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And it could have easily been Wyoming, rather than New Hampshire. Both awfully cold states.

If this stuff concerns you, you might want to join us. We stopped Real-ID, our DMV is required to honor our requests not to include our SSN, home address, or photo, and a zillion things more. Free State Project

One person voting doesn't help much. Hell, one person getting into office doesn't help much. But THOUSANDS of activists and DOZENS of people getting themselves elected, in one small state? You bet your ass that's making a difference http://freestateproject.org/

If you're looking to roll back government, you should seriously consider the Free State Project. By concentrating likeminded people in one state, and getting literally dozens of them elected, we are making real changes, NOW

Sounds like you should join us in New Hampshire http://freestateproject.org/

This us why thousands of us have moved to New Hampshire with the Free State Project

It stopped being "my" country when it started keeping secrets in order to aggregate power. "My" country is run by the people, for the people, and of the people.

Many of us feel the same way, and are concentrating our efforts in one small geographic distribution. We've elected dozens into the State legislature and many more municipally across the state. Maybe you should vote with your feet. Free State Project

Once more proving that Libertarianism is nothing more than an attempt to sell Aristocracy to the gullible.

But not those dumb enough to believe the lie. No, like Nigerian letters Libertarianism goes after those with an overblown ego, those who think they are going to be the Aristocrats. But unfortunately, the result for the rest of us is worse than just spam.

That's why I think we should all support the Free State Project. Having them all huddle in their Gulch means the rest of us can start rebuilding our society free from interference.

I first heard about the Free State Project from a slashdot story in October 2003, when they announced that New Hampshire was the target state. At the time I was on a 1-year work contract in Australia, and all I knew was that when I returned to the USA, I did not want to return to the high taxes, high population density and (comparatively) bad air quality of the Bay Area. As a libertarian myself, it was a no-brainer, especially after I read the "101 Reasons to choose New Hampshire" document (which has subsequently been turned into a video documentary). So I went back to California just long enough to make arrangements. I moved to NH in June 2005, making me mover #107.

In the time I have been here, some 1,900 other "early movers" have also come. We have gone from electing a few Free-Staters to local city councils and planning boards, to our first State Representative, to now having some two dozen Free-Stater State Reps, and having pulled many of the existing State Reps and Senators (especially the Republican ones) in a much more libertarian direction. I will never forget the ex-Marine State Rep who in 2006 told me he would "never, ever in his life" allow "legal dope", to that same Rep now voting for full marijuana legalization every single time it comes up. We were the first state to pass same-sex marriage via a legislative process (not popular referendum). We passed medical marijuana. We have no adult seat belt law, no helmet law, open carry and shall-issue concealed carry (and are likely to pass constitutional carry next session). We have eliminated all state knife laws, absolutely rejected Real-ID ("and any de-facto national identity system that may follow therefrom"), forbidden the State to use automated license plate scanners, and passed a law affirming a defendant's right to explain Nullification to the jury.

We don't need all 20,000 to show up. Another 4-5K people, if they do the same things as the first 2K, and NH will bear very little resemblance to the police-states/welfare-states of the rest of the USA... and much more resemblance to the society described in the New Hampshire Constitution, which is summed up well by Article 10:

Government being instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security, of the whole community, and not for the private interest or emolument of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, whenever the ends of government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other means of redress are ineffectual, the people may, and of right ought to reform the old, or establish a new government. The doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power, and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.

Sounds like a good project for New Hampshire.

There is also Low unemployment and plenty of jobs available. Portsmouth is one of the 30th top markets to find a job.

Here are more resources for plenty of jobs in NH - https://freestateproject.org/r...

Not to mention that you'd be moving there with a large group desiring to see you get a job and succeed, thus willing to help you find a job and act as references. I'd be surprised if they went through all this trouble and didn't have community job finding assistance even if only a mailing list where everybody can list jobs they know about.

How much _real_ broadband is available in New Hampshire? Where it is available is probably not too cheap, cost of living-wise (see first point).

You are acting like NH is a third world country, lets just get the facts- http://www.speedtest.net/award...

Most Free state people are moving to locations like Keene which has Xfinity with 114 Mbps download average and the same prices as elsewhere

There is also Low unemployment and plenty of jobs available. Portsmouth is one of the 30th top markets to find a job.

Here are more resources for plenty of jobs in NH - https://freestateproject.org/r...

Sounds like the Free State Project is what you're describing and yes it has been hard BUT we are succeeding

That's what we'd holler to cars driving by as we rallied to support the fine folks who had taken the initial steps at the Kilton Library (you might recognize my name from the article - OK nm it's slashdot). Do read this story to get a better sense for what this sort of street-level activism is like (and how enjoyable it can be).

More pics and a great interview with the librarians on the event page:
https://m.facebook.com/events/...

Sounds like you should be in New Hampshire

Here in New Hampshire, the State is forbidden by law from using ANY automated license plate scanner technology. We are the only state to have passed such legislation. Not by coincidence; we have some two dozen hardcore libertarians in the State Legislature and thousands of liberty activists, with more moving in all the time. And you can join us http://freestateproject.org/

The arguments against are that 1) it's illegal, and 2) Uber drivers don't have enough (or the right kind of) insurance.

The first argument seems contrived. Up here in NH the Portsmouth taxi commission decided that Uber is a better solution, then voted to disband. (As the Free State project points out, "where else would this happen?"

Why is the illegality argument contrived? Yes some municipalities have changed their laws to allow it, that doesn't change the fact that they're basing their expansion around a practise of flagrantly violating the law everywhere else.

I've been following with interest the debate about government-regulated taxis versus free-market Uber.

So far as I can tell, the argument for Uber is that it's cheaper, and the rides are nicer and more convenient, but otherwise it's the same service. In particular, the service has not been a statistically significant source of crime.

The arguments against are that 1) it's illegal, and 2) Uber drivers don't have enough (or the right kind of) insurance.

The first argument seems contrived. Up here in NH the Portsmouth taxi commission decided that Uber is a better solution, then voted to disband. (As the Free State project points out, "where else would this happen?")

And as to the insurance argument, the Boston Globe reports that "Passengers hurt in accidents often run into denial and evasion by poorly insured firms".

Uber is a good service, people seem to like and want it.

Are there any objections I've missed? Besides "predictions", of course(*). Anyone can predict anything and sound just like an economist.

(*) Predictions are invalid because both solutions are in play right now. There's no need to predict what will happen because we can just look to see if it's happening.

"no welfare, looser building codes, no minimum wage, and few restrictions on weapons"

How could this possibly go wrong?

It's just nonsense - to build on a sea platform would require tremendously strong buildings and no owner of such a platform would permit shacks to be built there as crumbling buildings would threaten the platform and its other occupants. The notable difference between a seastead and local building codes is that such agreements on a seastead would be entered into voluntarily, not by fiat backed by violence.

The people who would live and work there would need to be attracted to live on a sea platform, so low-paid workers and destitute beggars aren't even an issue. This isn't a model for society, it's more of a Galt's Gulch.

I still think it's silly to get all the anarchists on a platform that can be sunk by a torpedo (see the Free State Project for a more sensible option) but TFS is written as if by a seventh grader who's heard something about libertarians.

Yet another reason to live in New Hampshire: No sales tax.

In further praise of New Hampshire note that we also don't have an income tax and, unlike California, we're not bankrupt. Also, the unemployment rate is pretty low - currently 5%.

(We have high property taxes, but one of the lowest overall tax burdens, so having high property taxes isn't as important as you might think.)

Yet another reason to live in New Hampshire: No sales tax.

Except that's not what it's about, the tea party are willing dupes to D&R. If they were serious they would be voting third party. Not republican. The oligarchy just steers these people into the system and keeps them confused by taking advantage of their hopes.

Yeah, like voting for a 3rd party candidate, much less being active in the campaigns of those candidates, really makes much of a difference? When you talk to 3rd party groups, if they are extremely well organized (like the Libertarian Party or the Constitution Party) they might claim to have elected a county clerk, a municipal council representative, or some other mundane person to office. Once in a blue moon they even might get a single legislator elected.

You at least have folks like the Free State Project that understand this issue to a small extent where they are trying to concentrate their numbers so at least at the municipal level and for a low population state (like New Hampshire or Wyoming where there are indeed active communities) they can come together in order finally start winning elections. That has pushed a few buttons in New Hampshire in particular as there are some
people really pissed off and angry that the Free State Project is moving in on their turf and pushing them out of office... as if democracy didn't even matter.

Still, besides something so drastic like that, how do you possibly get from 3rd party status to even being able to have a small delegation is major legislative bodies like a state legislature where you need to bother with electing the minority leader of your delegation? That is the issue which the Tea Party groups face or for that matter anybody else who wants to try the 3rd party route. The Reform Party actually made some inroads until Ross Perot decided to go wacko and basically implode the whole thing leaving a bunch of ordinary folks holding the bag and trying to figure out what to do next.... many of whom simply moved back to the two major parties.

The problem with the current political structure in America is that it is far easier to work within one of the major political parties and at least get a few seats and gaining influence than it is to be left out in the cold and have no influence at all. I don't know if that tactic will work either to "throw the bums out", but after years of seeing how completely ineffective 3rd party groups have been sometimes you need to try something different just to get some kind of traction.

Yeah, of course it seems nice until you do...

http://freestateproject.org/

I'm a healthy skeptic, but this is literally the paranoid conspiracy-theorist's worse nightmare incarnate.

and the most troubling part is that the reality hasn't changed - it's just become apparent. The "tinfoil crowd" has been right all along.

I'm flabbergasted. In all seriousness, do we need to just move to a different country at some point?

A less drastic step is to join others who feel this way in the same country. There is strength in numbers, which is causing them to gather. Be careful of selection bias - a great many people (I'd dare say even the majority) are not paying attention and have no idea how extreme the situation is. And - also - 'cause holy shit - we're not even 10% of the way though the Snowden disclosures.

I've wondered why they chose NH for that -- seems to me a state with more resources and more space, and already more rooted in a culture of freedom and independence, might have been more appropriate, not to mention having more ability to sustain itself if need be. WY or MT or ND, maybe.

NH does have a culture of freedom and independence - most locals are libertarian in nature, if not political. But the biggest issue is that a large state is bad for activism. In NH, every activist can be in any place in the State in less than 3 hours, and the median time is under an hour. There was a protest rally a few weeks ago, organized in less than a week, and 300 people showed up. Montana can be 14 hours from corner to corner.

It's also very important to have a seaport, to keep options open. A landlocked State can ultimately only exert a certain amount of power. Montana at least has Canada as a border, but no access to shipping itself.

They also list more reasons here.

There is a large and growing movement in New Hampshire of libertarian types who engage in civil disobedience basically as a lifestyle. As long as you're not hurting anyone, do what you want, regardless of the "law." Many of us are involved in things such as Free Keene and the Shire Society. You can read about a lot of the stuff going on here on Free Keene's blog. There are dozens of other links to sites set up by people in the N.H. liberty movement in the sidebar on this site, too.

See also the Free State Project, which is where most such people have come from.

WTF does that even mean? That could be anything from Libertarians who don't want to pay taxes to hippies wanting to set up a socialist utopia.

Liberty means that both of those groups should be able to do those things that they want, short of hurting others.

I'm a long-time NH resident, and have met several of the FSP early movers. That pretty well fits each one of them - let people do what they want, short of hurting others (oh, the horror). They're almost all strong on property rights (except for the odd Georgist or two) and favor peace and tolerance as the prevailing basis for society. Most favor sound money and work hard for private charity. There are already a few that live in something like a commune and the ones that are pro-markets and free enterprise are completely down with that - they think it's silly, but the commune-ists pose no threat to them.

It's probably a safe bet that none favor Greek-style central control, central banking, and a pervasive regulatory environment, or the US-style warfare/welfare state (corporate welfare being tops among them). Their statement of intent says, "the maximum role of civil government is the protection of life, liberty, and property."

I've worked with some of them at the State house on issues like the right to record public officials in their official duty, the prosecution of victimless crimes, and legalizing industrial hemp. The Earth is "full" as there are no unclaimed jurisdictions, so the new reality of the past century is that one cannot simply move to settle a new area with like-minded friends (e.g. Utah) - the only option left is to move en masse and gentrify an existing area.

It's certainly not for everybody - those who would rather be kept as pets should not move here, and that's the beauty of political migration - those who do wish to "Live Free or Die" can move here with the FSP and work to make this one beautiful spot of nine-thousand square miles the freest place on Earth.

Is the Mars colony ready yet?

No, but there's that thing going on in New Hampshire...

Copyleft is a practical handicap, as well as a moral one.

The practical handicap, first off, is that you need a lawyer to understand how exactly it will handicap you and your business. In many cases your business model would be sabotaged, as you don't have the freedom to do what you want with your own additions and enhancements to a piece of copyleft software. Those restrictions tighten over time - most people paid no attention to them before GPLv3. (Linux was smart enough to stay with v2, but all its distros depend on GNU components that didn't.) And what of GPLv4, v5, and beyond? Knowing the anti-market socialist mentality that gave birth to the GPL, it's entirely reasonable to be concerned. Software is a relationship that requires a significant investment of time, to master it to the point where you can extend it. Rational people shouldn't invest this time in software that comes with legal threats attached.

The moral handicap is that it uses copyright, backed by government force. A "license.txt" file is intended to be an "implicit contract", which makes about as much logical sense as wearing a "by seeing me you agree to obey me" t-shirt! By equating copying with theft, you're no better than the RIAA! And GPL needs copyright far more than Microsoft or Apple, because the latter make a growing fraction of their income through legitimate explicit contracts (B2B, SaaS, hardware bundling, etc) rather than EULA's. Free software is a natural market phenomenon, but copyleft is an economically-retarded ideological movement that has hijacked it, and has done a great deal of harm - limiting how the software can be used, and thereby discouraging its use. Stallman's wet dream is to undermine the free market in software, make software development economically unsustainable, and then have to government come in to fund and regulate the development of all software. Copyleft software is not really "free software", and, by using it, you give credence to the socialist definition of freedom - using force to get your way.

So now we are gradually seeing an increase in copyfree projects relative to copyleft ones. Companies are increasingly reluctant to use any GPL software that they can avoid. Linux itself is difficult to avoid for now, but that may change in the future.

--libman

(Some more comments...)

These two "sides" are really just shaky alliances based on a bunch of different issues that frequently don't have that much to do with each other.

I agree, but this is mainly caused by so much power being held at the Federal level. There's no reason for New Hampshire Republicans and Mississippi Republicans to be the same party on an ideological level, but both need an alliance with the much more powerful Federal-level GOP in order to be viable. (The links in the previous sentence aren't meant as ideal representations of those state parties, but only to highlight the contrasts.)

There's no perfect solution to this, but moving power to more local levels would help. The powers of the Federal government should logically be limited to only the things that sub-national entities cannot possibly do, which is exactly how this nation was originally structured.

The long-term ideal is that all power is held by individuals and voluntarily-established institutions, but, until we get there, competitive local government is better than one homogeneous empire "from sea to shining sea" (and beyond).

A country that encompassed only the Bible Belt states wouldn't have abortion as an issue any more, because they'd probably just ban it and be done with it, so they'd move on to other issues for political parties to distinguish themselves on.

I get what you're saying, but I don't think any U.S. state would ever actually ban abortion, even if it had the political power to do so. It'd be like King Cnut trying to command the tide!

At present levels of technology, banning abortions translates to also banning certain medications, and even nutritional supplements (i.e. vitamin C)! As technology advances, abortion-inducing medications and devices would become ever-easier to self-administer, even for late-term abortions. They would also have to somehow ban "leaving the state while pregnant and then coming back not pregnant" (and without a baby, or adoption papers, or a medical report of a legitimate miscarriage, etc). Imagine all cross-border roads, airports, and seaports of a state asking all passing women and girls to pee into a cup! And the adoption / "legitimate miscarriage" reports would have to be carefully scrutinized, as countless out-of-state doctors would be willing to forge such reports with no harm to their own reputation. Tourism and business investment into the prohibitionist states would obviously go down, and goods and services produced in that state would be boycotted by many. And it's hard to imagine any woman wanting to get an abortion actually being deterred by all this - the cost of leaving the state would perpetually decline, and the number of charities willing to help women trapped in prohibitionist states would increase. Some women would simply leave the state and not come back. Population growth would likely only decline as the result - which is the very opposite of what many abortion prohibitionists had wanted! All this would obviously decimate the prohibitionist states' economy until they give up and get rid of such stupid laws!

Laws come from reality, and are understood through science (including economics). Human legislators cannot make up social or economic laws, they can only recognize them or fail to recognize them - like an engineer can recognize or fail to recognize certain physical laws of nature. The closer we come to understanding and applying those laws, the more functional is the resulting system.

Nature, to be commanded, needs to be obeyed.

The number of states that's optimal is highly debateable.

Of course, the divisions are largely arbitrary. But one functional basis for state divisions ar

You have been brainwashed to believe that all research that is funded voluntarily is bad, and all research that is funded through government violence is good. And it's not just "billionaires" who contribute to independent research - billionaires merely have the most to contribute, and are easiest for you commies to vilify.

In the history of science, there are many examples of politically-backed movements that seem to present overwhelming quantities of evidence to make their case, but are grounded on a faulty foundation and mis-frame the issues that they are trying to address. Some of the more famous examples of this include: the various state religions, "scientific communism", and "scientific racism" / eugenics. The latter, for example, presents mountains of data showing that certain ethnic groups perform better or worse than others, and try to use this data to jump to their preconceived conclusions - reduced Rights for the under-performing ethnic groups, sterilization, theft, etc. (Some Objectivists, for example, have been very guilty of this when discussing the Property Rights of the Palestinians.) Some of their data is indeed valid and significant, but it is being used to justify actions that it does not logically support! A rational epistemological formulation for a Theory of Rights leads to the recognition that all sufficiently-rational economic actors (potentially including parahumans, etc) are equal in their negative Rights, and the aggregate performance of any individual's ethnic group should be completely irrelevant in the eyes of the law.

Likewise, with all alleged environmental crises -- that try to put all of humanity in the same boat, both as the victim and the perpetrator of said crisis, in order to justify their power on a global scale -- the burden of proof remains on the accusers . The politically-biased alarmists, however, have the opposite mentality - willing to "err on the side of caution" and going quite far to overstate their case for interventionism, "for a good cause". They refuse to consider all the horrendous side-effects and unintended consequences of their actions. They have been repeatedly guilty of ignoring or outright hiding the error margins for reconstruction of past temperature data, failing to adjust for the "urban warming" effect, downplaying the unknown cycles in natural sources of greenhouse gases (ex. 95%~ of CO2 production has nothing to do with human activity) as well as other natural cycles (ex. solar activity), etc, etc, etc. Perhaps most importantly, their projections completely ignore the exponentially-accelerating rates of technological growth, in assuming that fossil fuels will remain just as viable in the marketplace for the remainder of the century, and that humanity won't irrigate and plant trees and come up with many yet-inconceivable carbon-sink technologies in the near future. The alarmists seek the power to be the "central planners" for all humanity, but what they know is dwarfed but what modern science doesn't yet know, and won't know for decades to come! That is the context in which all calls for environmentalist interventionism need to be considered.

--libman

Look, anybody who wants to see anything different has got to tell me how we de-centralize.

There's a plan in VA to float their own currency, but there won't be enough support to make that happen. There are too few people in every state who care about such issues to make any real progress before a massive crash.

That's the key insight behind the Free State Project - concentrate all the people who 'get it' in one jurisdiction, fix that jurisdiction, and then when the rest crash they'll have a model to look to for rebuilding (and when they rebuild upon sustainable grounds, many of the activists will move back to their favorite geography).

Doing it the same way it's been done for 150 years will lead the the same results - that should be self-evident.

Thank you for bringing this up.

A true libertarian would avoid commie-licensed software like Linux.

PS: the guy claiming to be "esr" on FreeNode #libertarian(s) (I forget if the channel name was plural or not) is a jerk.

--libman

if i came through as resorting to personal attacks, i'm sorry, that was honestly not my intention. sure, there's some sarcasm in there, i'll gladly admit that, but it's just my way of expressing myself. i'm used to conversing in this manner (and sometimes i forget that not all are used to this tone..)

And I apologize for my tendency to speak in generalities and lump people together - no particular "personal attacks" came from you.

No one should be blamed for "not giving a rat's ass about my opinion" - I just write the things that I think deserve to be written.

(The "go back to writing html css javascript..." comment struck a bit of a nerve, but only due to my own insecurities... I haven't done much but scripting since the 90s, while I'd rather be writing more serious software in C, or at least Go/Rust/Nimrod... But the in-browser software stack is a universal standard that I am forced to accept.)

I do appreciate criticism, sarcasm, and passionate self-expression - it's the "shut up, troll" stuff (from other people) that should be avoided.

if it was the incoherency comment, it was a bit hard to follow your line of thought hopping from pointing out the (faultily) large dependency list...

My first post, while not wrong, was poorly researched. It was based on a single piece of anecdotal evidence that atypically turned out not to be representative of how XBMC is packaged on other OS'es. The purpose of that post was not to present a well-rounded review of XBMC, and it was clear that I was talking about that specific observation on FreeBSD. I don't comment on every piece of software that I don't use, but I thought that particular observation was interesting enough to give voice to. From the purist point of view, the criticism of "software bloat" still applies to XBMC as it's packaged for other OS'es, but that is far less noteworthy.

I'm obviously presenting a specific point of view, and one that is admittedly not very popular. I am trying to practice and evolve a software philosophy that values simplicity, modularity, and reuse of common components. I am also biased against software that is not permissively licensed, and am trying to make things work while using as few of those components as possible. Some copyleft components, like mplayer/ffmpeg and Web browser dependencies, cannot yet be avoided, but the amount of unavoidable copyleft code needed for a functional UNIX desktop / workstation is gradually shrinking.

...to spawning mplayer through a web browser (which has much more deps - we have resorted from pulling in webkit for that very reason), which surely embeds more scripting languages and has an even higher complexity than xbmc.

I didn't want to simply badmouth XBMC for being 100MB of "GUItard GNUshit" (parody quotes); I also wanted to presented my alternative vision for how a Media Center app ought to be designed. Or, rather, it was two perspectives that sort of melted together. The first one is that "you don't need it" - one can use decentralized media tools and script them together for any desired effect. The second perspective was access to all your media via Web-based app / apps (which of course can run locally).

That first perspective comes from the minimalist unixbeard perspective, which is a minority, even on Slashdot. I just can't imagine having a keyboard very far away from me at any time. Even when relaxing on the couch and watching video on the big screen, reaching for a laptop on the tray table right in front of me (which I occasionally do anyway if I'm on IRC, etc) takes less time than reaching for a dumbremo

(1) Advocating "clear and present" violence against gun owners is indeed free speech, but it really pushes the boundaries... By that same standard Goebbels is innocent, if he did not directly kill anyone with his own hands...

(2) The theoretical possibility of someone retaliating against their threats does not implicate all "2nd amendment proponents".

(3) Rights to both free speech and self-defense come from economic reality, not any constitution. The best any legal system can do is recognize them.

(4) The emotionalist people who want to a total government monopoly on all means of self-defense are brainwashed fools without the slightest understanding of what the consequences would be - a lot less freedom, and also a lot more crime. They want to turn USA into another Venezuela - in murder rates as well!

--libman

Voting puts you on the same level as all idiots, who tend to be in majority. I'm not saying you shouldn't vote for someone like Ron Paul, but don't expect perfect results. A better solution is to move to a country where people are smart enough to understand basic economics. Such a country doesn't yet exist, but Hong Kong and Singapore come closest. There may also be hope of creating such a country, someday... Within the United States, there's also something called the Free State Project...

--libman

You are right about Stallman's extreme Leftist views

I try to avoid the irrational left-vs-right "wing" terminology. It originated as a schism within the socialist movement, with those seated on the "right" of some historical deliberative body being "nationalist socialists", and those on the "left" being "internationalist socialists". I reject them both.

One possible exception may be when I'm highlighting the distinction between copyLEFT and copyFREE with upper casing, just as a reading aid (unless I forget). The former is an application of copyright that stands for a particular political special-interest group, while the latter stands for freedom.

and being familiar w/ your link,

By this do you mean the the thread on the Free State Project forum?

I'm not sure why you say that he attacks bad people.

I think you've misunderstood me. I was saying that Stallman is often attacked by other people for all the wrong reasons - and not for the right reasons to be severely critical of him.

Personal attacks against Stallman are often focused on his lifestyle choices, and I think those attacks are often irrational. Hippies are a-OK, as long as they don't initiate aggression (i.e. socialist politics) against others. Even voluntary communists are OK (even though their philosophy is so dysfunctional it is almost never practiced voluntarily). I can respect lispy emacs users, even though I reject GNU Emacs and its license. I can agree with some of Stallman's software design ideas, while disagreeing with others.

What is irreconcilable between me and Stallman is that he believes in using government-veiled violence to get his way, and I refuse to recognize that violence as legitimate.

In the Mid East, w/o saying so in so many words, he backs Jihad terror groups against Israel.

I am rather critical of Israel myself (although I do recognize its accomplishments as warranted). Israel could have been established without violating the Property Rights of the Palestinians... But that's a whole nother debate...

And his views on pedophilia and necrophilia - how on earth can anyone consider that mainstream?

Actually those are some of the issues where Stallman is mostly right (except he'd probably fail to fully recognize Parents' Rights in regard to the former). Pedophilia is clearly an illness, and its indulgence is clearly unethical, but it doesn't constitute rape in every single case. The hysteria over "kiddy porn" is probably the #1 threat to Internet freedom that exists today!

The choice of whether to program in C, C++, Objective-C, Objective-C++, C#, Java or whatever should be a decision of individual programmers, since the FSF is not a company. [...]

A group doesn't need to be "a company" (presumably you mean like with salaried employees) in order to have working standards. There's great usefulness to organizations that set policies for the projects that they accept under their umbrella, as long as people are free to fork off on their own if they so choose. We can have the best of both worlds - rational order as well as freedom. There's nothing wrong with having large "cathedrals", as long as there's a "bazaar" of competition between them.

I myself firmly believe that having every component written in a different language is horrendously ugly! I'm a big fan of all UNIX systems programming taking place in C, and brand new future-oriented "post-POSIX" OS projects starti

Wow... Here it's claimed that... RMS's worst flaw... Is his software design preferences?! And that is why copyFREE software is gradually leapfrogging copyLEFT?! Nonsense! That's like saying Hitler's worst flaw was his vegetarianism!

I hate to see bad people attacked for wrong reasons, because it distracts the eye of history from their actual faults. In reality RMS is intelligent, charismatic, and does not have an oft-alleged hygiene problem. He might not be an accomplished programmer, but some of his lispy software design ideas did at one time have merit, though history has shown them to be less than ideal. C++ does contradict the UNIX philosophy of developing myriads of small tools, although it might be a valid option for huge projects like compilers and Web browsers (until a better C-killer language, like D or Go, is fully baked). Free software should handle such aesthetic disagreements amicably, through forking and choice. Vi / Emacs / Eclipse users can be friends, yadda yadda yadda...

RMS's real flaw is his fanatical socialist / anti-capitalist politics, and that is precisely the philosophy from which radical copyLEFT has emerged!

RMS's vision stands against the software philosophy of the free market, where copyfree and proprietary software exist in a symbiotic relationship, resulting in a more financially-solvent, more competitive, more innovative, and more advanced software industry world-wide. He thinks all businesses are evil, and that everything, starting with software development, should be funded by the state - presumably with him in charge.

RMS and his supporters are horrendously hypocritical in their stance on "intellectual property rights". GPL relies on illegitimate government force far more than major software corporations do, because the latter mostly function through explicit contracts (SaaS, hardware bundling, support contracts, education / certification contracts, etc). GPL, on the other hand, is purely an "implicit contract", which, in a rational world, would have no more validity than sticking a post-it note on your forehead that says "by seeing me you are legally bound to kiss me"!

The practical consequences of copyLEFT have been horrendous, not just for the software industry at large but for the growth of free software as well. CopyLEFT is inherently antagonistic and legally unpredictable, which gives the business world good reasons to avoid it. Billions have been wasted rewriting the same code (at times in roundabout ways) just to avoid copyLEFT restrictions! Since copyFREE code equalizes the playing field, the fact that so much open source software was poisoned by copyLEFT has benefited the strongest player in the market, which is Microsoft - whose dominance would have been greater still without the copyFREE software that has been utilized by its competitors like Apple, thus restoring a more competitive environment.

--libman

When am I going to publish a commercial OS containing those desktop environments? Never. That's when.

That thought doesn't even cross my mind - if I publish anything it is always as open source and "public domain".

Seriously - when I publish open source software, I prefer to use BSD style licenses, but I don't shy away from GPL except when I might need to violate said GPL in order to get value from it. I just don't see that being an issue with desktop environments for Linux... at least not anymore.

It's good that you prefer "BSD-style" (copyFREE) licenses. We need to explain to more people the drawbacks and dangers of copyLEFT. Then, how far they would go in the name of software freedom, is obviously up to them.

Using restrictively-licensed software won't kill you, but it is a step in the wrong direction. It matters more than you'd think, because use of open source software is a relationship - the more familiar you are with a project, the more likely you are to contribute code someday, or to be helpful on its mailing list / bug-tracker / forum / IRC channel, or promote it to friends who see you use it, or leverage it in another (hopefully copyFREE) project, etc. The software you use today is the software you may contribute to years from now, even if you currently don't plan on contributing.

                Watch your thoughts; they become words.
                Watch your words; they become actions.
                Watch your actions; they become habit.
                Watch your habits; they become character.
                Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
                                            -- Lao Tzu

Experience with freer software makes you more free.

--libman

If course the WBC are mentally deranged idiots, but they do have a (negative) Right to unlimited Free Speech, including their Web-site. Whether hacking constitutes aggression is a complicated discussion, but the Anontards' intent was clear and despicable! At least the WBC has the balls to drivel in the open, rather than hiding behind masks!

The harm that the WBC does is limited to annoyance, and can be further restricted on the basis of Property Rights - they cannot go where they're not wanted. The Anontards, on the other hand, have no respect for anyone's Rights.

--libman

If course the WBC are mentally deranged idiots, but they do have a (negative) Right to unlimited Free Speech, including their Web-site. Whether hacking constitutes aggression is a complicated discussion, but the Anontards' intent was clear and despicable! At least the WBC has the balls to drivel in the open, rather than hiding behind masks!

The harm that the WBC does is limited to annoyance, and can be further restricted on the basis of Property Rights - they cannot go where they're not wanted. The Anontards, on the other hand, have no respect for anyone's Rights.

--libman

I'm not going to contribute. Not because I don't like VLC, I do. But because I don't support windows 8.

I'm also not going to contribute. Not because I don't like VLC (though, in absence of HTML5 video, I tend to prefer ye olde mplayer). Not because I don't support Windows 8 (haven't tried it yet, but I'm sure some people like it, and for enough money I'd install it with bells on). Not because I'm broke (that's just a cover story for the IRS). But because I don't support GPL!

Now how about a copyfree-licensed platform-independent player (ideally an mplayer clone) that only includes genuinely free codecs like VP8, Theora, Opus, etc... (With features specific to a light-weight player rather than a Web browser, which still don't work very well for full-screen video on FreeBSD.)

The infected gaggle of non-copyfree codecs ought to be taken behind a barn and filleted with a dull axe!

--libman

I just don't see the problem with the GPL license.

It is a deeply-rooted disagreement between the more libertarian (i.e. free market capitalist) approach to software philosophy vs the more socialist approach of Richard Stallman. Politics (and, to a lesser degree, other philosophical issues, like design aesthetics) have been crucial to Stallman and other founders of the GNU movement, and the (mostly accidental) popularity of their license has legitimized and empowered their ideas. There are some things we'd agree on, but the differences between our visions can neither be reconciled nor ignored.

The philosophical core behind copyLEFT believes that "money is the root of all evil", that corporations need to be destroyed, and that government force is OK just as long as it serves their desired aims. I believe in individual self-ownership, free markets, voluntary cooperation, and owning the fruits of your labor. My epistemology is grounded in rationalism, empiricism, and logical deduction of a Theory of Natural Rights; theirs is based on existentialism / emotionalism, demagoguery, and the thirst for political power. They believe that government force is legitimate when it suits them (copyLEFT enforcement, "net neutrality", funding of their pet projects, etc) and evil when it doesn't (patents, SOPA, vice prohibitionism, etc); I believe that violations of (individual, negative) Rights are always wrong.

CopyFREE and proprietary software exist in a natural symbiotic relationship. People can innovate and are free to decide how they release their innovations, including in a way that profits them the most, but free market competition eventually drives prices to zero and recognizes openness / source availability / copyFREE-ness as a competitive advantage. You eventually get the best of both worlds - the developer's rent gets paid through the next cycle of innovation, and the source is eventually released. There's no definite need for state-sponsored "intellectual property" monopolies in this process, because development can be funded through explicit contracts, SaaS (which, BTW, is the direction that Microsoft is moving in), hardware bundling (which Apple did from day one), support bundling, education / certification-bundled contractual agreements, an open reputation-based donation system, etc, etc, etc.

CopyLEFT software, on the other hand, exists in a perpetual state of uncertainty and antagonism with everything around it. The Linux kernel has avoided some of this uncertainty by pledging to stay with GPL v2, but many of Linux distros' essential components will follow the latest version, and there's no telling whether (A)GPL v4 or v9 will begin to include quotations from Chairman Mao... Businesses embracing copyLEFT as a PR-friendly add-on to copyright is not what RMS had originally intended, and fear of losing more market share is the only thing that's limiting their push for ever-more-restrictive licenses. They ultimately believe that businesses are evil and should be taxed into non-existence, and government monopolies should fund all software development and control everything - with them in charge.

The BSD license permits people to take free source code and lock it way and not share back [... below ...]. The way I see it, GPL is an immunization for the user community against the jerks who want to take source code and not share back their changes.

Copying is not a crime, and it is wrong do deal with "jerks" (who have not initiated physical aggression) through violence - lest you forgot that the power of GPL enforcement ultimately derives from the guns of state!

The BSD and other

"How do you tell a government official is lying?" "His/her lips are moving." Governments always grab as much power as they can, and give as little back in return as they can get away with.

UN is even worse - an entity immune from intergovernmental competition, therefore there is no frame of reference. Tyrants like Hitler, Stalin, and FDR can keep each-other in check to some degree, but tyranny on a global scale would be impossible to escape!

What we need is a more decentralized Internet that is outside of all governmental control: no DNS monopolies, no cable/phone monopolies, no "net neutrality", no taxation of online sales, no limits to free speech.

--libman

Nothing could be further from the truth. I prefer copyfree software for philosophical reasons. Copyleft is not really free software - it is open source software with legal threats and anti-capitalist propaganda attached.

Notice how anyone critical of GPL gets "(Score: -1)", regardless of the substance of their arguments... This is making Slashdot look like a commie cult! Having a freer license is one of Haiku OS's greatest accomplishment, which needs to be recognized. They could have gone the easier route and borrowed code from Linux and other GPL projects, but they didn't.

So big kudos to the Haiku OS team for trying to create a Linux competitor in the market segment where the pure copyfree stack is rather weak: user-friendly desktop clients, netbooks, tablets, etc (although FreeBSD + E17 might be gaining ground as well).

--libman

Freedom first, then peace, then justice. You can't have justice without peace because for that is mob tyranny.. You cannot have peace without freedom for that is slavery. And you have to deliver them to yourself in the only order that can sustain itself during the transitions. Freedom first. Then peace. Then justice.

Nice. Of all the states on the East coast, NH, the freest state would be my first choice in which to live. I've never been there, but will definitely have to pass through (at the very least) on the way to a Niagara Falls visit, or something.

(As noted in my previous posts, I am a libertarian gradualist who is perfectly fine siding with Republicans in this election, but, to make things more interesting, in this post I will defend the long-term libertarian ideal.)

Libertarianism is just a slightly less honest version of anarchism.

Libertarianism (which in USA'ian usage means pure free market capitalism) has nothing to do with anarchism. The only connection between the two is that Murray Rothbard (possibly as a joke) used the term Anarcho-Capitalism, where the a-word is used as a descriptive qualifier for purity of capitalism: no involuntary monopolies of any kind (ex. no hierarchy in jurisdiction of fully independent polycentric courts). That does not equate it to the common definition of "anarchism" - a chickpea is not a chicken!

A free market capitalist society unavoidably involves the emergence of hierarchies - firstly within families on the basis of Parents' Rights, and then on the basis of voluntary association in the many areas of human endeavor where hierarchical organization may constitute an advantage.

People would find it in their interest to form voluntary groups on the basis of contractual agreement, ranging in size from a family to a neighborhood association to an alliance of charter cities established for a common purpose (ex. common infrastructure). Very few people would choose to exist without contractually-established institutions of any kind.

The political sentiments are pretty much the same...

The political sentiments are almost polar opposites. Anarchists are brain-damaged emotionalist idiots trying to get back at their parents for grounding them. They even make their Marxist pals seem rational in comparison! Free market capitalists like von Mises, Hayek, Karl Popper, Rothbard, Hoppe, Rand, the Friedmans (etc, etc, etc) are brilliant economists and philosophers. Gaining an understanding of free market capitalism requires many years of diligent study. Gaining an understanding of anarchism requires a death-metal CD and huffing some paint thinner.

...and both are equally untenable...

So let me get this straight... A world with 200 sovereign governments that we have today is perfectly tenable, but if governments become fragmented into smaller and smaller sovereign entities that people are free to choose between then at some point it becomes untenable? At what point does that happen? Switzerland and Liechtenstein can decide on matters of jurisdiction based on geographic borders, but several Liechtenstein-sized (or smaller) neighborhoods / city-states cannot?

...but the libertarians wrap theirs up with ideals about private property to pretend they aren't just a bunch of crazies.

OK, fine, we're a bunch of crazies. The reason why free market economics works so well (i.e. the well-demonstrated causal relationship from economic freedom to growth) is... crazy juice! The reason why free market economists (ex) were so accurate in predicting this current economic crisis is... more crazy juice! Etc.

So, if we're just a bunch of crazies, with our silly econometrics and non-aggression principles and all that, then why not permit things like seasteading (without the threat of Uncle Sam sending in the navy) or private land secession (without Uncle Sam restricting access and trade)? Why do you need to tax and otherwise enslave a bunch of crazies? Why not just let us free?

Anyone who believes fundamentally that everything ought to be private falls into one of two categories. People who believe that when everything turns pri

First of all, the argument against GPL is primarily a moral argument. GPL is a product of socialist thinking that completely misunderstands how the FLOSS marketplace works, and tries to use "intellectual property" laws (thereby legitimizing them) to hurt "evil corporations". GPL is a gun, and one that is becoming more and more dangerous with every version. It is hypocrisy to call restrictively-licensed software "free".

Secondly, you are wrong on the pragmatic side as well.

Read a bit of UNIX history, will ya? BSD was entangled in legal FUD at just the very time when Linux was taking off (1991 to mid-1994). By the time BSD became BSD-licensed, Linux was the buzzword of the year. This avalanche of attention was great enough to allow it to overcome its licensing handicap.

If your premise was correct, then we'd be seeing a trend of other permissively licensed (copyfree) projects being leapfrogged by restrictively licensed (copyleft) ones, but in reality it's the other way around. The smartest new projects tend to use permissive licenses instead!

The Apache license hasn't stopped Apache httpd from dominating all potential GPLed alternatives over the years, and now it has been supplanted by the even more permissively-licensed Nginx. We've seen popular scripting languages go from copyleft (Lisp, Perl, SpiderMonkey) to almost-copyfree (PHP, Python) to fully-copyfree (V8 / Node.JS, relicensed Ruby, Lua, Go, alternative PHP and Python implementations, etc). Mozilla has been leapfrogged by Chrome. MySQL is slowly beginning to lose market share to PostgreSQL, SQLite, and the various copyfree NoSQL alternatives.

GPL still dominates only among the software projects that were "grandfathered in" in the 1990s, when most people uncritically accepted GPL as "THE open source license". This includes the Linux kernel, mplayer, the popular widget toolkits, and things based on top of them. (The BSD people were geekier than the Linux people, and thus didn't rush to create things like GTK+.) The popularization of HTML5 with copyfree media codecs (and eventually HTML6+, with NaCl, etc) will help the copyfree world leapfrog in the latter two categories.

--libman

Indeed. In New Hampshire, we haven't had a Libertarian in a state-level or higher office since the 1990s. However, we have about forty outright-pro-liberty Republicans in the 400-member State House right now (a dozen of which are the so-called freestaters). We've had one pro-liberty Democrat get elected, too (Rep. Joel Winters, 2006-2010), and a handful of other liberty activists have run as Democrats, too.

What we've learned from New Hampshire politics: Both the major parties have pro-liberty elements; with Republicans it's taxes, spending, and firearms, with Democrats it's social freedom issues, privacy, and civil rights.* If you actually want to get elected (as opposed to just making a point by running, running as a "protest" candidate, or the like), pick a party depending on which issues you care more about. If you make it through the primary, you're guaranteed about 30% of the people will vote for you in the general just because of the party label, then you only have to worry about getting that additional 20%+1 to win. Running as a third party, you have to work for every single vote to make the full 50%+1, and first you have to waste your time petitioning just to get on the ballot. I've known a couple Libertarians who worked their asses off---visiting every single registered voter household in their district (one of which was 9,000 people)---only to get less than 4% of the vote.

* That's the breakdown on the state level here; YMMV in other states of course.