Free Software and Business/Administration (Was:Re: Italian e-govt investment and aid)
M E Leypold @ labnet
leypold at informatik.uni-tuebingen.de
Mon May 20 18:54:18 UTC 2002
Hello Georg,
While I do not deny most of your other statements, I'd like to add a
comment to this one.
Georg Jakob writes:
>
> I know that this sounds like open source speak, but I think that's
> exactly why we *need* the FSF - to talk about freedom, to create
> awareness. If you talk about freedom in a sales presentation,
> you'll be laughed out of business quicker than you can say "GNU".
I do not think so. Freedom per se is not a bad thing even in bussines,
else 'they' wouldn't insist on free trade so much. The counterside of
the specific freedom you/we/the-FSF is talking about is dependency,
mainly from a vendor. In business 'dependency' translates into 'risk':
The risk to loose undefined amounts money very quickly to a partner or
not-partner-any-more. Actually I believe that this is a language
'they' understand at sales presentations and I've seen it working now
and then. One can even turn this into some sort of advertisment:
"Look, we give you source and all, you might change your
vendor/developer/what-ever, if you ain't satisfied with us some time
in the future. Yes, I'm so convinced, we're the best, we won't take
you that freedom".
> But the FSF (*not* the OSI) gives us the possibility to change that.
> Beware the dark side...
I will try. :-)
Regards -- Markus
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