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Comment by haroldp | Hacker News Reader

Similarly, no words like "freedom" appear on the home pages of many popular GPL-licensed projects. That doesn't mean that, "Mono doesn't talk about freedom". It doesn't mean that, "Python doesn't talk about freedom".

It means they didn't use the word, "freedom" on their home page. OpenBSD people care about and talk about freedom, I assure you. They have a track record of ejecting software with insufficiently free licenses from inclusion their project.

FreeBSD has switched to Clang because, among other reasons, they consider it freer. You and RMS may not agree that that it is indeed freer, but it is obnoxious and demonstrably untrue to say they, "don't talk about freedom".

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Python is not licensed under the GPL, and it is not clear to me that they care about this sort of thing.

As for Mono, I was there at the conception of the project, and can thereby tell you off the top of my head that if you go to the History section of the documentation they have an archived copy of the premise, and it is dropping with "free as in freedom" language.

http://www.mono-project.com/archived/mailpostlongreply/

(More "current", "Free Software" also listed as a "Feature Highlight" in the about page.)

http://www.mono-project.com/docs/about-mono/

So they in fact talk about freedom with using the word on their home page. That is exactly my point.

rms' statement was

> The Clang and LLVM developers reach different conclusions from ours because they do not share our values and goals. They object to the measures we have taken to defend freedom because they see the inconvenience of them and do not recognize (or don't care about) the need for them. I would guess they describe their work as "open source" and do not talk about freedom.

If you're objecting to that, well, where do they talk about freedom? I'm saying rms appears to be correct because I can't find anything they have to say about the issue. I searched more than the homepage.

RMS is wrong on this issue, and wrong in a very insulting way.

OSS programmers who disagree with him about license must not talk or (care) about freedom? Really? Jesus that's shitty.

RMS uses "freedom" to mean "the best thing you can have", kind of like, but also kind of opposite to, the way people use "freedom" to describe America. It's just propaganda, who cares. Many people view permissive licenses as more free, whatever, it's a buzzword.

I get that you don't like what rms observed about the Clang and LLVM developers, but you haven't cited anything from them that would show him to be mistaken.

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