Free is good. Profit is evil

Free Software Foundation’s ‘5 reasons to avoid iPhone 3G.’ A lengthy, uninformed, unbalanced, and self-righteous treatise on why a profit motivation is bad for consumers, and why open source software is better for the world than anything the obviously corrupt and evil Steve Jobs and Apple and Company will do for you.

Apple, through its marketing and visual design techniques, is manufacturing an illusion that merely buying an Apple makes you part of an alternative community. But the technology they use is explicitly chosen to divide people into separate digital cells, and to position Apple as sole warden. When your business depends on people paying for the privilege of being locked up, the prison better look and feel luxurious, and the bars better not be too visible.

John Gruber’s take: “They’re accusing Apple of concocting the whole thing as some sort of profit-making scheme.”

Shame on Apple. Not.

When open source comes up with software as cool as Apple’s, for free, I’ll pay more attention. For now, it’s not much of a contest.