Free vs proprietary (was Re: NumPy, SciPy, & Python 3X Installation/compatibility issues)

[Rustom Mody]

On Sunday, May 11, 2014 9:46:06 AM UTC+5:30, Nelson Crosby wrote:
> I also believe in this more 'BSD-like' view, but from a business point of view. No one is going to invest in a business that can't guarantee against piracy, and such a business is much less likely to receive profit (see Ardour).
> 
> 
> 
> Don't get me wrong - I love free software. It's seriously awesome to she what a community can do. But at the same time, some people want to earn a living from writing code. That is simply not possible without proprietary software.

Whenever this (kind of) debate arises people talk of 'Free' vs 'OpenSource'
which then becomes an rms vs esr debate.
It seems to me that esr gets more press than is his due and the more 
significant ideological difference between rms and Torvalds gets neglected.

rms started working on hurd before Linus was a CS student. 
Its taken him a good 20 years to admit the mistake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Hurd#cite_note-fsf-future-of-freedom-12

I believe that he still does not get it - that the mistakes were political more
than technical.

By contrast,
- the Linux kernel targeting hardware for which it was never intended
- perl running equally on DOS and unix, (with all due respect python, ruby etc 
just followed the lead)
- Samba talking to Windows as though it were Windows itself

all show that some amount of guerrilla mindset is necessary