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Comment by thechut | Hacker News Reader

Lots of people are quick to jump on this "Avoid the pain of Windows 8" comment but people need to relax. Their is something major being overlooked here. Ubuntu is giving away their OS for FREE. $0

Windows 8 will be cheaper than previous Windows upgrades but lets not forget about the pillars of free software and why to support it.

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'Free' and 'polite' are not mutually exclusive. The first pillar of free software is not '$0 free', it's 'respect'.

I don't recall ever seeing respect as a pillar of free software. I always thought the first pillar was freedom. Canocial can be as rude as they want, but as long as they do not make it difficult for me to do what I want with their software, their software is free.

Free Software is about acknowledging and enabling your rights and value, both individually and within the community. Freedom of availability / modification / etc are the tools to achieve that. However, just because you give me something for free, doesn't mean you value me and want to empower me. And you can't value someone if you don't respect them first.

Perhaps this is all just arguing semantics, but the idea that motives matter is important to me.

I don't understand how can Linux folks feel any respect for Microsoft after what they tried to do to Linux community a couple of years ago...

"They started it" - Is no reason to be disrespectful or rude. Instead they should show by example how a to act.

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