Not only is there nothing to worry about: for such a knowledgeable
ejournal provider as
Ingenta to consider that it can make money from offering this service
is an extremely encouraging sign. I hope they sell many copies, and have a
great commercial success.
It's a major step towards the general acceptance of
the free access movement.
Dr. David Goodman
Research Librarian and
Biological Sciences Bibliographer
Princeton University Library
dgoodman_at_princeton.edu 609-258-7785
On Tue, 16 Jul 2002, Thomas Krichel wrote:
> I think that much of this debate comes from a confusion about
> the meaning of the term "free". When we talk about Eprints software
> being free, the term "free" should take the meaning as implied
> by the GNU public license. In this particular meaning, one
> should think of it as "freedom", rather then "zero euro". More
> precisely, Richard Stallman, who is the main father figure
> of the free software movement, will tell you that free
> software is any software that has four freedoms attached.
>
> freedom 0: You have the freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
>
> freedom 1: You have the freedom to modify the program to suit your needs.
>
> freedom 2: You have the freedom to redistribute copies, either gratis
> or for a fee.
>
> freedom 3: You have the freedom to distribute modified versions of the
> program, so that the community can benefit from your
> improvements.
>
> Since Eprints is under the GNU public license, it is has a license
> attached to it that aims to protect these freedoms. Under the
> license, the producers of Eprints are free to charge per download,
> but they could not prevent another organization allowing zero-charge
> downloads.
>
> Free software is sometimes opposed to commercial software. That
> is a false opposition. Commercial software is written for a
> profit. Free software can also be written for a profit. For
> example mySQL a leading free relational database software. It
> is produced by a commercial company. I assume they make their money
> consulting others on how to costumize and use it, rather
> than on the software itself. I have no affiliation with the
> company so I am not entirely sure.
>
> I presume that Ingenta have similar things in mind. Plus,
> they will be running services to run archives on behalf of
> other organizations. The clients would choose to
> let Ingenta run Eprints for them, rather than doing it
> themselves.
>
> I have been a champion of free access since 1993, when I put
> the world's first free economics paper online, and I am the
> the founder of RePEc, a very large FOS initative for economics.
> I have had my fair share of arguments with Stevan in the past,
> but on this occasion :-), he is spot on right, there is nothing
> to worry about.
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Thomas Krichel mailto:krichel_at_openlib.org
> http://openlib.org/home/krichel
> RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
>
Received on Wed Jul 17 2002 - 03:36:45 BST