SFLC will love the 7th Circuit

[Philippe Verdy]

Alexander Terekhov [mailto:alexander.terekhov at gmail.com] wrote:
> > And it is also to expand the competition
> 
> http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html
> 
> "GNU will remove operating system software from the realm of
> competition. You will not be able to get an edge in this area,
> but neither will your competitors be able to get an edge over
> you. You and they will compete in other areas, while benefiting
> mutually in this one. If your business is selling an operating
> system, you will not like GNU, but that's tough on you. If your
> business is something else, GNU can save you from being pushed
> into the expensive business of selling operating systems."

Yes, GNU promotes something else: not selling softwares (but still not abuse
the proprietary rights when they exist), but basing new business into making
the best service offers for customers, that will have allthe tools they
want, and will have the freedom to choose between them, but will still need
assistance for either choosing them, or operating them, or enhancing them.

Remember that GNU softwares come with no warranty, and no assistance. That's
where business is possible and considered to be honest, and easy to control
without limiting users freedom, notably limiting freedom of speech and
freedom of creation (or re-creation, or modification or complete rewriting
for better performance or for porting onto other unsupported platforms, or
redistributing everything, including your changes).

Having to redistribute the source is a limited warranty for downstream users
that the distributed binary code will not violate others' right without any
possible control (of course one could find such abuse by reverse engineering
or analysis, and that's how GPL abuses are found).

This is also an offer for better security with a software you can trust
because YOU can decide which security features are needed by YOU, and verify
it simply with the source, instead of by lengthy test procedure from a
monolithic blackbox with unknown internal behaviour (this concept is also
used to defend open softwares at OSI, against "security by obscurity", but
it is not exclusive to FL-OSS licenced software because it exists also in
many proprietary softwares that permits analysis of source code through
contractuala agreements, and this includes some parts of Windows whose
protected source could be parsed by third-parties provided they sign such
contractual agreement not to distribute this secret source, not to keep any
archive of this source, and to pay huge fees for getting this limited
access).