> Thanks for this excellent report, but I do have one point of difference:
> mentioning that Koha and Evergreen are "free" as in a "free kitten," where
> you discover that in reality, you have taken responsibility for this kitten,
> which means to feed it, teach it not to tear up your furniture, spend money
> for the vet, etc. Freeware and open source software are not "free" in this
> sense either, since anybody who has undertaken such a project quickly finds
> out that there is maintenance of the system, you have to do lots of server
> maintenance, you need to defend against attacks, and so on and on.
The real contention for me is the connotation that this is some sort
of surprise still. All software, free or otherwise, are kittens.
Some are just more imbred than others. ;-)
> But this is not what freeware and open source software is. Richard Stallman,
> the father of free software, titled his story: "Free as in Freedom". (You
> can read it for free at http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/).
+1
-- Jason
Received on Tue Jun 28 2011 - 08:57:35 EDT