Why KDE4 is called KDE?

[Duncan]

Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. posted on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 06:36:16 -0600 as
excerpted:

> On Monday 07 December 2009 23:44:25 Thierry de Coulon wrote:
>> On Tuesday 08 December 2009, Duncan wrote:
>> "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
>> and if you use the program, he is your master."
>> Richard Stallman
>> 
>> May I ask what changes with free programs as long as you are no
>> programer? I love this affirmation but it's very theoretical for the
>> average user....
> 
> With free software any programmer with the necessary skills can modify
> the program[];  with non-free software some singular entity can simply
> refuse to allow the software to be modified[.]

> In practice, that singular entity rarely dismisses a modification
> entirely, but does exert monopoly control.
 
> The traditional car analogy is that with a "free car" you can take it to
> any mechanic to get work done on it. [But] if you use a "proprietary
> car" or "non-free car" the manufacturer has sealed all the mechanisms[.]

Perhaps I'll do the short answer for a change! =:^)  The traditional one-
sentence version of the above car analogy is:

Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut, that had to be taken to 
the dealer even to fill the window washer fluid?

One real practical effect of this on the FLOSS community in real life, is 
that due to the number of people running the proprietary nVidia graphics 
drivers, X development is rather slower than it'd be otherwise, and 
distribution deployment of new xorg versions is MARKEDLY slower, because 
nVidia is effectively holding all the major distributions hostage to 
their driver release schedule, as nVidia is often months behind the xorg 
implementation, including all of the native xorg drivers.  Were there 
fewer users who chose to play nVidia lackeys, the entire xorg ecosystem 
would evolve faster.  Here, nVidia isn't holding only nVidia lickspittles 
in servitude, but the entire community is held back.

Well, shorter before I edited the above quote for length. =:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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