On Monday 29 October 2007 07:32, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
On 10/29/07, Manoj Srivastava srivasta@debian.org wrote:
In free software, what is in it for the authors? For alarge segment, getting the credit, and the recognition that follows, is _it_. Eben Moglen commented on this to some extent in the recent Theo/BSD/LKML scrap about credits for driver code.
Yes, I understand that since I too would be pissed if someone doesn't give me credit for my work. But it's very strange that businesses are willing to give credit to projects like Linux, Eclipse, Firefox, OOo, etc. but always somehow keep GNU at an arms length.
I guess one of the key factors is that GNU has mostly contributed to the base system (shell, tools, compiler, etc.),
It is more complex than that. Business assumes that they have a right to exploit resources for those tokens called money. As businesses got smarter they could account for other things like publicity (since it eventually translates to money). GNU otoh has freedom as the sole agenda even if it means destroying the business's assumed right. While such an agenda is useful to everybody at some point in time, it's also a major hindrance to very many, particularly those who either refuse to see the social shift, or those in transition. It's very easy to picture the situation if one happens to be earning tokens from the media companies / M$ et all / Pharma companies etc. Freedom seems to be sooo contradictory to the aquivisitive (consumptive) nature of today's value system, even to those who pedal linux.