[hackerspaces] Proprietary Product Company as a sponsor of FOSS event

[Avinash Sonawane]

Thank you Moritz and hellekin for clarifying the things so clearly.
Awesome clarity of thoughts! Thanks to others who contributed to
discussion.

So we have decided to *NOT* to take proprietary product company as a
sponsor of our FLOSS event as it'll dilute the whole purpose, the
FLOSS values.

Here is what RMS has to say about it:


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Richard Stallman <rms at gnu.org>
Date: Fri, Jul 4, 2014 at 5:22 AM
Subject: Re: [Gnu-linux-discussion] [x-post] Proprietary Product
Company as a sponsor of FOSS event


[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

    1) To have a proprietary product company as a sponsor of FOSS event is
    it morally right?

Having a proprietary software company as the sponsor of an event
grants legitimacy to the company's proprietary software.  Thus,
it sends a message that contradicts the free software idea.

By the way, if you want to support the idea of free software,
saying "FOSS" doesn't do that very well.  See
http://gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.html.

    2) What about proprietary *service* company?

The terms "free" and "nonfree" are defined for programs.  They are
meaningless for services.  See
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/network-services-arent-free-or-nonfree.html.

      I mean the one which
    serves it's client with say system administration or building a dbms
    system (which is closed source suppose) for the client

This might be SaaSS (service as a software substitute), but I can't
tell for certain because your description is very sketchy.
See http://gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html.

If you want to support the idea of free software, I suggest not saying
"closed source" (or "open source") since they refer to a different
idea.  See http://gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html.


--
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call.



-- 
Avinash Sonawane (RootKea)
PICT, Pune
http://www.rootkea.wordpress.com