[mythtv-users] OT: Google - big brother? or I going mad?

Brian Wood beww at beww.org
Tue Sep 14 20:50:38 UTC 2010


On Tuesday, September 14, 2010 01:53:56 pm Marco Nelissen wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 6:17 AM, Brian Wood <beww at beww.org> wrote:
> (...)
> 
> > But it makes me very uneasy to take advantage of all these "free"
> > services, anything "free" usually turns out to be worth
> > the cost, or to actually cost   much more in the end.
> 
> Kinda funny reading that on a mailinglist meant for discussing a free
> software product :)

That thought occurred to me as well.

But we are talking about two different kinds of freedom. Myth would remain "free" even if it cost money to buy it (as long 
as it was still GPL).

Google has not allowed me to look over their source code, to see what they are really doing. They have not solicited code 
patches from me to make GoogleVoice better (impossible, due to the first item).

I must also confess that the comment quoted above was lifted from Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", as many here 
probably recognized. TANSTAAFL.

The main problem with discussing "free" in English is the fact that, in most other languages, "free" and "libre" are 
correctly two different words, not so in English.

MythTV is, IMHO, one of the most successful open source projects to date, though of course it would not be possible 
without many other projects (IVTV, LIRC, and many, many others, obviously including the Linux kernel itself, as wel as 
many GNU tools).

I see on /. that Linus Torvalds has become a US citizen, not sure if that was a good idea or not (for him I mean).





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