Comment by ekianjo
21 days ago
Android is open source but not "free software" which is exactly on point. People have been fooled to think that open=respecting your freedoms, but there is no equivalency.
21 days ago
Android is open source but not "free software" which is exactly on point. People have been fooled to think that open=respecting your freedoms, but there is no equivalency.
Basically my point is that it's not really about software. It's about access to things that are of practical use. Having a monopoly (or oligopoly) on hamburgers or hammers would be a similar problem. It's true that within the software realm, open source (or "free software" or whatever other term you want to use) increases access, but it doesn't in itself solve the problem.
The people writing the software need to eat and if they can't do that it doesn't matter what the license is, the software won't get written and no one will be able to use it. Moves like this thing by Google are about economics rather than licenses or abstract ideas like "freedom". A world with ten gazillion closed-source programs competing would likely be more free than one with tons of open source software but only one company that can pay a living wage so that people can work on that software.