid for by mommy and daddy and living in their parent's cellars.

Many computer users express their freedom every day, including the freedom to run any software they want open source or not, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, some people on the fringe of society with little in the way of common sense have come to believe that freedom can be achieved through imposing limitations on how software can be redistributed, widely campaigning against the idea of there even being closed source software and attempting to limit people's choice to use it or not - regardless of the limitated capabilities of much of the software they call free - such as that developed by the GNU Project.

There really is freedom, and many people exercise it though the systems they use in terms of both entertainment and work. Freedom is the ability to choose something on both it's merits and failings, and involves informing people and making rational decisions based on what you need or want. Freedom is not useless if left to tend itself, and is an essential part of any society be it capitalist or socialist. Freedom is not the imposition of restrictions upon distribution of one's own work or derivative works. All the so-called freedom advocated by the FSF are really little more than naive idealism devaluing the work of programmers worldwide in an attempt to promote a socialist agenda.

It seems someone got an overdose of Fox News.

Since we are on this GNU == Socialism kick, I would like to point out that the BSD license is the de facto free license. It is free from viral licensing agreements and really doesn't place restrictions on how you can use it. Now that's what I call free.

I think the above block of text (three long paragraphs!) is a copy-paste troll, and a bad one at that. The rant seems to complain about "socialism", but advocates that we abolish copyright law so that people can't restrict each others rights. How does that work?

You know, his time would be better spent trying to find the use of the "free" license-burdened code in commercial products, not the other way around.

On another note, I often try to *avoid* GPL libraries and such just so I don't have to deal with its viral licensing. At least some people have the decency to provide LGPL versions of libraries, while others are even more generous by adopting truly free-as-in-do-as-you-please software and libraries.

Please don't turn his "Eye o' Sauron" onto our ports again. He's already tried to bully OpenBSD about non-free ports, even though nobody ever asked for his opinion or blessing. The BSDs and their users are quite happy to have the freedom of choice without him sticking his beak in yet again.

He is asking for reports on FSF endorsed GNU/Linux distros. *FSF endorsed* GNU/Linux. Please ensure you understand the distinction, OK? That probably means Gnuisance and a few that have conveniently and thankfully fallen beneath my radar by dint of being pathetically useless without, for example but not limited to, Highpoint RocketRAID support. Please to be restricting your zealous, whining, self-righteous mailings to those only as the rest of us have enough to do, working with this crud, without having it functionally castrated by the Rt. Rev. Beardy. Thanking you.

That second paragraph wasn't directed at you. It was a general CQD on behalf of all sane projects' mailing list managers. Apologies for not making that clear.

"As a rule it's biggest advocates are stoners, dirty hippies, communists, career educators, career lecturers and students still having life paid for by mommy and daddy and living in their parent's cellars."

= Stereotype much? Care to explain why companies like Intel, AMD, Novell, RedHat, IBM, Google, etc are supporting this cause via their contributions in the form of code and other initiatives?

Didn't Microsoft recently toot their virtualisation code contribution to the Linux Kernel? (...Whether it actually gets accepted is another story. But they certainly made a contribution.)

Want to explain this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwEWxpOWOok
Or this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ3eq_lKHFk

"Many computer users express their freedom every day, including the freedom to run any software they want open source or not, without realizing it."
= How is it freedom when they have no choice but to accept EULAs and hoop jumping of anti-piracy mechanisms like serials, activations, and endless online verifications of their systems when they install non-opensource software?

Is their a choice (legal) to remove the anti-piracy mechanisms in Windows, MS Office, games, third-party commercial applications, etc?

Then how is one supposed to express their freedom if they had no choice to begin with?

...bob = fail.

@Bob

LOL OMFG...
I mean really how clueless can you get?

I'm not even going to bother engaging you in an intelligent conversation.

I take more pleasure in jumping right into some good old fashioned socialist-bourne abuse (the source of all good violence & evil).

Bob = Bollywood Ninja Conspiracy Theorist.

Get a brain & better informed lamearse.

And quite frankly, you guys need to learn a little humility and grace. Bob's post was hilarious, even more so if you're a fan of free software.

So far the responses can only be described as "butthurt".

To Bob on "Freedom":

Free != Socialist...

I don't get it. There are no restrictions on the use of GNU software - as long as you don't distribute it. None. Nada. Zilch.

The restrictions only come into play when you redistribute it. View those restrictions as the cost of using the code in your own code projects. You can buy code or libraries from others for cash, or you can "buy" FOSS code from its authors, and the currency used is you contribute any changes/enhancements you make back to the author/community.

What can be more capitalistic / free enterprise than that? Don't tell us that crap about the GPL doesn't let you charge CASH for your software. You don't believe that, do you?

Or do you believe the Glenn Beck-style of democracy, wherein software development is a zero-sum game, where there is only win-lose. There is such a thing as win-win. It happens every day in capitalism when both the supplier and the consumer think they've gained from the transaction. Suppliers who believe they only win when they rip off consumers sound like they learned at the knee of someone like Beck or O'Reilly...