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Don't oppose Free Software and Commercial Software
Using the term "Commercial Software" as the opposite
of "Free Software" is not just simply wrong but also hazardous
to the evolvement of the Free Software concept in business environment.
The attribute "commercial" in business is a synonym for "professional".
Thus, if you oppose the terms "Commercial Software" and "Free Software",
you imply Free Software to be less professional.
Don't do it if you like the Free Software concept!
The opposite of Free Software is proprietary software.
Both can either be commercial or non-commercial. A Free Software
can be called commercial, if you can buy certain services such
as training, installation, configuration/setup, maintenance,
development etc. and a customer can be satisfied with
any subset of these.
Non-commercial Free Software is software where you can't pay
a company for services. Non-commercial proprietary software is usually
gratis software (often referred to as "freeware") without available
services from companies.
2004/10/05
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