The concept of free is complex. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, free means not under the control or power of another. A later definition says available without charge.
This leads to possible contradictions in the discussion of freedom. For example, Google Earth is free, in that it can be used without charge. However, it is not free because there are controls that Google restricts access to unless you pay for Google Earth Pro. Depending on the definition used, it would be possible to argue for hours for it being free or non-free. Another good example would be derivatives of open source projects. According to the Linux Weekly News, Debian and the Mozilla Foundation were in conflict over the freedom to modify Firefox. Ironically, Mozilla Firefox is an open source project that is freely modifiable. However, the Mozilla Foundation wishes to maintain its brand integrity by requiring the Mozilla logos to be used only in ways they dictate. This is in conflict with the foundations of freedom of open source. At the same time, Debian is rebranding Mozilla Firefox to be called Iceweasel to avoid this problem. However, this can confuse, and potential alienate users that are looking for Mozilla Firefox on their computer.
2 comments:
I think the name Iceweasel is hilarious! ~L
I went to three sessions at the AAG meetings related to virtual globes and google earth. I found only one session to be of interest, which is described here: http://communicate.aag.org/eseries/
aag_org/program/
SessionDetail.cfm?SessionID=4024.
The other two sessions were terribly boring - how could the folks studying google earth, such an exciting software, be so boring? The visual aspects of virtual globes were critiqued and criticised by folks that produced visually and graphically painful power point presentations (and with no sense of irony!).
Anyway, I do agree Kris, google earth is, at once, free and an enticement to a very pricy enterprise. Google Earth Pro is $400 annually and Google Earth Enterprise runs in the tens of thousands of dollars for some businesses. I would love to be able to easily extract a subset of Google Earth business information, for example, all the religious organizations in the U.S. (I proposed that this type of information be included in the next Religious Census of the US by the American Religious Data Archives; however, this is not in the scope for the next ARDA, given that this information is likely to come at significant cost).
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