> But charging money has nothing to do with freedom.

The fact that Stallman repeats this over and over, doesn't necessarily
make that true.

Charging money does have something to do with freedom, at least the specific
sense we're discussing now (being free from corporate control). If a person
has a billion dollars, he doesn't care that he's not free to move his DVD
collection from the US to Israel - he just leaves them in the US and has his
servants get the same ones for him in Israel. Or he pays a million dollars
to the studio to have a special all-zone DVD made just for him.
A person without money is obviously not free to use that option.

Returning down to earth for a moment: when I was a kid and we didn't have
much money, I was free to read any book I wanted, because (among other things)
we had a very cheap library (in fact, it was a library-on-wheels that came
to our street once or twice a week). However I was not free to watch any
movie I wanted. Why? We didn't have a VCR (those were outrageously expensive
in Israel), and even if we did we would not have been able to afford to buy
videos. And because VCRs were too expensive to afford, video rental stores
also did not exist in Israel initially.

So certain things costing too much *does* effect the people's freedom to use
them.

In a short lecture I gave in Haifux about free software (see
http://nadav.harel.org.il/essays/chofesh/lecture.html) I discussed the
advantages of free software (including, but not only, freedom), and
I pointed to another freedom given by free software that Stallman always
hides because of his "it's about freedom, not no-cost" mantra. Here's a
translated quote from what I wrote there

   ...
   The fact that free software can be copied without cost (or at a tiny
   cost) grants the user another type of freedom:

   Even a person who agrees to spend money on buying software usually has
   a limited budget. He can not afford dozens of different commercial
   softwares costing tens or hundreds of dollars each.

   For example, a curious child might want, in order to learn and develop
   himself, to buy an operating-system, a word-processor, a painting
   program, software development packages for a few programming languages,
   email software, and more. Should he want to use commercial software
   without breaking the law, he would have to give up some of his ambitions.
   On the other hand, if he were to use free software, he could afford
   all of them, and even try a new free program every day.

   The freedom to learn, experience, and act is especially important to
   children, but obviously also for curious adults who are trying to learn.
   ...
   
(and yes, MosheZ, I do know that quoting myself doesn't make what I say
true :) ).

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |     Saturday, Jan 11 2003, 8 Shevat 5763