Free as in Freedom (not Free Beer)

I’ve been known have the odd dig at the ‘free-software’ faction of the
‘open-source’ movement from time to time. You know the line ‘there is not much value in free‘… While I maintain this is true in the sense of ‘free-software’ meaning much the same as ‘free-beer‘ (i.e. untainted by the immoral gains of filthy lucre) there is another side to the story that I’ve only just figured out.

UPDATE:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/ldr - look for “LearnDog REMIXED – New Language” for links to the podcast that mentions this post and “Post Linguistic and yet Sub Symbolic” language.

Free-software can mean software (and more importantly content) that is free as in freedom. And this is the magic ingredient that enables some of the more powerful outcomes of re-mixing and the network effect.

I owe this recent discovery to the tireless work of Stephen Downes
who’s talks on ‘eLearning 2.0 and Web2.0′ I have listened to no less
than three times on various podcasts from OLDaily. Today I was riding
my bike along the Glenelg
to Henley foreshore and once again my iPod was firmly implanted in the
left ear as I cycled blissfully on a wonderful spring morning. About
40minutes into this three part, three hour talk I heard the words ‘free beer’ and my brain sprang into action!

Tonight and later next week I plan to ‘slice up’ Stephen’s talk and
some other goodies I have heard on podcasts and Re-Mix these snippets
into some form that we can begin some discussion about in the LearnDogPup blog. Stay tuned.

Fang – Mike Seyfang – LearnDog

p.s. Look where Stephen was this time last year – spooky!

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