Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Buying the rights to proprietary programs to free them

[Koz Ross]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

On Fri, 5 Feb 2016 15:21:27 -0800
Erik Moeller <eloquence@gmail.com> wrote:

> 2016-02-05 7:43 GMT-08:00 Fabio Pesari <fabiop@gnu.org>:
> > Yes, I totally forgot about Blender! Or it subconsciously prompted
> > me to start this thread; in either case, Blender is arguably one of
> > the best free programs around (in several categories) and proof
> > that this approach can offer quality software pretty quickly.  
> 
> I think the fact that Ton Roosendaal, the original developer of
> Blender, led this liberation effort and the transformation into a
> nonprofit should not be underestimated. This is  a matter of
> principled leadership, deep technical knowledge, and deep knowledge of
> the social and technical community around Blender.
> 
> It would be relatively easy to throw money at closed source projects
> that seem worthwhile, only to see the resulting free software whither,
> because nobody wants to bother getting through the familiarization,
> community building and technical debt cleanup efforts required to
> build a vibrant community. A year or two later, you might not even get
> working packages for the latest distro anymore because some outdated
> library dependency is missing.
> 
> That is not to say that I find the idea inherently flawed, far from
> it! But I think one would need to identify partners _within_
> commercial software efforts who are more interested in joining the
> liberation efforts relevant to their software packages than in making
> a quick buck. To me, this would seem to be a good criterion to narrow
> down the set of possible packages to prioritize.
> 
> Warmly,
> 
> Erik
> 
> 

Erik makes a very valid point actually - just throwing money at the
initial freeing effort might get us free code, but it won't be *useful*
free code unless we can either keep chucking money at it to keep it
maintainer, or unless someone actually wants to maintain it (and loves
it enough to do so...).

- -- 
Koz Ross <koz.ross@retro-freedom.nz>
www.retro-freedom.nz
If you aren't using GPG, you should be!
https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org/en. ***
Please don't send me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html for why. ***
Proud member of the Open Wireless Movement. Find out more at
https://openwireless.org/ ***
Proud member of Peers, at http://peers.community/ . We grow freedom.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2

iQEcBAEBCAAGBQJWtTxSAAoJEJARVr/lAw1AbS0H/0NRFNmOqpOxTY1acD5znnt0
XMPxxDcTpCNHuiYNQMmgcOsheAkBJZ5r6OF+3Ljq/RIiEvLzB2SYek5b0H4aJHwG
njEMAC0ARa1mw+PVZA54VbHc8+qREcNnxHv0ofjVeED9vlV6CAo4x/N1pZgZ8EpZ
gEYHphtrUOQ8X9oqM8poUGzosub1IkB4zaprc+kE4/M1TKuCnD8IB/QGVXpHcW5p
g21OUC6MDBcgMzAzkQpmyEMci/UmlaPI+R2GIQ1WEacXNIMvPWDwI6laJI85pmdg
kh/eN57LGLGZCHkLlA+NoG5+ypZ1+HJlV8bipYTcFaQo2IwlE1/Go5CKu+k69es=
=Ekhw
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----