
Session 240, Page 3
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 6
Session 240, Page 3
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 6
55 min 0 sec
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), The Harmony of the Worlds [Episode 3]
Context: As a boy Kepler had been captured by a vision of cosmic splendour, a harmony of the worlds which he sought so tirelessly all his life. Harmony in this world eluded him. His three laws of planetary motion represent, we now know, a real harmony of the worlds, but to Kepler they were only incidental to his quest for a cosmic system based on the Perfect Solids, a system which, it turns out, existed only in his mind. Yet from his work, we have found that scientific laws pervade all of nature, that the same rules apply on Earth as in the skies, that we can find a resonance, a harmony, between the way we think and the way the world works.
When he found that his long cherished beliefs did not agree with the most precise observations, he accepted the uncomfortable facts, he preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions. That is the heart of science.
Letter to Lance Cpl. Joe Hickey http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,88163,00.html (23 September 1983), R.W. "Dick" Gaines http://www.angelfire.com/ca/dickg/marinesquote.html refers in detail
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)
Source: Death Kit (1967), p.149
Letter to Mr. Drummond (10 November 1710), quoted in Gilbert Parke, Letters and Correspondence, Public and Private, of The Right Honourable Henry St. John, Lord Visc. Bolingbroke; during the Time he was Secretary of State to Queen Anne; with State Papers, Explanatory Notes, and a Translation of the Foreign Letters, &c.: Vol. I (1798), pp. 16–17
Source: Systems Engineering Tools, (1965), Systems Engineering Methods (1967), p. 24; First paragraph of Ch. 2. System Organization, Scheduling, and Record-Keeping
1990s, Why "Free Software" is better than "Open Source" (1998)
Context: While free software by any other name would give you the same freedom, it makes a big difference which name we use: different words convey different ideas.
In 1998, some of the people in the free software community began using the term "open source software" instead of "free software" to describe what they do. The term "open source" quickly became associated with a different approach, a different philosophy, different values, and even a different criterion for which licenses are acceptable. The Free Software movement and the Open Source movement are today separate movements with different views and goals, although we can and do work together on some practical projects.
The fundamental difference between the two movements is in their values, their ways of looking at the world. For the Open Source movement, the issue of whether software should be open source is a practical question, not an ethical one. As one person put it, "Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement." For the Open Source movement, non-free software is a suboptimal solution. For the Free Software movement, non-free software is a social problem and free software is the solution.