Slashdot Mirror
Thus Spake Stallman
Q: Lets assume for a moment that free software becomes the way business happens. Every company, if it wants to keep shareholder value anyway, opens up the source, makes their softwre free. What's next? Where do you go from there? What do you do for an encore? Or is that the "end of the war" and at that point, GPL protecting our freedoms, you go back to coding?
RMS: Non-free software is not the world's only problem. I undertook to work on this problem because (1) it dropped in my lap (I could not be neutral except by leaving my field), (2) I had an idea for how I could tackle it effectively, and (3) nobody else was even working on it.
It's clear that other problems such as religious fundamentalism, overpopulation, damage to the environment, and the domination of business over government, science, thought, and society, are much bigger than non-free software. But many other people are already working on them, and I don't have any great aptitude or ideas for how to address them. So it seems best for me to keep working on the issue of free software. Besides, free software does counter one aspect of business domination of society.
If in my lifetime the problem of non-free software is solved, I could perhaps relax and write software again. But I might instead try to help deal with the world's larger problems. Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating, and now I have a taste for it. I could volunteer my time to the ACLU, Amnesty International, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, or ZPG, if I'm of any use to them.
(In 1988, George Bush called Mike Dukakis a "card-carrying member of the ACLU", in effect comparing the Bill of Rights with Communism and its defenders with Communists. This insult to the US Constitution inspired me, as it did many others, to join the ACLU. Let's hope the Shrub will not be president; one Bush was too many.)
Or I could work on winning for other kind of published information the freedoms that are appropriate for them. These could include dictionaries and encyclopedias, textbooks, scientific papers, music, and other things.
Q: Are there any good case studies of large corporations opening up proprietary in-house source code?
RMS: It's appropriate that you've used the terminology of the Open Source Movement for this question, because this is the sort of question they would be most interested in. That movement, founded in 1998, argues that "open source" is good because it is more profitable for software developers. They collect examples to justify that claim, and might be able to help you.
I am not the best person to ask for this kind of help, because I focus on something else. Rather than trying to convince IT managers that it is more profitable to respect our freedom--I don't know whether that is true--I try to convince computer users that they should insist on software that respects their freedom.
I am not affiliated with the Open Source Movement. I founded the Free Software Movement, which has been working to spread freedom and cooperation since 1984, and is concerned not only with practical benefits but with a social and ethical issue: whether to encourage people to cooperate with their neighbors, or prohibit cooperation. The Free Software Movement raises issues of freedom, community, principle, and ethics, which the Open Source Movement studiously avoids.
What the Open Source Movement explicitly say is right, as far as it goes; but I'm very unhappy with what they leave out. By appealing only to practical benefits, such as developing powerful reliable software, they imply by omission that nothing more important is at stake.
The Open Source Movement seems to think of proprietary software as a suboptimal solution (at least, usually suboptimal). For the Free Software Movement, proprietary software is the problem, and free software is the solution. Free software is often very powerful and reliable, and I'm glad that adds to its appeal; but I would choose a bare-bones unreliable free program rather than a featureful and reliable proprietary program that doesn't respect my freedom.
Eric Raymond said publicly that if "open source" isn't better (he means, more profitable) for software developers, it deserves to fail:
"Either open source is a net win for both producers and consumers on pure self-interest grounds or it is not. If it is, you cannot lose; if it is not, you cannot (and *should* not) win."(Quoted in Salon, September or October 1998.) Implicit in this position is Eric's belief that proprietary software is legitimate, and his rejection of the idea that free software is imperative for freedom, ethics or social responsibility.)
Imagine someone saying, "If an uncensored press is not better for publishers as well as readers, it cannot (and should not) prevail." This would show that person does not understand freedom of the press as an issue of liberty. For people who value civil liberties, such views are ludicrous. (This example is not entirely artificial, since corporate media owners and corporate advertisers increasingly exclude certain issues and views from press coverage.)
Although I will not join the Open Source Movement, I agree that they do some useful things. They might be the best ones to suggest something useful to say to your IT manager.
Q: Today everyone is hearing the critics about how open source is also hurting the community. All that aside did you ever in your wildest dreams at the very start of the "crusade" think that open source would be a "movment"?
RMS: I thought of free software as a movement years before the GNU Project. I learned about free software as a way of life by joining a community of programmers who already lived it. My contribution, the place where I took things a step further, was in thinking in ethical and political terms about the contrast between our way of life and the way most computer users lived. I made free software a movement.
But I never imagined that the Free Software Movement would spawn a watered-down alternative, the Open Source Movement, which would become so well-known that people would ask me questions about "open source" thinking that I work under that banner.
If we in the Free Software Movement are lumped in with them, people will think we are championing their views, not ours. For this reason, I don't want to discuss my work or the ideas I advocate under the rubric of "open source". If people seem to be lumping me in with them, I have to correct that mistake. The work I do is free software; if you want to discuss it with me, let's have the discussion using the term "free software".
Q: What would happen, in the hypothetical case, where you litigated the GPL, and lost? Do you have a Plan B?
RMS: It would depend on the precise details of the decision. Perhaps we would change some words in the GPL. Perhaps we would just say "Too bad, copyleft can't be done entirely right in that particular country or state." That would be unfortunate, but not necessarily a disaster.
For example, there are companies in China that distribute versions of the GNU/Linux system in China, and violate the GPL completely, by not distributing source code at all. As a practical matter, we cannot enforce the GPL against violators in China, because China does not enforce copyright law very much. (That policy makes perfect sense for China--the US likewise did not recognize foreign copyrights when it was a developing country.) But I don't think this means that the GPL is a failure in general.
Q: Have you ever thought of taking a more conciliatory attitude to things? Does the phrase "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff" (I'm thinking of the "GNU/Linux" thing) have any resonance at all with you?
RMS: The reason I continue asking people to use the term "GNU/Linux" for the combination of the GNU operating system with the kernel, Linux, is that it's an important little detail. It makes a big difference for the GNU Project's effectiveness in spreading the philosophy of the Free Software Movement.
Calling the whole system "Linux" leads people to think that the system's development was started in 1991 by Linus Torvalds. That is what most users seem to think. The occasional few users that do know about the GNU Project often think we played a secondary role--for example, they say to me, "Of course I know about GNU--GNU developed some tools that are part of Linux."
This leads users to take their philosophical lead from Linus's "apolitical" views, rather than from the GNU Project. They tend to adopt the goal of boosting the popularity of "Linux" (what Linus jocularly calls "world domination"), rather than spreading freedom. Ironically, these users of the GNU system love the system so much that they cast aside the freedom for which we developed the system, in the name of the system's success. You might call this "success" for GNU, but it is not success for freedom.
Businesses that distribute "Linux" are actively urging people to adopt success as the goal, and sacrifice freedom for that. See http://www.zdnet.com/filters/printerfriendly/0,6061,2552025-2,00.html for a clear-cut example in a recent speech by the CEO of Caldera. They can do this more more easily and effectively when their audience does not connect the "Linux" system with that inconvenient, idealistic, uncompromising GNU Project. The ability to avoid calling to mind issues of freedom, by using the term "open source", is also convenient for them: they can ask people implicitly to give up their freedom, without explicitly acknowledging this implication of the conduct they recommend.
As businesses get more involved with free software, they will be faced with a choice: whether to do business in a way that contributes to the community, as Red Hat mostly does, or base their business on proprietary add-ons, as Oracle does and Corel mostly does. It will be up to the public--the community--to make business respect our freedom, by rewarding the businesses that do. The future of our community depends above all on what we value. If people adopt the value of popularity or success, we will end up with many people using a system that is based on GNU and Linux combined with lots of proprietary software.
I ask you to call the system GNU/Linux so you can help inform the system's users that it exists because of the GNU Project's idealism. Users who know that will probably take a look at our views, and some of them will agree. Later on, they may stand up for freedom.
Q: Are there any things that you sort of care about, but not very much?
RMS: Sure, plenty--but I don't argue about those things.
Q: What sort of things do you do in your spare time, and do you approach them with the same amount of intensity that you have for free software?
RMS: I like reading, music, eating delicious food, seeing natural beauty. I also like to dance, mostly Balkan folk dance, but an ankle problem means I can't do it any more. I also like sharing tenderness with someone I adore, but I only occasionally have a chance to do that.
Q: How applicable do you think the GPL is to these other areas? (As in, the concepts embodied in the GPL). Also, what are the essential aspects of any license that wishes to convey the same kind of freedom the GPL conveys?
RMS: I don't have a simple answer for this. The ethical issues about copying and modifying works depend on the kind of work and how people can use it. There is a certain basic similarity between all the kinds of works that can be in a file on a computer: you can always copy them, unless someone has gone out of his way to obstruct you. There are also differences. Novels, musical recordings, dictionaries, textbooks, scientific papers, essays, and software are not all used the same ways.
So I don't have the same views for all these different kinds of works. Textbooks and dictionaries should be free in the same strong sense as software: people should have the freedom to publish improved versions of them. For scientific papers, I think that everyone should be allowed to mirror them, but I see no reason to permit modified versions (that would be tampering with the historical record). For some kinds of works, such as novels, I am not sure just which kinds of freedom are essential.
However, a certain minimum freedom is essential for any kind of published work that is in a file on a computer: the freedom to occasionally make copies for other people. To deny people this basic freedom is intrusive and antisocial, and only Soviet-style methods can enforce the prohibition.
Q: I'm currently attempting to persuade a hardware manufacturer to provide unobfuscated source code and hardware documentation to free driver writers.
In your opinion, what is the best and/or most effective way to go about this? The court of public opinion? Economic arguments? Pointing out the higher quality of free drivers? Or should I just advise people to move to more enlightened hardware manufacturers.
RMS: I think it is best to use a combination of approaches:
- Informing them that people who want freedom will have to buy the other hardware for which free drivers are available (which is not quite a threat, because we would be doing this not as a punishment but in order to do the job with free software).
- Saying that the community is encouraging people to do reverse engineering to write free drivers (thus, obstinacy may be futile).
- Offering them the community's good will and commercial patronage if they cooperate.
- Asking them what their concerns are, and creatively suggest ways they can cooperate enough to enable us to write the free software soon, while still partly achieving those concerns.
Q: (from Bruce Perens) - I'm concerned that GPL restrictions on derived works haven't kept up with software technology.
RMS: I am working on GPL version 3, but this is not something that should be rushed. I put it aside for most of a year to work on the GNU Free Documentation License, but now I plan to get back to it.
Bruce: The most pernicious example is CORBA, which lets us create derived works from components that aren't in the same address space at all, yet work seamlessly as if they were. I'd rather not see my GPL work end up in somebody's proprietary program, simply because it's been server-ized to avoid my license restrictions.
RMS: If people can write non-free software that makes use of free CORBA components, that is bad in one way: it means that their non-free software can build on our work. But using our free software through CORBA does not make our programs themselves non-free. So it is not as bad as extending our programs with their non-free code.
I think it will be hard to claim that a program is covered by our licenses because it uses CORBA to communicate with our code. Perhaps in cases of particularly intimate coupling we could convince a court of that view, but in general I think we could not.
Bruce: A more common problem is dynamic libraries that are distributed separately from the executable. You say that a court would hold those to be devices explicitly used to circumvent the license restrictions, but that's rather chancy, and no substitute for explicit language regarding what is, and what isn't, considered a derived work in the GPL.
RMS: We have no say in what is considered a derivative work. That is a matter of copyright law, decided by courts. When copyright law holds that a certain thing is not a derivative of our work, then our license for that work does not apply to it. Whatever our licenses say, they are operative only for works that are derivative of our code.
A license can say that we will treat a certain kind of work as if it were not derivative, even if the courts think it is. The Lesser GPL does this in certain cases, in effect declining to use some of the power that the courts would give us. But we cannot tell the courts to treat a certain kind of work as if it were derivative, if the courts think it is not.
I think we have a pretty good argument that nontrivial dynamic linking creates a combined (i.e. derivative) work. I have an idea for how to change the GPL to make it clearer and more certain, but I need to see if we can work out the details in a way that our lawyer believes will really work.
Bruce: There's also the problem of Application Service Providers, who make a work available for people to use without distributing it, and thus would be under no obligation to make the source code of their modifications available. Do I have to see my GPL work abused that way as well?
RMS: I too feel these servers are not playing fair with our community, but this problem is very hard to solve. It is hard for a copyright-based license to make a requirement for these servers that will really stick. The difficulty is that they servers are not distributing the program, just running it. So it is hard to make any conditions under copyright that affect what they can do.
I had an idea recently for an indirect method that might perhaps work. I'd rather not talk about it until our lawyer figures out better whether it can really do the job.
Bruce: It seems there's a lot of new technology that the GPL isn't keeping up with.
RMS: You make it sound as if solving these problems were only a matter working hard enough to change the GPL. But the GPL can only use copyright law as it exists. The recent changes in US copyright law to "keep up" with technology, in the DMCA, were commanded by the software privateers, and they were designed to help them restrict away the users' freedom, not to help us protect users' freedom. They allow copyright owners to restrict the mere running of a program--but only if some sort of hard-to-bypass license manager or access control enforces the restrictions. The freedom of free software means that even if we did put such artificial restriction into a program, the user could easily bypass them--and that's a good thing! But it means that new legal power is not available for use for copyleft.
The DMCA is a perfect example of the harm done when business dominates government and society. One part of the law explicitly says that only commercially significant activities are considered important (to legitimize a program which is often used to bypass technological means of controlling the users)--showing explicit prejudice against educational uses, recreational uses, communitarian uses, military uses, and religious uses.
Q: What kind of a position do you take on applications such as Napster?
RMS: Napster is bad because it is proprietary software, but I see nothing unethical in the job it does. Why shouldn't you send a copy of some music to a friend? I don't play music from files on my computer, but I've occasionally made tapes of records and given them to my friends.
Q: In particular, I see GTK Napster carries a standard GPL. I'd just like to know what happens when someone like Metallica wins a lawsuit against Napster who has a GPL'd counterpart such as GTK Napster? Can they touch it at all?
RMS: I don't know who will win those lawsuits, but I don't see anything that would give free programs any special protection from this kind of suppression. It seems to me that if they win against Napster, they would probably win against any program doing a similar job.
If they do not win using present-day law, we can expect to see the record companies purchase new laws they can use to suppress these programs in the future--and trot out famous musicians like Metallica (only famous musicians get much of their income from copyright) who will say that copying music is like killing their baby.
We can also expect to see fierce attempts to catch individuals who use Napster and imprison them. The War on Copying will become more vicious.
The War on Drugs has continued for some 20 years, and we see little prospect of peace, despite the fact that it has totally failed and given the US an imprisonment rate almost equal to Russia. I fear that the War on Copying could go on for decades as well. To end it, we will need to rethink the copyright system, based on the Constitution's view that it is meant to benefit the public, not the copyright owners. Today, one of the benefits the public wants is the use of computers to share copies.
Metallica justifies their lawsuit saying they think it is an outrage that their music has become a "commodity". Apparently they think music is a commodity when shared between fans, but not when large companies sell copies through record stores. What hypocritical absurdity!
Such drivel is normally laughable. But Metallica is presenting it as an excuse to attack our freedom, and that is no laughing matter. I encourage people to write letters to periodicals that cover this story, stating disgust for Metallica's lawsuit and rejecting their views.
Q: The battle over CSS has been about whether people have the right to use software (I consider DVDs software because they are programs read by a computer chip) when it is controlled by the content control system CSS, even after they've bought it. I hope they'll lose in the courts, but it is unclear at this point whether they will, however, my question is on another, related topic.
Suppose very strong, nearly unbreakable encryption were used on traditional Software DVD (i.e. stuff like M$ software or other companies software, just in a DVD format) and a DVD CCA for software were set up saying, "You aren't allowed to access the content of any DVDs unless you use our licensed DVD decryption software. Oh, and our DVD decryption software contains a legally enforceable (under UCITA) software license which states that you cannot reverse engineer any content you have decrypted using our decryption software." How would Free Software handle it?
RMS: With laws like that, there would be no lawful way to solve the problem. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act comes close to what you imagine, and it may be enough to prohibit free software for this job. (I don't know for certain, and I think the answer is not known yet.) It may be necessary to develop this software in countries which do not have these laws.
Q: Does there now need to be a Free Hardware philosophy which states that "Hardware which exists tied to a proprietary software system must be replaced by Free Hardware standards" or something similar?
RMS: I agree--but it will be hard to get the movie companies to release movies for that hardware. Fundamentally, the only solution will be when enough of the public believes in freedom to change the laws that are the basis for denying our freedom.
Q: I've been reading your opinions for some time now, and while they make sense in and of themselves, they beg certain other questions. What interest me most are your meta-ethical notions.
You often speak of notions such as right and wrong as if they were objective things; do you hold them to be so?
RMS: I think of right and wrong as based on how what we could do affects other people--the implications of imagining ourselves in the situation of the people our actions affect.
People can come to different conclusions about the implications. I don't believe in relativism; I don't believe that any conclusion is as valid as any other. If I and someone else disagree, at least one of us is wrong. Unfortunately, there's no way to place to get complete certainty about what's right and what's wrong. We can only try our best to figure it out.
The generalizations that we get from our consciences are our values. Our specific conclusions about ethics derive from these values; arguments about ethics depart from them. So my arguments about free software, or anything else, start from the values I believe in. They are addressed to people who at least partly share these values. When people persistently reject these values, there is nothing I can say to them. But sometimes people will start to share my values when I point out to them the situations the values are based on. They may then imagine the same feelings I felt or imagined.
Q: Are there "natural" rights, and what is the nature of their existence?
RMS: I think there are natural rights, natural in the sense that people are entitled to them regardless of what governments say about them. Freedom of speech is a good example; I think people are entitled to freedom of speech, and censorship is wrong. That is one example that I think most people reading this would agree with. I also believe that the freedom to share software and other published information is also a natural right.
There are also artificial rights, rights that are not natural. I agree with the US legal system, for example, in the view that copyright is an artificial right, not a natural one. It can be reasonable to have a limited kind of copyright system for some kinds of works, but this is a concession made to benefit the public, not an entitlement of authors and publishers. This system should be limited so that it doesn't seriously conflict with other people's natural rights.
Q: If so, how does this fit with your atheism? If not, do you feel that ethical claims have some basis beyond personal taste?
RMS: Religious people often say that religion offers absolute certainty about right and wrong; "god tells them" what it is. Even supposing that the aforementioned gods exist, and that the believers really know what the gods think, that still does not provide certainty, because any being no matter how powerful can still be wrong. Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics.
Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can. Injustice is happening now; suffering is happening now. We have choices to make now. To insist on absolute certainty before starting to apply ethics to life decisions is a way of choosing to be amoral.
----------------
and just for even more fun, the last figures I was aware of (a year ago, so it probably hasn't changed that much) put the earth at a population that is too large to be supported by the physical resources around the year 2050. that should be fun
I live in Salt Lake City, with quite the booming population (in part because of a decent economy, but also because of the up-coming winter olympics). Now I'll try not to be insensitive here by saying that the Mormon majority here certainly loves its ability to procreate (because many religions, cultures, and even individuals do), but seeing families with 5 or more kids is just sickening to me. Common, folks -- unless you live on the family farm and want to breed some free labor, you have no business with that many kids anymore.
Overpopulation taxes the enviroment, which is the worst problem I see. I've been here only 4 years, but I've seen a lot of wonderful open space get sliced and diced by housing developers. It just sucks. My wife and I bought a used home, and will likely never build a new house unless we buy a large chunk of land with the intention of preserving it from development.
Overpopulation taxes the social systems we have in place. Why the hell should I have to pay more property tax every bloody year for schools for families who are cranking out tons of kids, when they get the better tax benefits?
It taxes the family. I have 2 kids, and my wife and I are "fixed". Part of that decision was a kind of social obligation to not take more from the community/planet/our-kids than we deserve. Neither of us can see how parents can give their kids enough of what they need (money/support, nurturing, education, time, friendship, etc.) when there are so many. Maybe my wife and I are just lousy parents? *shrug*
What really infuriates me is when I see city/state (or whatever) officials whine about declining populations. What's so wrong with that? Someone who knows better about these matters once told me that the current birthrate for a sustaining the population was something like 2.1 children per couple (anyone know where I can find these stats?). What's wrong with slowing down a little? Oh yes... it's all about money. Without more mouths to feed, people to build homes for, and teens to sell Sony Walkmans to, our economic system goes down the toilet. We can't just hold the financial status quo, we must always be growing.
The earth is nowhere near its capacity to hold humans (I read the entire earth population could fit in Texas is efficiently done). However, we don't do a good job of using our resources. Take Salt Lake (again) -- we live in a f*cking desert, yet there's all these golf courses around here, and the city is (was?) suing some woman for trying to landscape her front parking-strips with desert plants, rather than the ordinance-required grass! WTF?!?
Sometimes I don't think people really stop to ponder what they're doing. I'm in no way advocating State involvment in the procreation practices of individuals, but I think people are too selfish when it comes to having kids.
(Sorry about the off-topic rant. This response just struck a nerve in me this morning.)
RMS has been something of a conundrum to me. On the one hand, he's strange, fanatical, and has likely scared away many from the free software movement. He has no idea of diplomacy, has scolded many of his supporters, and he looks like a wierdo. On the other hand, he is that horrible thorn in the side of those who would restrict freedoms we have now. In other words, laws are being passed to change the status quo; laws that will encroach further on our freedoms. It is not so much a matter of causing a revolution of thought, but of keeping the small freedoms we have now. Moderation may be suicidal when the opposition is ruthless. And RMS' foes have proven themselves to be ruthless (but so very presentable and professional). For this I am glad that there is an RMS.
Advocates of the GPL and free software can be a little bit
Before I get flamed, I should explain that by "religious fundamentalism", I am describing the beliefs of about half a percent of people of faith, and am not attempting to describe or characterize "mainstream" religious belief. Religious fundamentalism is dangerous because religious fundamentalists cannot be expected to do what is in their own best interest. The United States and the Soviet Union never engaged in thermonuclear war because each side knew that if they provoked the other, they would be destroyed. The policies of "deterrence" and "mutually-assured destruction" work because, in general, people make decisions based upon what's in their own best interest.
However, when one believes that he (or she) has got a god on their side, things get a little bit different. It becomes easier for one to engage in activity that is decidedly not in their own best interest; for example, strapping a bomb to your chest and detonating it in a crowded market. After all, it will only "hurt" for a few microseconds, after which you will be spending an eternity in paradise with your creator! Why would you not strap that bomb to your chest? Why not gun down that doctor? What good reason is there not to blow up that gay nightclub?
Obviously, sane people see problems with that logic, and in this case, "sane people" consist of the overwhelming majority of people with and without faith. And obviously, not all religious fundamentalists are willing to perpetrate violence in the name of their religion. However, many are. When you've got a set of beliefs that are Absolute Truth and you are not allowed to challenge them and anybody who disagrees is an Enemy, there are going to be problems. And that, I think, is RMS's point. It's a bit disingenuous to compare open source zealotry with religious fundamentalism. The former is annoying. The latter is the greatest threat to global stability that the world has ever (and will ever) see.
RMS is called a kook, not because he speaks of freedom, but he portrays his overbearing version of "freedom" as ubiquitious and in his mind absolutely right. It's actually a perfect example to refute his supposition that people are either "wrong" or "right". My subjective perception of the objective world may be much different than his; and, hence, my idea of what is "right" and what is "wrong" can be completely different.
Examples:
He speaks of ESR saying that if open source software isn't better, then it loses its worth. He then rants on about the fact that he will use crappy software to further his view of "freedom".
Problem:
We also value good software. IMO, "freedom" is useless if you don't get anything out of it. I can respect his opinion, but I really can't understand that different people just have different goals (e.g., balancing freedom for code and utility in good software).
I do agree with him on many counts of his definition of freedom, especially his articulation of UCITA and DMCA, but the problem is that he is an extremist. The problem with extremists is that they let their strongly held views blind them to small nuances in a problem. Example: in the DMCA, there is legal protection of software or hardware systems protecting copyright. Why is copyright good? Because it allows people creating copyrighted materials to a) produce the materials in the first place; and, b) maintain control over their own property. It's fairly obvious that RMS doesn't either particularly respect or maybe understand the economic system we live in. His utopia has no place in our current reality - why? because we all have an economic imperative. His freedom froth for the greater good restricts the right of the copyright holder to make agreements with others to produce and benefit. I completely agree with him when it comes to 'fair use' -- but I do not when he goes off on some evangelical rant to further his own religious beliefs toward free software or free anything which is supposed to "benefit" society. Unfortunately for him, that benefit would have much less effect if it wasn't for the economic system we live in.
I would agree with him if he ever thought of compromise to achieve balance. I don't think he ever will, because he is in my opinion an evangelical extremist. Don't get me wrong; I like the guy -- but he can be a *little* bit extreme and overbearing when it comes to his views (as is anyone attempting to spread their own belief systems).
The GNU/Linux thing is prime example. a good portion of very important code in any Linux system came from GNU. I can understand him wanting GNU mentioned. After all, nobody complains when they see "Redhat Linux" or "Mandrake Linux" and the Debian group still calls the OS "Debian with a Linux kernel." Who gives a shit? He does and so he says something about it and what's the response? don't sweat the little things or write your own damn kernel. It has far more to do with who said it than what was said. Since it was RMS this extremist element must surface and try to rally against it. Who cares? Call it what you want, big companies do, some people just think that GNU deserves a little credit. So he does it at a conference and he refuses to respond unless you say "GNU/Linux" well don't ask a question then, go to a different event, screw him if you don't want to call it what he wants.
Honestly, I think there is an element of the community that is poised to exploit and as they understand the gravity of the GPL and the amount and quality of code covered by it they see that it is getting harder and harder to exploit it. That's what I honestly think. They label RMS as some kind of communist and this is about as political as I've heard RMS in quite some time and I have yet to hear him spout real communist propaganda. He may be a liberal but that's far cry from a communist, and who cares if he is one? Last time I checked you were allowed to have whatever political views you wished in the US. Meanwhile ESR has his own brand of right wing rhetoric on his home page, and some how he remains with few critics, in comparison, and they tend to be more quiet. Why is that? ESR is sitting there talking about killing people in self defense and his right to protect himself with lethal force, that's the kind of crap that hurts people, I've never heard RMS mention "lethal" anything. It boggles my mind that ESR can say that kind of stuff and all RMS wants is for source code to be freely accessable and changeable and he is ridculed by this group of the geek populous.
I'll provide my theory, sure to be hated since I'm defending RMS. I think that deep down, everybody knows he is right and knows his ideas will win. It's already happening. You can't get a CS degree in this country (the US) with out being touched by GNU software somewhere along the way. Free software is going to win and it scares the hell out of some people. I'll interject my comedic side here: in God Father II, Michael Corleone is in Havanna and watches a communist rebel do a Vietcong style suicide bombing rather than get takin' down by the federalis. He later says that he isn't buying in to Hyman Roth's Cuban casino plans because he thinks that the rebles can win since they are willing to sacrifice. The same logic applies here, although we're not communist rebels, we're free software rebels..
I think the ESR philosophy of "if it can't make money then it must not be the right thing" is the stepping stone. Redhat is already adding non-free software to their "enterprise" product, making the CDs uncopyable. What do you think VA is going to do when their stock holders start demand that they make a buck or two? (don't forget, ESR is on their board and they have hand in hosting a tremendous amount of free software products) They are going to do whatever is bloody takes and if that means keeping code to themselves or even licensing code under a non-free license then that is what they'll do. It's very easy to pay free software or opensource lip service while your stock is high and the media is your friend, let's see what happens when it get's down to go time. What's ESR's "tribe" (to use his phrase) going to do when competition catches up? Dell is vicious, they will stand and deliver in Linux space, they are not afraid of anybody. Maybe I'm being a pessimist by assuming that it will but the economy and this industry is way too wild, everybody has been the underdog or on the recieving end at some point, everybody and that includes MS, IBM, Compaq, Dell, Apple, everybody. They've already aligned themselves, if they can't make a buck then they don't believe that it works, they've said it. More to the point, their purpose is to make a buck. Contrast that to RMS's ideology, he thinks it's the right thing regardless of money. I think he's right and I think that his ideology will ultimately win and that has to scare those who are in it simply to make a buck. So what happens? they speak out against RMS every chance they get.
In fact, the money approach fundamentally bastardizes the process. In a pure competitive environment, all Linux distros are essentially equal, the assumption that it must be profitable encourages proprietary value add. If I give you the source to my "installer" then you can make the same distribution as me and mine would no longer have a competitive advantage. Why is Corel "better than" Debian? It has some code that no other dist has that makes it easier to install. It totally ignores the issue of freedom and when it's all said and done it's going to ignore the source code too, there will be market pressures that will discourage companies from giving their source code up until after they've reaped rewards from keeping it secret; why opensource your installer until it's obsolete? ESR has said all this, early on in a project's life it is far more beneficial to be closed source, once it is deployed and support and reliablity become issues opensource is far more effective. It's like a dictatorship, it is ruthlessly efficient at making decisions and giving orders, it is far more efficient than democracy but I still think democracy is so much better that I'm willing to fight for it. Chomsky has written volumes on this subject, money kills freedom in so far as you value it more than freedom, Alexis De Tocqueville said it, all the communists said it, Proudhon said it, and plenty of others did too and it's a major theme in this year's election. RMS is just a nerd who wants the source code to the applications he uses, what's so bad or extreme about that?
RMS will never "give something back" to the community, because is part of it and stays in it. The same isn't so for VA, Redhat, and others. Watch. You can't "give something back" unless you're just sitting on side taking.
militant and are overreacting.
almost a new religion.
It's a fanatical cult. How else can you explain the blind devotion to Stallman that they have?
Movements are for gorilla warfare and revolutions. This is a good thing, but it's only software.
These people honestly believe that they are the freedom fighters of the internet. They think that they are fighting repressive corporations and evil governments to maintain the net as they believe it should be. And in a sense, they are right. But they have taken it a tad far. They have set up a decentralized government in much the same way that the internet itself is built, with major routers like Stallman controlling the power of the entire community. Remember, to these people, it's not 'only software'. This is these people's life.
Too much argueing and bickering.
Isn't that originally what fragmented Unix? Whatever. I wasn't into Unices back then, so I wouldn't know.
Well, prepare to be moderated down to (Score:-1, Not Linux Zealot).
As in indication how annoyed comments like that make me, I would like to point out I rarely post (this will be my first post in about six months). I used to police the physics discussions (I have a Ph.D. in physics) for factual inaccuracies and I gave up on that when the scientific literacy really started to decline and the inaccurate data was being moderated up as Informative.
... way too many of you."
As this will probably be considered flamebait I will take the path of the Anonymous Coward.
Overpopulation has become the intellectual's way of being racist.
To take issue with the above poster, let's talk briefly about Bangladesh.
I would like to point out Bangladesh has the same population density as Fremont, CA. New York City has a much higher population density. But these is filled (mostly) with white people and are in a rich country, thus nobody cares. In effect the complaint about Bangladesh saying (to quote P.J. O'Rourke) "Just enough of me
In "All The Trouble In World", O'Rourke goes into detail about Bangladesh's history.
Bangladesh became such a poor country when the prices for jute fell through the floor. Originally jute was used as the backing for carpet. In the late 1970s, plastics began to be used for carpet backing (evil large corporations giving us better stain resistant carpet). The country faced a decision: either subsidize production of jute or let the market dictate to the farmers what to produce. In the infinite compassion of a left wing goverment, the farmers were subsidized. However, nobody was buying it and with most of the population involved in the farming and production of jute, the country was bankrupted.
Before you go complaining about Bangladesh and Bombay (and betray your subtle racism), learn a little bit about the issue instead of just looking at pictures of a third world slum and how compassionate it would be to tell all those non-white people not to have babies.
"Having worked with these "repressed" imprisoned individuals, my own conviction is that we have too many people breaking laws in the United States. This is not the fault of the laws, but rather the people. There is a subculture in this country in which going to prison is expected -- kids grow up visting their dad on Tuesdays and their uncle every other Thursday. They expect to be on the other side of that plexiglass themselves someday. "
You can hardly argue this an immutible state given possible changes to socio-economic conditions that would prevent such casualties in our political and economic system. We are first human and second the subjects of the systems we grow up in. Tweak the system, all the while taking into account realities of human behavior and you may be able to change unwanted factors. There are thousands in jails for their entire life because of stupid three strikes laws on acts that are supposedly damaging to humanity. The rationalization for completely destroying their life is that they *may* eventually do something subverse to the moral standard given a previous pattern of behavior. I actually have no problem with this, except for the use in an incredibly wide range of crimes. Of course, real long term solutions are to change socio-economic conditions, but these are complex issues that most politicians often either don't care about or don't understand.
"I am not in any way convinced that legalization of drugs will reduce imprisonment numbers"
Simple. Most drug related crimes have no victim. Drug related crimes that have victims usually have to do with drug dealers or coke addicts searching for money to get their next fix. The rationalization for the war on drugs is protection of the ignorant and stupid populace who would almost literally use it as opium for the masses, not unlike tv is often called opium for the masses. These two conflicting factors are what creates the controversy. My personal opinion is that these substances are freely available to most people, just as booze is, so why waste so much money on the drug war when you could focus efforts on re-education and the spread of objective information as to the effects and consequences of using. Drugs have been freely available to me in my life and I have not once accepted, probably due to the drug education process in school and from various other sources. We of course live in a society where higher education is an exception statistically, so one would again have to ask if the people can really handle such responsibility. So goes the issue.
The war on drugs in columbia and the government death squads employed there are, IMO, unethical.
The 'civil right not to get shot' is already well-protected by various and sundry murder and attempted-murder felony laws.
And even if gun ownership was made illegal, we'd still have a bunch of thugs running around with them. Criminals aren't going to pitch all their guns just because they aren't legal to own anymore...
The only thing outlawing guns will do is tell the criminals that they're *guaranteed to not get shot* by the law-abiding citizens they're mugging and robbing.
You get to choose the license when you write your own software. When you take the software of others with the GNU GPL license, you must adhere to it when modifying it for personal or commercial use.
It is therefore less free in the sense of unrestricted use, but more free in the sense that the community is guaranteed contribution from modification - if we all follow the rules.
Those interested in it - and hopefully thinking about the qualities inhereted by using licence {x,y,z,f,whatever} - are acting in their own interest as are those following the rules in the GPL in modification and re-use.
Your mention of RMS boycotting is certainly on idealogical grounds, which he obviously comes to through self interest. Those developing the products who choose the GPL are also acting in their self interest on whatever grounds they choose the license. For the consumer, it's all free because all GNU software is free for use.
I myself use the BSD license because I don't code to further my economic imperative since I have other flows of income. I find utility in the contributions of others allowing them to help me build products I value, while ensuring that they too can use that same code to produce whatever they may find utility in.
I don't particularly subscribe to RMS's model, but I can understand where he is coming from and accept the rational decisions others make in choosing the GPL license.
No, the hard part of any project is to get the ball rolling. This RMS did in the 70's when he wrote emacs. Then he went on to write GCC. Two essential tools in software creation, an editor, and a compiler. Go write a compiler come back and tell me that a monolithic kernel is so difficult to implement. the FSF would have come out with their kernel years ago if they did not attempt such an ambitious project. HURD is a much more advanced project than Linux. Linux is warmed over reused technology. If HURD ever gets done people will drop the Linux kernel like a hot potato. Linus is a great pitchman, and a fair coder, but he's no Stallman. The difference is in vision. Linus will attempt to copy something, RMS will see what could be, and create it.
Really I don't think that RMS has anything left to prove in the software development world. A thousand years from now he'll still be a legend, just from his accomplishments to date. So I can understand him wanting to break ground in new, more political arenas.
"GNU/Linux" is RMS self-aggrandizement, and is worthy of a marketing droid.
I think this is proof that a greater than 60 point IQ differential makes communications impossible. Not everyone can understand RMS, oh well... By the way, for laughs go add up the code that Linus has contributed, and the FSF code in a typical Linux distribution. You might be suprised that it's all FSF software but the kernel!
Something tells me that if you stated this in front of Linus he'd either laugh, or bitch slap you to the ground, depending on how many beers he had in him.
You'll probably never read this. . .oh well.
Oh but I will. I find this discussion very interesting.
One can argue quite impolitically that many poor people often have children they can't afford.
This is exactly were the problem lies. We could easily create a much smaller and smarter/stronger/whatever society if we would decide who can or can't have children. This is what eugenics were attempting to create. Simply artificial survival of the fittest. The problem with this approach is that:
1. Neither you nor I, nor even majority have any right to decide who can or can't procreate. We are not allowed to take other's rights.
2. Even if we could decide for others, how would we determine what is in the interests of the society. Today our interests might be more smart people. Tomorrow we might need something else, but we'll be left with the "nerd" society.
3. People in US are supposedly equal and have the same rights despite their social status. I don't really see how this equality can be maintained under this tax law.
Methinks you've created a rather outrageous strawman.
Yes, I might be taking the entire situation to the extreme. However, such extremes have to be evaluated to achieve a balanced solution.
We're talking tax cuts for having fewer children.
It's ironic. I don't know if there are any similar laws in US, but in former USSR there was an additional tax for single men. Maybe it's this involvement of the state into personal live that gives me the shivers.
Remarkably, you think I should study sociology, but you ignore the demographic trend of increased education -> fewer children and increased education -> increased household income.
Wonderful, so maybe the solution is in spending more on education? Without restricting personal freedoms we can "enlighten" the masses about there role in overpopulation?
In any case, your strawman ridiculously assumes that poor people routinely starve in the US.
No, I didn't say anything about starvation. Although I don't see the need to put an additional burden on lower, lower middle classes.
Four words: earned income tax credit.
I can give this one to you.
This is what I find amusing when people bitch about tax cuts for the rich. According to the last stats I saw, 80% of the income taxes collected was paid by 10% of the people. In other words, of course tax cuts go to the rich, they pay the majority of the taxes.
Oh, please. It all depends on which statistics you choose. By the same token, I recently heard about statistics that the income of rich people in US is growing at rates much, much higher then income of lower, middle classes. Thus the social gap increases. So maybe they deserve to pay more taxes? ;-) We are getting into entirely different area here. I don't want to revise the ENTIRE tax system on US. Let's save this argument for the "flat tax" discussion.
Given its success in redistributing income, you can be assured that there Social Security tax is well-spent.
That was not an issue discussed. And you know it :-) "We know that we had an unjust tax law. But rest assured that the money went to a good cause."
FWIW, I heard on the radio today that the upper-limit on Social Security was abolished about 90 days ago.
Wow, great. I'll take you word for it. This is a great news.
Logic 101 my ass. Laws don't decide anything. People do.
Agreed, but people base their future decisions on existing laws. And often existing laws can provoke an avalanche of corrections and additions.
Give people massive tax breaks for not having any children, or for only having one child. It's not violating anyone's civil rights, it's not imprisoning anyone, and it's humane. It appeals to the one thing that drives most people: their wallets.
What a great plan on the surface. Oh, but it's so rotten from the inside!
This is eugenics revisited, only this time profiling is done on the basis of social status. Reproduction is an instinct that sits in us. People will NOT get rid of it. By giving tax break to people without children you are ensuring that poor won't have any kids. Even if we forget for a second that a lot of useful to the society people grew in poor families, what right do YOU have to decide who gets to have children?
This is a totally biased solution on my part, though, since I never plan to have any kids.
I don't want to insult you on this one. I understand your concern for overpopulation. I even applaud to your choice. However, the solution lies elsewhere.
Nah, in reality, you're probably ensuring the upper-middle class won't have kids.
Your logic is faulty.
Given:
Result:
Thus from a right given us by nature you make reproduction a privilege. This is exactly what eugenics in the beginning of 20th century were trying to do.
In the US, the poor generally pay no income tax whatsoever.
Who told you this stupidity? Every US citizen has to pay income tax. (Unless they make below $6k I think). On top of that, people with incomes BELOW $70k per year (just around the middle class threshold) have to pay Social Security tax. So relatively to income, poor might be just paying even more then rich. This is one of those tax wonders of this country.
BTW, if you'd like to know what exactly is the line of poverty in US, go check http://www.census.gov/hhe s/poverty/threshld/thresh99.html
Ummm, why don't you show us again what decision he's making for anyone?
If the tax law that he suggests goes into life, the law will indirectly decide who has the right to have children. This is logic 101.
I have an impression that you are either too young, or trying to start a flaimbait. I'd suggest that you take a course in sociology. It just might make some things clear for you.
Which, in my mind, goes to show that there is very little, if any, real difference between the Republicans and the Democrats.
Come now, either you don't look or ignore the differences. One of the most fundamental is state vs federal regulations. One said says, "What we say is absolutely the only way to do it," the other says, "Let states/local areas decide how to handle the issue." What pisses me off the most about Democrats today is how they take everything to the most extreme extent. Republicans offer a modest tax cut, Democrats scream it will kill children. Republicans give a bigger increase to the school lunch programs, Democrats scream their starving children. All the while they say they want to make a "bi-partisan" deal. It's either their way or the highway. I can certainly understand why many people equate the political left with Communism.
As for the war on drugs, I have to agree with the people who have said it is a "religous war". It is the only context in which it makes sense. Any practical view of it shows that it is an utter failure.
That depends what you consider success/failure. There exists one program that worked steadily for many years. All the numbers showed decreases in the number of kids getting started in drugs. I went through elementary school during the time. Today, everyone laughs at the thought of saying "No" to drugs. The attitude of the current administration on drugs (and many things) is "They're gonna do it anyway." What a shock drug use increases during this administration.
The key to this (and prohibition of the early part of this century) is attacking the demand side. The enforcing of the laws is a mild deterrent. Only when you convince someone they do not need drugs will the rest fall into place. Demand went down for youngsters during the 80's because Nancy Reagan set out a plan to do just that. Now we give needles to heroine addicts and the like. We are appeasing them rather than convincing them not to do it. It is no surprice, therefore, that today it is considered a failure.
As for bringing back alcohol prohibition, there is a MUCH better chance for tobacco and guns to be outlawed in the next ten years than alcohol.
I took it as that poster commenting on RMS's statement that President Bush considers the Bill of Rights something from Communism, and that is his reason for joining the ACLU. That is just such an absurd statement. Name one Communist state that allows freedom of speech, religion, etc. They way they operate for so many years is spending time scaring their people into believing the government will be your salvation, not other people or religion. So they come down incredibly hard on people who speak against it. Why was that wall put up in Germany with armed guards ready to shoot anyone who comes near it? Because people naturally dislike such oppression and will seek to get out of it.
That is something to fear and never want to spread around the globe and to improve the rights of its citizens. This Elian Gonzalez fiasco is but a piece in the puzzle. Everyone's shouting about father's rights, so we shall send the boy to a country where no one has any rights (except Castro). Ok, that makes sense.
Communism isn't just a mere value choice like say vegetarians vs normal foods. It is evil.
Does Metallica and Dr Dre consist of 75% of the music industry?
And should we count Dre's opinion anyway, given he is guilty of exactly the crime he complains about.
and the FSF code in a typical Linux distribution. You might be suprised that it's all FSF software but the kernel!
Yes, for example, those well known pieces of FSF code like XFree86, apache, vixie-cron, and sendmail.
I don't think you understood my point. I'm not arguing that this was the wrong forum to answer non-free software questions. I merely question whether from a practical standpoint he would want to go into non-free software matter in front of a mostly free software crowd in a way that might turn some people against him for no good reason. If I were the principal crusader for a particular viewpoint on a given issue, I'd try to minimize any partisan statements on other, unrelated issues in order to avoid stirring up controversy.
Three cheers for RMS!!
I've always seen absolute truth and relativism as working together, not opposite sides. Let me give you an example.
;)
For any event that happens, there is an "absolute truth" to what happened. However, it is impossible for us to actually KNOW this truth. We can use relativism to see what we THINK the truth is, but we can never see the absolute truth itself...
Now, this means that some people are closer to the truth than others.. heck, some people might even occasionally get it right! But since no one can ever know, it's up to the individual to make up thier minds as to what they are going to believe.
I have no idea if this sort of philosophy has a name or not.. maybe someone here can enlighten me with the truth.. or at least thier version of it?
You want to know what's sad?
This couldn't be more true. I know two people that have NIKE tatoos on varying parts of their bodies. (I live in portland, home of evil NIKE)
If this doesn't validate what Blue says, I don't know what does.
-Erik-
This is the most well-balanced, well-spoken interviews with RMS that I've read in a long while.
:)
Y'know, it's kinda funny - ESR got into the position he's in right now (spokesmodel for the Open Source folks) by being a less-radical, "warm and fuzzy" version of RMS. Someone who could convey the underlying message of the FSF without all the revolutionary language.
But yet lately, it's been ESR who's been foaming at the mouth, and here ol' RMS comes off as the calm, level-headed one.
And even funnier, people accuse RMS of being a Communist all the time, and yet here he accuses his opponents of being "Soviets" - twice!
Ahh, it's people like RMS and ESR who make this stuff fun.
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
I find it funny when Stallman says something like "I'd rather not talk about it until I've talked to a lawyer"....
There's nothing wrong with being careful, we get enough phony legal advice on Slashdot. But what would it hurt? Looks like Stallman needs an Open Legal Community, so he can freely exchange ideas and get answers. "Many lawyers make all lawsuits trivial", or that sort of thing.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Think of it as a moral problem.
People don't like to starve.
Too many people and not enough food make for some unhappy people.
Or, if you like, starving people don't do a very good job of producing goods or performing services, and might end up stunted for life, besides.
"Overpopulation" means having more people than an area can support, like overgrazing. Overpopulation is a problem in precisely these times. Optimally using the Earth's resources, maybe we could have more people on Earth and keep them all happy. But as long as there are places where we can't, overpopulation is a problem.
Also, from my time on slashdot, "the more people [...] the better" isn't true at all. Society breaks down whenever it gets too crowded. This is true of rats, people, governments, and online forums.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Because the GNU project created two of the base tools that made Unix system administration and programmation a joy in life: GNU Emacs and the GNU C Compiler.
And, when you think about it, most of the open source and almost every free software could not have existed without the later (and in most case the former).
Alright, you could have compiled your programs with some kind of commercial C compiler, but, at the time GCC started, you could not write any portable system software with a commercial compiler (well, it was quite difficult).
In fact, the companies which produced C compilers insisted on having different C idioms. Read the story about the relatively recent normalisation of ANSI C (and how it was/is not supported by software companies producing compilers) for facts about this important matter.
Had gcc not been GPLed you can be sure that we'd have a lot of incompatible variations on the same theme instead of a portable and reliable C compiler.
If GNU C hadn't existed, we would live in a quite different world where I doubt open source software could exist, and Linux (with or without GNU[1]) could succeed.
Heck, even when there is an non GPL open source alternative now, GPL bashing BSDists still use gcc.
On another matter, I may be wrong, but last time I checked, GNU covered every area of the POSIX.2 normalisation. While X, Apache, Perl, MySQL and the "other" important open source software that you'd want to include (rhetoricaly, I hope) in the GNU/Linux title don't provide such a conformance to a UNIX normalisation (BSD is another matter entirely: they knowingly ignore POSIX in some case).
I could work, with difficulty, with a UNIX system providing only GNU; with time and resources it might develop in a full-fledged interoperable UNIX system. It'd be impossible with any XFree86-only, Apache-only, Perl-only or (!) MySQL-only UNIX system. I choose to believe that the importance of these components to a Linux distribution is relatively less than that of GNU.
[1] the pun involving a U2 song was not intended.
Users are free to share open source software. Nonestablishment entities are free to branch, improve and distribute open source software. If the establishment wins too--- so what? Thats great, everybody wins.
That RMS has said, then Free Software and Open Source movements disagree on priciples but agree on the pratical steps to take. The only way the two approches diverge is in propaganda.
As to open source becoming integrated into the way corporations and markets work, well, I can't speak for Eric Raymond, but I thinks it's fantastic. Everybody ends up richer. Everybody ends up freer. I don't understand why you find that dismaying. Life is not a zero sum game.
Happy hacking,
Henry
Its a simple economic law called the law of diminishing returns. Let me give you a simple example. You start a one man moving company with one truck that seats 2 in Redmond. Your business is booming because the rats are leaving the sinking ship so you decide to hire another guy. Now you can do twice the work faster. You are now operating at peak performance for your resources (the truck) but demand for your service is increasing. What do you do? Add a 3rd person? If you do that you won't realize such a big rig return b/c that 3rd person will spend much of his time being an ineffective drain. Do you really need 3 to move a couch? How about getting that guy from one house to the next? You would have to make 2 trips. Of course you can add another truck someday like someday we will be able to add another planet but the cost of that truck is pretty prohibitive. So you see over implies too much and too much of anything is not a good thing.
"What are the three words guaranteed to humiliate men everywhere?
In Republican America phones tap you.
Of course, advertising should be banned. Not only does it insult my intelligence, it is also a tremendous waste of resources and it promotes destructive ideals, such as "buy more stuff and you'll be happy", "get thin", "buy it on credit" etc. Commercial speech is not covered by freedom of speech anyway, so censorship would not only be possible, but also very desirable. To buy a product, you can always look it up in Consumer reports or in some yellow-page like catalog of specifications.
--
Just to expand on your "everyone fitting into Texas" idea:
assuming:
- everyone were to live on one acre (approx. 4047 square metres) of land (like you suggested)
- there are 6e9 people living on this planet
then we would require 2.4282e13 square metres of land. If we were to put this in a giant square (to simplify the math -- damn that pi), the square would need to be about 4.928e6 metres (or 4928 km) on each side. Considering that the earth is approximately 6371 km in radius, I find it unlikely that everyone could fit into Texas.
In fact, if we use the number 13e12 square metres as the total land mass of the Earth (though that number should probably be lower -- not many people would want to live in Antarctica), then the average amount of land per person is about 2167 square metres. If the average person were to live in a square (go to hell, pi!), then they would live in a square about 47 metres on each side. This is considerably larger than the average suburban house lot (phew), but I must say it's not very impressive. Personally I don't see the benefits of a larger population outweighing the costs. It seems like about 15 of the 6 billion people (okay, slight exaggeration) are living in poverty. If one were to 'average' out the quality of living, it would be extremely poor. But that's because we (or more accurately, our governments) are so dumb, you say! True, but I doubt increasing our population will move us into some sort of utopia, no matter how efficient our resource mangling.
Woo.
Nope. It should be GRUB/Linux/GNU (or LILO or whatever you use to boot your machine). After all, boot loader is definitely an important part of the OS! =) (For further madness, see the GRUB documentation.)
I always thought the whole idea of copyright was to protect the creator! Or is this part of RMS' to-hell-with-production-costs-I-have-a-right-to-co py-as-I-see-fit philosophy? (His tollway example always struck me as being insensitive to the cost of construction -- sure, it should be free once it's built and the gov't has recouped construction costs.)- --------------
----------------------------------------
Oh please. You're confusing morality with religion. They are not the same thing, although frequently people's morals will rely on a religion for a foundation. This does not mean that everyone needs such a foundation.
For RMS to be a Christian would basically require a belief in a single god, the divinity of Jesus, etc. However, Jesus's preachings are generally still valid even if you decide that he was a regular human being. (which is IIRC what Muslims believe - that Jesus was a prophet, but not divine)
It is possible to be a good person and still be an atheist. You need not decide that the ONLY reason it's wrong to murder people for instance, is because God says so. It's wrong anyway.
People acting religiously have also been responsible for atrocities all throughout history. You can't blame the Crusades on the Reds. Or the Spanish Inquisition. Or human sacrifice. Or the acceptance of slavery for thousands of years. So religion is not necessarily moral.
And businesses and plain old greed have been responsible for plenty of horrible acts as well. Slavery, again. The Spanish Inquisition, again (you think that the money and property confiscated from Jews got dumped in the trash?) Child labor. Lack of safety equipment. Massive levels of pollution and inefficiencies in production. Grossly defective products. Infringements on the rights and freedoms of anyone smaller than they are - typically regular people. Businesses aren't lily-white at all.
RMS has a moral system that works for him. This is good. It's basically compatable with the society he's in, which is good. I don't have any problems with it myself, so I'm willing to say it's good. I'm sure his politics are subject to his morals, but that's also good.
I would much rather live in a society where everyone had well-developed morals, instead of one founded on religion or some political or economic philosophy.
If you have a better idea, please enlighten us. I'm sure we'll all bask in your wisdom.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
What America needs isn't the NRA to defend the 2nd amendment, what America needs is a sensible way to legally change it's constitution and remove things that makes no sense anymore (such as the 2nd amendment), and update it's wording (such as explicitely say what speech is/isn't in the first amendment). Only if America can change it's constitution in a democratic manner America can be said to be a democracy.
However, viewing the American public's tendency to vote for politicians wanting to take away their rights and freedoms, it might be that we should be happy that Americans can't change their constitution. If they could they would probably have completely abolished democracy by now.
--
%japh = (
'name' => 'Niklas Nordebo', 'mail' => 'niklas@' . 'nordebo.com',
'work' => 'www.sonox.com', 'phone' => '+46-708-405095'
"If there is no God, where does his basis for judgment come from?"
Jesus's golden rule, Nietzsche's single standard, a belief in karma or however you like to term it can be accepted as a kind of lowest common denominator. it comes up so often in a mature ethical belief that you could say theres a fair bit of empirical evidence that it is so without the need of god.
Please take a few moments to review the ACLU's stance on seperation of church and state as it relates to schools. The ACLU would have no arguement with a validictorian quoting from the Bible, unless it is required/corced/encouraged by the school.
Your interpretation of the ACLUs actions implies that you are personally offended, because of some position they have taken. Did you take the time to understand their position? I suspect not. Would you have felt the same if the relilgion involved was Hindu, Islam, Jewish, or Taoist. Honestly, answer that question.
Troy Roberts
Stallman does not suggest anywhere that copyright law should be ignored. If he made such an arguement, it would be hard for him to then use copyright law to protect GPLed code. The GPL relies on copyright law. It may be the case that the US copyright law is not best suited for the protection of freedoms that the GPL is meant to protect. This is no reason to argue lawlessness. The best solution is to actively support the Free Software Movement and increase public awareness. These type of activities may help change the laws to better support our freedoms.
Protection of freedoms may only be achieved through appropiate laws. Anarchy protects nothing .
Troy Roberts
Niether Lenin or Stalin were socialist; they were communist. Socalism is an economic system. Communism is a polital and economic system. To see the diffence, check out Sweden. They are a socialist democracy.
To suggest that the golden rule is a christian idea is competely false. Long before Jesus the idea existed in many religions. Examples can be found in almost every culture to the dawn of the written word. I suspect you have insulted many Christians too. Christians believe in Jesus Christ and his teachings. These teachings my contain some elements of philosophy found other places (socialism) but that does not make socialism watered down Christianity.
Troy Roberts
>While I find your proposed policy fascinating,
:)
:) The seven-child family is a special case, since five of the kids were adopted from a single family. It seemed cruel to break the kids apart, so the parents who wanted to adopt the kids (both well-paid government workers with an absolutely *huge* house) decided to take them all in. They're wonderful parents, too. The kids love them.
>the political goofballs on the left, in the US
>anyhow, would complain about "tax breaks for the
>rich" and how the plan is "unfair to the poor."
Agreed. I never intended it to be a "build out of the box" plan, just one that could eventually be mutated into something useful. And considering that I'm one of those left-wing goofballs, I can understand that point of view. I guess the thing I'm trying to get across is that punishment doesn't really work in this sort of thing, while rewards often do. Give someone a fifty dollar reward to turn in a lost wallet containing a few hundred, and you'd be surprised how many people will take the reward.
>Framed another way, people with fewer than two
>children are over-represented in the professional
>(I'm using a broader definition of profession
>than lawyer, doctor, and priest) arena. As such,
>they'd receive additional benefits for merely
>continuing their current behavior.
Interesting point, and one that I'd be inclined to argue in favour of. Higher education is never a bad thing. At the very least, it might encourage a little more rational thought in everyday decisions. It probably wouldn't in reality, but one never knows. Of course, then comes the question of "How would a poor family afford the university/college tuition?" I've always thought that tuitions should slashed, but that's an entirely different issue.
>In any case, you'd probably be able to look at
>China's experience with its one-child policy.
>Does anyone have a rational explanation of
>whether or not its worked?
Not being the least bit Chinese (British descended east-coast Canadian, in my case) nor knowing anyone who lives in China, I honestly couldn't say. China's policy is vastly different both in spirit and in practise to the dollars-not-babies idea. Their system, from what I've gathered in the news, is a straightforward do-this-or-else fascist policy. Can anyone who knows more about China's one-child rule comment?
>FWIW, I understand the female infanticide problem
>exists, but I consider that an unfortunate
>cultural artifact more than evidence against the
>policy per se.
Again, you're right. Acceptance of this kind of thing would be a big problem anywhere in the world where sexism and/or a large family is an accepted part of a culture. Not just east Asia and Africa, but many parts of, well, every single country in the world, I guess.
And I just thought of another problem: this could be seen by some of the more extreme right-wingers as some sort of "attack on family values", despite the fact that the parents would have much more time to pay attention to one child. Whether that's a good or bad situation, I'll leave to the psychologists.
This is all *strictly* anecdotal, but here goes. I'm the oldest child of two oldest children, so I've got many young aunts and uncles with school-age children of their own. Among my extended family, I've got younger cousins in various one-child, two-child, three-child and seven-child families. I've noticed that the parents of the two-child family are the most relaxed of them all. I expect the parents of the single child will be more relaxed once my little cousin is no longer a toddler.
By the way, please adopt if you have the chance and want kids. There's some great kids out there who need good homes.
>but I agree. I wouldn't wish doom on anyone. The
>sprite graphics, the low-res textures, the
>3D-no-wait-they're-2D maps...I could go on, but
>you get my point.
I dunno, a good game of 4-player Doom is great at parties for that retro-gaming experience.
All insane, militant, extremist, dogmatic and propaganda-filled jihads eventually spawn a more moderate branch. The moderate movements tend to be the ones that catch on. This is how life works.
Not everyone wants to be a 'card-carrying' lunatic in order to bring about some change for the good.
Get off my lawn.
Hoo boy. If RMS is reading this one, I'll bet he's getting a good chuckle or two.
As someone who's old enough to remember when America actually had a Christian left, I'll state that, while the basis of your premise is not necessarily wrong, it is misguided by the confusion between "communism" and "socialism".
Now, most U.S. adults don't know this difference, having been spoon-fed Cold War rhetoric since they were in utero. But, the roots of socialism go back to John Stuart Mill, who predates Karl Marx considerably. (So yeah, Mill's Christian upbringing probably had quite a bit to do with his thinking. Marx, however, saw religion as a puppet of State control -- a view echoed by Lenin, and an accurate description of the Russian Orthodox Church of that day.)
Communism advocates violent revolution by an elite as a prerequisite for the eventual goal of universal equity; socialism merely advocates a fairer distribution of wealth. Not a subtle distinction. Just ask the members of Communist and Socialist parties in European nations about this.
Thus, I would take issue with the Soviet death camps as a symbol of "socialism", as socialism and democracy co-exist fairly well in other parts of the globe. A communist society, on the other hand, is another matter; no blueprint for the "dictatorship of the proletariat" was ever specified by Marx or his interpreters, but Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot et. al. have removed all doubt on what kind of dictatorship this would be.
In short, say what you will about present-day French National Assembly, but it sure as hell isn't the Khmer Rouge.
As for the statement that a capitalist society is inherently better than a socialist one, well, this is a generalization if there ever was one. Clearly, the States has a better standard of living than, say, Yugoslavia, but I would also venture to say that my civil liberties (as a whole) have a better chance in Canada or the UK than the USA. Capitalism would be ideal IMHO if civil rights and liberties were tied indelibly to economic freedom, somehow ,in a very explicit manner. This will probably never happen, certainly not in my lifetime.
He obviously sucks at political philosophy
But I'm afraid he runs rings around you..
-----
"O Lord, grant me the courage to change the things I can,
the serenity to accept those I cannot, and a big pile of money."
".sig,
They very carefully pick and choose which rights they will defend, and invent rights where none exist.
On balance, they are far worse than any Microsoft or any DMCA.
Listen to yourself! How is picking and choosing rights to defend harmful? The NAACP picks rights that pertain to race. Is this wrong? The EFF defends a certain type of rights, and certainly not others. Greenpeace, Planned Parenthood, Pro-life groups, the Christian Coalition, the NRA, the Free Software Foundation all fit into the same catagory. No one group can even be EXPECTED to right for EVERY right. No one will chew out Greenpeace to push them into fight for free speech or the Free Software Foundation to take a stance on labor rights. Why can't the ACLU fall into this catagory too?
The ACLU spends the GREAT DEAL of it's time fighting for issues of first amendment rights. You may not like their stance on gun control or their interpretation of the second amendment but just because they don't choose to fight vehemently for your particular interpretation of that piece of law is no reason to say their aren't protecting it (they are just not protecting it in the way you see to be most valid which is not your business to tell them) and it is certainly out of line to say that they are doing harm. Either way, they are not fighting AGAINST the 2nd amendment so I can't see how they are worse than MS.
Microsoft has engaged in anti-competative marketing practices and as a company, it HAS done things wrong. They have committed crimes (according to a US court, which is fair as you're going to get) and that is bad (abusing a monopoly is illegal). The DMCA takes massive steps to limit the ability for innovation by the end user (section 8 of the constitution) and it limits freedom. This IS bad. You may not agree with some of the things the ACLU doesn't fight but doesn't make them worse that companies and bills that ARE harmful.
-- Mako Hill Standing up to an evil system mako(at)debian(dot)org is exhilarating. --RMS
I was under the impression that in order for protection to be at all effective, it had to be seen (this is just under the DMCA). A unavoidable click-through is hard to miss, text file in the tarball is probably not hard to miss--and that's the problem.
Because a piece of GPLed software can be legally modified (any part, that's right) it is perfectly legal to simply make a change that removes the click-through license and, whammo, the protection is no longer "effective."
You're completely right, it may not matter how difficult the "effective protection" is bypass (although a reading implying the opposite is certainly possible with the current text although I'm under the impression that this will fixed in an amendment to the act if it becomes at all necessary) but the problem exists that the scenario of "effective protection" can change very legally with GPLed software in ways that it cannot change at all, with closed-source or non-free software. It is in this way that the DMCA reserves special rights for proprietary software and it is for this reason (and many many others) that RMS speaks out against it.
I hope I've shed some light on this.
-- Mako Hill Standing up to an evil system mako(at)debian(dot)org is exhilarating. --RMS
You, my friend, are a truly sheltered and ignorant individual. Next time, try doing a little reading before you inject your utterly senseless opinions into a conversation you know nothing about, and which has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
Actually, ASP's do distribute. If multiple users using a cental fileserver with Word on it are counted for licencing purposes as having had the product distributed to them, what difference does it make if the server is hundreds of miles away? If someone can use a product to do work then that product has been distributed.
With ASP's, you access a program through a terminal, such as a web browser. You a not downloading and executing a program. If you are not distributing a modified GPL'd _PROGRAM_, you do not need to make your source avaliable. Your logic would follow that if a modified GPL'd program was used to make video effects for a movie, the source must be released because the "product" is being distributed. This is not how the GPL works, nor should it work that way.
--fatboy
For Linux to get mainstream we must get rid of the radicals and focus on the quality of the results.
:)
Without RMS, there would be no Linux. The reason Linux has done so well is because of the GPL. There are many other X86 OSes out there that are just as good or better than Linux, but they are not GPL'd. Please remeber these two things, Linux _IS_ mainstream and all movements have their crackpot/wacko founders. RMS is our wacko/crackpot founder and should be treated with respect, no matter how crazy he speaks
--fatboy
So, in other words, you're attacking an ethical position with a merely practical argument. It's like saying, "Most people won't be persuaded by the statement, 'Thou shall not kill,' so obviously the statement is ethically incorrect (or irrelevant?)."
Don't you mean, 'Thou shall not murder'. Killing is _NOT_ a crime. There is a thing such as justifiable homicide.
--fatboy
No. The commandment says "Thou shalt not kill".
No, the commandment's actual translation is "Thou shalt not do murder.".
Now shut up, and get back on topic, fatboy.
This is on topic, have you read the interview?
--fatboy
Of course it's the fault of the laws.
The fact that there are people who break the laws is an obvious indicator that such laws are not good for everyone and should be changed.
It's not a social problem in itself since society grows around it's laws, so that changing a law reflects on society's changes.
--
GNU fileutils, binutils, textutils, zip, egcs are hardly replaceable. You'd look a little silly with a ksh and nothing to run with it.
And besides, RMS has lovely hair.
BTW, a good example of this is the second amendment. It guarantees the right to keep and bear arms, but a "civil" right is the right not to get shot. The constitutional right would be the right to shoot back. Which is more important, and which is more feasable to guarantee?
It's pretty obvious that the civil right is extremely difficult to police at all, let alone fairly. The Constitutional right seems to be in the process of being phased out, by burial in apathy and the death of a thousand laws and regulations.
I guess that leaves us with the right to get shot, whether or not we bear arms.
It seems to me that RMS is on the side of Constitutional, and opensource.org is on the side of Civil. For one thing, not a lot of people can really see the difference between the two sides, the differences in inevitable consequences of taking either position. For another, defenders of Constitutional rights and RMS are both generally viewed as slightly nutty and difficult to get on with.
RMS is a religious fundamentalist in his own way. He'd probably be upset to hear that, but there is no behavioural difference: he holds an uncommon fundamental belief, and I don't know if he'd die to protect it, but he'd come a lot closer than 99.99% of people would. The only difference in principle between RMS and a kris-waving Jihad participant is in methods.
The world would be much nicer if all religious fundamentalists limited themselves to spreading their ideas by debate and assertion, rather than with swords(*) and the kind of political cheating that always leads to wars and massacres.
But it was not foretold so, and of course it is not working out so. I think RMS's example of doing the best that he can with what there is, is a good one.
(*) and poinards, garrots, etc. See a transcript of the Jesuit Oath for a comprehensive list.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Text is not intense, no matter how big the font.
Ooooh, I dunno... red 200-point bold Verdana can get pretty intense inside a tag pair. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I can't see even the most out-of-touch judge supporting the idea that an item can be used by many people and yet not have been distributed to those people.
I cite the example of the US Constitution itself. Not only can people use it without actually having it, they can use it without actually having the information in it. Yes, I know the cases are different, but you can bet that a similar argument will turn up in court one day. Are we ready?
I can also see some meathead arguing that the users only run certain parts of it, so they only need to distribute the source for the parts which the user has actually used _and_ are Open Source, and will the user be so kind as to clearly identify these parts, please?
Also, UCITA and friends (or should I say, "and business partners"?) would make it illegal to distribute any proprietary modifications with the open source. This is because the modifications aren't inherently Free (RMS's definition), it's only that the GPL says that they must be made free if they are made to GPLed code... or does it?
Perhaps GPL-III (Grandson of GPL) can be phrased in such a manner that modifications to GoGPL'ed code are inherently blessed (made "holy", ie Free) as they happen?
I also hope to avoid the day when someone ships GPL source for an original, plus a proprietary program which applies encrypted proprietary patches to the GPL source as it is compiled. In this way, the patches are distributed non-GPL ("mere aggregation" does not implicitly GPL them) rather than modified GPL code being distributed, so they escape the "virality" of the GPL.
Law sucks. I dearly wish common sense were universally enforceable.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
But to answer your question, "does it matter if the black box is accessed over the web?" -- I think it does, or to be more specific, it matters if the program is running the memory space of my black box versus your black box.
:-)
Nice, simple and clear-cut. Hee-hee.
If you run (say) PatheticWriter at an ASP's site, you will be using an X server on your machine to do it. PW will send icons (as bitmaps) and other data to your X server to be displayed and maybe clicked on. The icon now lives in your machine. It has been "distributed" to you. It is a part of the program. Has the program been "distributed" to you, or not?
Fine it down some more. You run Word at an ASP using Terminal Server (or some other near equivalent like VNC). You see an icon on your screen. There is a conceptual difference here, as the icon has not been sent to your machine as a separate bitmap. Nevertheless, it has been "distributed" to you. Same questions as above.
BTW, you can move your mouse cursor over the icon, and the cursor turns into a little hand. The hand _has_ been distributed to you. You click. Word crashes. Lo, identical functionality! (-: sorry, couldn't resist
Fine it up a little more. It is the future. You are running a Java interface within your browser to access a Word descendent (say Word 13) at your ASP. Word 13 contains GPLed code, but the Java interface doesn't. An icon comes up as before, presented to you by the proprietary Java interface. It is visually indistinguishable from the previous two cases, and the Java interface, while a separate component, needs Word 13 to be useful. Has any software component of a program containing GPLed code been distributed to you?
A separate but related issue: the ASP has had a GPL-containing program distributed to them, in the form of Word 13, therefore the ASP must have free and unrestricted access to the full source for Word 13, yes?
Let's see how thin we can get these hairs! One day a court will be doing the same thing, and we want to know ahead of time how it turns out.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
If "demonizing" is so bad speech it should not be used, where would you draw the line?
As for releasing under a certain license; it's not a must. You might be obliged to think about it though. Nobody can (now) force you to use a single kind of license. Go for *BSD if GPL hurts you.
You can release your software binary-only and restrict its use and copies. You just may not use GPL-protected code in such programs, that's all. As long as a future DMCA doesn't render copyleft useless.
Proprietariness doesn't guarantee you income, just like GPL does not require you to give out your work for free. GPL just allows redistribution and modification of your work once you distribute it with any price you choose. Or do I get this wrong?
You can, as well, protect people from a world that is emerging: a world where humans are consumers only, and consumables are provided by corporations.
The Nike and other corporate commercials build one kind of world; the freedom zealots' speech builds another kind. Hint: the former ones are suing people and companies for copying stuff; the latter are talking about "what's ethical".
Pick yours.
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
I am not a Christian, nor am I a right-winger. I'm a Jewish atheist left-libertarian. But I don't particularly hate "the christian right". And the ACLU kept sending me fundraising letters that demonized "the christian right". In reading these it seemed to me the ACLU had lost its focus on constitutional issues and become a generic liberal cause instead. For example, I got letters warning me that if we weren't careful the christian right would destroy our public schools with voucher initiatives. Is schooling a federal issue? Is it mentioned in the Bill of Rights? Is it even mentioned in the constitution? Nope. Then why is the ACLU working on this issue? Because that evil "christian right" appears to be for it, so the ACLU must therefore be against it.
Anyway, I'll be a data point on this one: I'm not christian and I agree with the previous poster. And I'd honestly have been just as bothered if it had been applied to any other group.
I play Nerd-Folk!
Benetton eg skips your mental defences, doing dissociative fashion spreads of people on death row, smiling downs syndrome kids, a burning car wreck, trying to make an impression & associate themselves with a sensibility, in your mind. The ads' very un-categorizableness gets past your expectations and gets around your tuning it out. They try to stake a claim in your conceptual / sensibility space. You know all this most likely, but the point is that ad writers are doing their best to get past our reasoning minds and manipulate us more / less directly.
And, they're ubiquitous; more & more these days we seem to trade free stuff for having someone plaster ads in our sight. Govt's even, are financing things with ads on public property. Manipulative or banal, I think it costs us to have to deal with so much of it.
* 'Coercion' by Douglas Rushkoff is good though it's not specifically about ads.
Someday we'll all be negroes
As long as your belief that "induction works" relies upon an inductive system of proof and disproof, the validity of induction is completely unfalsifiable (because your argument is circular), so you have already defined away the possibility of disbelieving. Which, some could argue, is analogous to "taking it on faith", as you refuse to accept any system of knowledge in which your assumption (inductive proof/disproof as an indication of veracity) does not hold.
Thank God for liberal arts education...
The question then is whether
- The laws or powers granted under law are morally or ethically "right" (for whatever definition you like of "right")
- We should (for whatever definition of "should" you prefer) commit our resources and energies to supporting (whether financially or with our coding skills) products and/or entities which refuse to grant us freedoms that we feel are either "fundamentally right" (see 1) or "preferable, better, more productive, etc".
Mind you, I'm not disagreeing with you... but the meaning of "freedom" very quickly becomes murky in discussions like this...And yet, here in RMS's words we see a choice example of an atheist making precisely the same mistake: he cannot imagine a being who, by its very nature, has created all else that exists and therefore knows the rules, knows the very NATURE of every situation, and is therefore easily capable of distinguishing right and wrong (Note "wrong" on m-w.com - all 6 definitions of the adjective form presume some pre-existing "correct" or "right" thing which "wrong" is defined in contrast to). Whether such a being chooses to ACT in accordance with what it knows is right is a completely different question - where "act" could include a deliberate self-delusion - but again, Stallman's assertion only holds true if you assume that such a being is not capable of self-consistency.
If you allow that all that exists is derivative of one being which is capable of total knowledge of all that is derivative from it, and that it is capable of total self-consistency, then... ta-da... RMS is wrong. (Or, more likely, he just didn't think through that statement very carefully.)
Which, in my mind, goes to show that there is very
little, if any, real difference between the
Republicans and the Democrats. Lately, I have been
refering to them, collecitvly, as the
"Republicrat Party", which is split into 2
factions, which hate eachother for no real reason.
I think you should be given a few insightful points. Democrats and Republicans seem to have a single interest at heart: businesses. It's important to understand the form of government that we have, and increasingly it is an oligarchy. Oligarchy is rule by a small elite, and those elites are business leaders. I am not necessarily against strong business and a strong business voice, but our country is a constitutional republic. The criteria that I use when I judge the goodness of a nation is how well it does in protecting the rights of the minorities. Every country does a great job protecting the majority. I hope ours (the United States) will do a great job of protecting minorities.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
... of your American organisations, but what is the ACLU?
cheers,
Tim
Fair enough; I was just pointing out the previous poster's distortions of Stallman's argument. For what it's worth, I don't agree with everything RMS says, either; particularly the part about using a crappy free piece of software rather than a commercial one that gets the job done well. Sometimes you just need to get the job done.
And Stallman never used the word "boycott" either, so I guess I'm guilty of distorting what he said to some degree. I'd agree with your distinction on that point. But I think RMS would argue that while it might sometimes be in your short-term best interest to buy "non-free" software, it would never be in your long-term interest to do so. I don't know about that. I'm glad alternatives exist, and I am rather often surprised at how free software is not only a cost-effective way to do a particular task, but also a better one. But at this point (and maybe never) there isn't always a better free alternative.
"I believe that the cult of the particular brings only death - for it bases order on likeness." St.-Exupery
"I would say that communism is a political model and its economic analog is socialism."
Communism is `a form of socialism that abolishes private ownership'.
-rozzin.
"Second, I am neither suggesting that Stallman is a Communist nor that Communism itself is evil. It is a system of government."
Isn't communism more a system of economy?
-rozzin.
Bad analogy, I know, but the only better one I can think of involves Tolkien, and I don't want to go there ;-)
Well, go there anyway -
I can think of at least 4 potentail examples
1 - After the capture of Melkor after he overthrew the Lamps, they could have shoved him out into the Void, but didn't. This analogy reveals that your question in some ways boils down to one about the death penalty.
2 - After the War of Wrath, Melkor does get the 'death penalty', but they don't end up killing all the bad guys (hence LotR).
3 - After the victory of the Last Alliance, they could have destroyed Sauron, but did not. They just try to imprison him.
4 - After the War of the Ring, Sauron is finally disposed of, but evil is not entirely wiped out (no scorched earth).
Well, I hope that doesn't reveal me to be too much of a Tolkien geek.
Sam TH
Sam TH
AbiWord Developer
I feel compelled to point out that you are entirely mistaken. Tolkein spent his life as a linguist, or more specifically a philologist. He taught at Oxford for most of his career. His major area of research was into Anglo-Saxon languages (he has an important essay on Beowulf.)
He was certainly catholic, and if one wants to, one can see that in the books.
I think you may have been thinking of CS Lewis, one of the most famous Christian apologists of this century. (The Chronicles of Narnia is a Christ allegory).
Sam TH
Sam TH
AbiWord Developer
OK, so I'm way off about the land area claim.
However, if you take the land area of Texas (6e11 meters^2) and spit it up 6 billion ways, the per-person land area is about 100 square meters. For a family of four, that allows for a land area 20 meters on a side. That's the size of a small suburban lot, and is much less than the density of a large city. If you housed people in apartment buildings with 100 people in them, (say a 5-story building with 5 4-person families on each floor) you'd get to put each building on a lot 100 meters on a side, which is larger than most apartment buildings have. Granted, that's not an ideal amount of land, but it wouldn't be that bad. The population density here in Minneapolis is higher than that, and I'm surviving.
So I think my point stands, although I admittedly was pulling numbers out of my ass in the previous post. The problem is not physical space, it's resources, and the primary component in the production of resources is human labor. Doubling the number of people on the planet would certainly cause a problem if done all at once, but if it's done gradually, it seems to me it would be a good thing.
The land they live upon, apparently, simply can't support the number of people that they have.
This isn't true. The problem is that farmers in those countries are using outdated farming methods that have lower yields. In the US, land use for farming has actually declined in spite of population growth. If all countries used the modern farming methods of the US, the environment would be cleaner and there would be plenty of food for everyone with less land wasted.
Now obviously most countries can't afford that, but that's not due to overpopulation. The third world is poor for political reasons, and would continue to be poor even if they had fewer people. What's needed in those countries is not population control but free markets, which would drive farmers to adopt modern farming methods.
Gee, I sure and glad you took the time to share your opinion. I'd hate to go through life not knowing that I'm sheltered and ignorant.
/.er. I certainly have read and thought enough about it to make a coherent case. I suggest you make sure you know what you're talking about before you go insulting other people.
Seriously, I've made out a case that population growth is a good thing. You responded with insults. And I'm the one that's sheltered?
I'd be willing to bet that I've done more reading on this subject than the average
If you think that population growth is bad, then please make your argument. Otherwise, why should I take you seriously?
God I'm sick of ignorant people taking condescending attitudes about subjects they don't understand. OK...
Take an island. Put 1,000 people on it. Give them all enough infinite wealth. Give them zero food.
Wealth is not money. Wealth is physical resources: iron, tractors, buildings, etc. A society that had all these things would be able to produce food more efficiently.
Besides, we don't live on an island. And our food supply is not fixed. The primary barrier to feeding the poor is poor distribution systems and a lack of technology for third-world farmers.
There is no global food shortage. There are local food shortages created by incompetent governments. Nations that have free markets in food production and the wealth to use modern farming methods have seen production skyrocket and land use dwindle.
Reducing the number of people on the Earth won't make the remaining people any richer. In fact, it will likely make them poorer, since there are fewer opportunities for division of labor, and fewer resources to go to fixed costs like research and infrastructure.
Resources are not fixed. This is an economic fact. More people means more labor available for the creation of more wealth. Population growth makes us all richer.
The Malthusians have been predicting this for 200 years, and it hasn't happened, in spite of unprecedented population growth in the last century. Sure, if there were a trillion people on the planet, then it might not be possible to feed them all, but we're nowhere near that point yet. There is still lots of open space, and most of the agriculture in the world is still done in an extremely primitive manner. Modernizing agriculture in the third world is going to be much more effective than trying to control population growth, and more people means more resources with which to modernize.
Poverty is a political problem. People are made poor by bad policies, not by any intrinsic limit on the number of people who can live in a region.
It's amazing how industrial nations, for all of their advancement, continue to create unbelievable amounts of waste and destruction.
In fact, the precise opposite is true. Land use, pollution rates, extinctions, and other environmental harms have been declining for about 50 years in the US. This is because the advance of technology has allowed us to use more efficient production methods that save resources, farmland, and produce less pollution. It is the third world that is destroying rain forests, causing pollution, and otherwise harming the environment.
What is needed in those countries is economic growth. Only by making now-poor countries wealthy will we have the resources to protect the environment, preserve forests, clean up the air, etc.
This is why attempts to impose draconian environmental rules on the third world are so wrongheaded. They aren't going to stop the pollution, but they may very well strangle those economies in the cradle, preventing them from ever becoming industrialized. And then without the benefits of wealth, they will never be able to reduce the hard to the environment as the West has done.
Go explain that 'fact' to the former inhabitants of Easter Island. Please CC: every specie of plant and animal we've extincted.
I have no idea what this has to do with the topic at hand.
At any rate, I'm not interested in getting into a flame war with you. Let me know when you're interested in having a serious discussion, then maybe we can both learn something. Until then, I'm not going to waste my time on you.
Well, sure, the word "overpopulation" by definition means "having too many people, so by definition that can't be good. But my point is that there is no overpopulation problem. Those countries that have problems with starvation and over-crowding are due to poverty, not an excess of people.
/.ers disagree with me.
If you were to shoot half the people in China (not that I'm for that) then you'd have hald a billion people, and the country would be just as poor. Sure, in the short run you could take the property of the half that died, but you would have lost half the productive capacity of your economy.
Resources aren't just lying around for people to use. 90% of the value of any good or service is in the value of the labor that went into it. So reducing the number of people is going to also reduce the pool of labor, and so is going to give you a very small net gain.
In addition, there are benefits to having more people around-- more division of labor, more potential customers if you run a business, etc. These far outweigh any benefit you might have by having more physical resources per person. Human labor is the most valuable commodity around.
As for an overpopulated country with a good standard of living, look at Hong Kong. Or New York, or Japan. All have extremely high population densities, and are also very prosperous. Sure they don't probably count as "overpopulated," since they have the resources to take care of their people, but they are countries with high population densities.
And for the record, I think it's ridiculous that my original comment got knocked down to -1. It's clearly on-topic, since it's commenting on something in the article, and perhaps it doesn't deserve a "2," but it's certainly no more overrated than most 1-rated comments. It's not my fault that most
There is a finite amount of resources on this planet.
There is a finite amount of natural resources, but that limit is extremely high. Note that the price of most commodities in real terms is going down. That means that those resources are becoming less scarce, meaning that they are being discovered faster than they are being used.
Most wealth is due to the value needed to make them, not to the value of raw natural resources. A chunk of iron or copper isn't worth much until it is extracted from the ground and purified. And even then it's not worth much until it's used to make something useful.
Also, most people would like to preserve some wilderness. Whether it be for recreation, aesthetic reasons, ethical reasons, or all of the above... It is hard to preserve natural areas on an overcrowded planet.
This is not true. I believe I've read that if you give every person an acre, you could fit the world's population into Texas. The reason that wilderness is being destroyed is that land is not being used efficiently. Notice that the amount of forest in the US has actually increased, and the amount of farmland in production has dropped, in spite of population and production growth in recent years.
The key to wilderness prvention is to make sure resources are used efficiently. That means that we need to find ways to get modern farming techniques to the farmers in Central America who are forced to use slash-and-burn agriculture to survive now. It means that we need a more efficient food distribution system, so that our surpluses can be distributed more effectively to the people who need them, alleviating the pressures to use marginal farmland with low yields.
In addition, you say "more goods and services" are a good thing, however if this were true rich people would be the happiest people, and I don't find this to be true.
Maybe not at the extremes, but you can bet that you and I have more pleasant lives than the average peasant in India. You can question whether Bill Gates is happier than someone who makes $100k/yr, but I think the person who makes $100k/yr is giong to be happier than someone who makes 10k/yr. Certainly it would be ridiculous to argue that fewer goods and services would be good. If you believe that, go ahead and join a monastary. I personally like goods and services.
You're assuming a fixed number of trucks, but where do trucks come from? They are made by people. So if there are no trucks for someone to drive, then chances are truck maunfacturing companies need to ramp up their production. So that extra worker could be hired by them.
The point is that almost all resources are created by human beings' labor. A hunk of iron 50 feet under the ground isn't worth a whole lot. It takes human effort (and capital, which is built with previous human effort) to extract that iron and turn it into something useful. So there will *always* be something somewhere for a new worker to work productivly.
Not only that, but specialization and the division of labor mean that two people working together can be more than twice as efficient than one person working by himself. If you're really good at catching fish, and I'm really good at gathering berries, then together we can have more of both fish and berries than either of us would alone. THis effect scales. Adding a millionth person to an economy can increase the per-person productivity of the economy as much as adding a hundredth or a thousandth person.
The cost of the physical raw material that go into a product is a very small part of the overall cost. Even when you purchase "raw copper," that copper has already had a lot of labor put into extracting it from the ground and purifying it. And there is no limit in sight to the amount of resources available. The Earth is a giant ball of natural resources, and there is probably enough resources in there to support ten times the current population. What is needed is the human labor needed to find and extract those resources.
Well sure, if you have a trillion people, then yes you might have problems. But most demographers predict that population is going to lever off at around 10 billion, which is nowhere near the number of people the planet can theoretically hold.
So, allow me to rephrase: any reasonable increase in population is beneficial. By reasonable, let's just say I mean up to 20 billion people. At that point, I suspect it would still be beneficial, but it's possible that we'd start to run out of natural resources.
Most demographers are currently predicting that the population will level out by the end of the next century, so chances are we will never have a population even that large.
Sorry, but how can you claim that his standpoint on relativism is incorrect?? The whole point of relativism is that there is no absolute right or wrong. If you're a relativist then you can't (by definition) claim that somebody else's views are incorrect. They're just different from yours. That's the whole point, isn't it?
That's why no serious modern philosopher espouses relativism. A relativist can't make any interesting arguments, since you can't legitimately disagree with anybody else!
/peter
Agreed that a broad interpretation of the Constitution in general should include a broad interpretation of the Second Amendment. However, the Second Amendment has probably double the political weight behind it as the rest of the amendments combined. Is it really worth hanging the ACLU over this issue?
BTW, Clinton is a "conservative politician", although one that is oddly disliked by most other conservative politicians. As is Gore. Stallman's comments about defeating Bush represent the typical futility of the American Left, encouraging people to elect "Bad" to defeat "Even Worse". Without some sort of positive alternative (like he has in the software world), his comments were out of place and really unwarranted.
Still, the question opened the door for Stallman to advocate non-software related political movements, so I guess what he said was fair. Hopefully people that agree with the Free Software movement will see past these possibly disagreeable remarks.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I'm glad you bring up the insanity of our particular form of American "overpopulation". Hundreds of miles of empty space, but when you get there, there's a traffic jam.
It's really not a "population" issue in this country, it's a land use issue. Specifically, the way we build our cities is beyond braindead. In an industrial, technical economy there's no reason that millions of people couldn't live sensibly in Utah, Montana, North Dakota, or anywhere else. Yet our friends in the wide open spaces continue to make the same stoopid mistakes that we have made in California.
At one time Silicon valley was some low lying factories and office parks amidst orchards and quaint prewar suburbs. Four million people and a hundred billion dollars later, it's a concrete nightmare of hour-plus commutes and million dollar 1960s two bedroom ranch homes. But, hey, it's also every other American city's model for the new economy.
So is it State involvement in population control or immigration control? Or is it state involvement in what you can build where and how you commute to work? As you point out, the Gubernmint is already hip deep there with full legal authority and with terrible results.
Good luck to you in Salt Lake.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Well, my word processor also outputs a dancing animatronic paper clip!
(Along with toolbar buttons and menus, and outline representations of the document, and macro programs with nice GUIs that might be GPLed on their own, and so on.)
I hate to belabor this whole thing, because the GPL is just one of those things that everyone has their own take on. But to answer your question, "does it matter if the black box is accessed over the web?" -- I think it does, or to be more specific, it matters if the program is running the memory space of my black box versus your black box. (This is why I though Perens' question about CORBA much more interesting than the ASP-err-host/terminal model.)
The GPL doesn't say Letting someone run the program is distributing it. In fact, it seems to say the opposite.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
(A) Confusing the UK TV Tax or some vendor's seat licence restrictions with the GPL is silly.
(B) You might try reading the GPL:
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.
Note that it makes no distinction between running locally, over a terminal interface, or where the server is hosted.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I have been provided with the program's functionality so it's GPLed. End of story.
You don't consider a "program's functionality" to be "output", as referred to by the GPL?
Maybe it's not as clear cut as it seems to me. You can run the program. You can recieve the output. You can provide input. All of these things are distinct from what the GPL refers to as "copying" or "distribution".
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Isn't "distribution" the act of transferring the program media, and not the act of running the program?
Companies like Microsoft handle licencing as a run-time issue, not a distribution issue. This leads to interesting paradoxes such as it being illegal to make a copy of a Word CD (except for backup purposes), but MS themselves continually spams-er-distributes my place of work with unlicenced Word CDs that we would need to pay for if we decided to install them.
In your ASP Word example, you really having nothing more than the ol' Host-Terminal model, which is nothing new, and not considered "distribution", as far as I know. If my ISP offers a shell service where I can telnet into a Linux box, they are really acting as an ASP for bash and vi and pine and so on. Do they now have to host the source code for the entire Linux distribution they are using?
Admittedly, this gets more complex if, say, the ASP was using a modified version of Apache to host a peoplesoft front end. But in that case, the ASP probably didn't write the modifications, and probably got them 'distributed' from someone else.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Huh? Are you saying I listen to popular music?
-lx
huh? Are you saying that growing up means that you lose your appreciation for music?
-lx
This man should be commended for somehow managing to stay above the bullshit and sticking to his principles, even when they aren't popular or grate on people's nerves. I hope ESR enjoys his million shares of LNUX because in a hundred years his initials will be long forgotten or remembered as a toadying dilution of the principles of RMS and GNU.
Left shift 1 for e-mail...
Yeah, I was also wondering about the lack of credit to the people who asked questions. Is this yet another sign of slashdot's decay into a corporate entity?
There have been several free BIOS projects as well as projects for freely available motherboard and CPU designs. It's only a matter of time before the whole computer is an open system. If engineers use a license for their software eventually they'll use it for their hardware. A lot of people are both hardware and software engineers. The hard part is getting a company to make and sell this hardware but there must be some company who'd like to drop the cost of R&D.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Yeah, in other words, every country is distinct, so there are no basis for comparison. Bzzt... thank you for playing...
The same social, economic, political whatever conditions are not necessary for meaningful comparisons of two simple facts that are in essence the same all over this big blue planet: law enactment and law infringement. Those and the way to deal with the latter are seriously fucked up in the US. Period.
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
I can keep going, but that proves my point.
No, it just proves that the correspondence course you took on anthropology isn't worth the drool you used to paste the stamps on those darn envelopes.
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
If RMS had his way he would take away this freedom from us all
And if your teeth were diamonds you could eat steel bars as chocolate! Or sell them for a fortune!
Fortunately, your false conjectures serve only to get that straw man argument knocked flat to the ground. Nice job, hope you had fun doing it.
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
This is a late post...I know. But you're right. I stand corrected. I still have problems with RMS's philosophy, but they weren't expressed well here, and they can't be articulated in so few words. But you (and others) make good points that I should have thought about before posting.
And yet here you are posting to SlashDot. What, do you think that coming here you are avoiding the mass media? Have you forgotten that /. is owned by a corporation? If you are so anti-media why are you even online?
:P Sure, I was grandstanding - someone wanted to point out that I'm weird, and I wholeheartedly agree. Do you have nothing better to do than flame me over it? The whole thread started as "there's no good in making fun of people who stand up for what they believe is right," coupled with "RMS is doing everything he can do stand up for our rights as consumers." Someone chose to call me names for posting that, and that's fine.
:P
:P I will say, however, that freedom, in any form, is equally important - be it the right to write software and not have it commandeered for the monetary benefit of a minority of people, or the right of 10 year old children to not spend their days making shoes. None of this is absolute - these are my views, and I'm taking my own little stand on them. I understand that maybe kids don't really have any rights - it's all social conditioning (as in, thinking of children as being something that should be protected from exploitation is social conditioning). I still believe that it is important to speak out against it.
:P
/., after all.
Would it have helped if I had added "and I don't click banner ads?"
As for being as complacent as the rest of us - well, that's just not true. I don't think I'd be spending all day answering flames if I were as complacent as the rest of ya.
f you think for one iota of a second that the free software movement has any bearing or relationship to true suffering in this world then you have have your head really far up your ass.
Maybe I do, or maybe you miss the point. Unlike RMS, I'm willing to accept the fact that we might both be right.
This whole thing, to me, was supposed to be a quick defense of RMS - I never thought I'd spend all day defending myself instead.
But, you know, it IS
--
blue (/., btw, is hardly a media site as in 'a site which reports news.' it is, to me, a sounding board for reactions to new or opinions. also, your assertion that all corporations and all media are equal, or, your assertion that i imply that all corporations or media are equally bad, is false and baseless.)
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
Those countries that have problems with starvation and over-crowding are due to poverty, not an excess of people.
/.ers disagree with me.
This is so funny, I emailed it to someone. Are you claiming that poverty can exist without people? Here's a logic puzzle for you:
Take an island. Put 1,000 people on it. Give them all enough infinite wealth. Give them zero food.
Explain to me how poverty, and not an excess of humans -vs- relative access to resources, creates the problems inherent in overpopulation.
It's not my fault that most
... You're right. It's Richard Stallman's fault.
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
OK, so to promote freedom, would you ban these commercials? Or just put out restrictions on what can or can't be said on TV? Or on their shirt?
Your baiting me, and not even very well. Where have I promoted freedom by restriction? I promote freedom by not watching television. The long version is: by not being subject to advertisements, my purchases are not attributable to the practice of advertising - god forbid I buy based solely on perceived quality, and not at all on the basis of which sportsmodel happens to be, well, sporting something. If no one ever bought anything because of an advertisement, we would become miraculously free of advertising.
'Social Conditioning' as used by anti-business zealots, could mean virtually any kind of persuasion.
Good thing I'm nothing like an anti-business zealot. Have I not put enough effort into defining 'social conditioning?' Is it not completely clear that I understand that I am also a product of such?
So while RMS is to be loved for advertising his development model, Nike should make people ill and sad for doing the same thing?
Come on, some of your post was good, this is silly. THINK about what I'm trying to say. A corporation, and one famous for human-rights violations, has so ingrained itself into popular culture that it is fashionable to wear the company's logo as a near-permanent embillishment to your body.
Is it the fault of the company that people are bored, lonely, and so in need of group approval that they'll brand themselves with a little swooshie? I don't think it is, but the fact remains that that little swoosh is a corporate logo, that it is intentionally pushed into the face of every human being alive as often as possible with ONE goal and ONE motive, neither of which is "we just wanna make good shoes." They do it for money, clearly irrespective of any damage they may cause.
And that, in my (quasi) relativistic, posted-too-friggin-much-to-slashdot-today, shut-up-already-you're-almost-as-bad-as-john-katz opinion -
is dead wrong.
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
Sorry, but how can you claim that his standpoint on relativism is incorrect?? The
whole point of relativism is that there is no absolute right or wrong. If you're a relativist then you can't (by definition) claim that somebody else's views are incorrect. They're just different from yours. That's the whole point, isn't it?
You are correct - in order to be 100% self-compliant, I should have said that I disagree with his viewpoint on relativism - not that his viewpoint is incorrect. Fortunately for me, I don't much care for debate - I'm just offering my opinions, flawed as they may be.
That's why no serious modern philosopher espouses relativism. A relativist can't make any interesting arguments, since you can't legitimately disagree with anybody else!
"Serious modern philosophy"
"Interesting argument"
"Legitimate disagreement"
Those phrases make me giggle.
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
bzzzzzzt. You failed the assignment, and you did not explain how people = poverty. F minus! You're just making a lot of funny (funny ha-ha) assertions without even trying to back them up without anything other than more funny assertions.
The cool part is when you tell me how I don't know what I'm talking about.
Resources are not fixed. This is an economic fact. More people means more labor available for the creation of more wealth. Population growth makes us all richer.
Go explain that 'fact' to the former inhabitants of Easter Island. Please CC: every specie of plant and animal we've extincted.
This progress we have made is not that wonderful, nor that important, in comparison to what we have destroyed. Past a certain point, more humans, no matter how great of a place it makes the planet for humans, generally means more (irreperable) destruction.
Any time some form of life dies forever just to make room for more humans, there are too many of us.
Danke!
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
You're certainly right about the 'waste of time' commen. The fact that you have no idea what Easter Island has to do with a discussion about overpopulation pretty much ends the conversation.
:)
:P)
And I'm not interested in having a serious discussion any more than I'm interested in talking about 'serious modern philosophy' with some other fellah.
This IS slashdot, ya know. I might be loud and impassioned, but I'd hardly call it 'serious.'
Grain of salt, and all that.
--
blue (601st post?
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
Yeah, I'm replying to my own post, so sue me. :P
I do want to say (since I expected to be moderated to -1, not up where people would see it) that I completely disagree with RMS's viewpoint on absolute right and wrong and on his standpoint that relativism is incorrect.
I am a firm believer that 'right' is defined by the individual, and the needs of the individual - I just happen to agree with him that freedom is being eroded, and I sincerely appreciate his efforts to halt or slow that erosion.
No matter whether you agree with everything he says, you can at least give him credit - he lives by his ideals, and his work helps you.
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
While I'm not a GNU/Opensource fan, I think that RMS' stance and idealisms make a whole lot more sense than ESR's. Where ESR kind of looks the other way when someone asks him how a company is supposed to make money by making their products free, replying "don't worry, their products will be so much better that they'll make up their revenues elsewhere", at least RMS is completely honest in his stance of saying that he's not exactly sure the Free Software is compatible with corporate desire for profit. It's much more straight forward and truthful to say it that way, rather than trying to push the idea of selling support and consulting as a means to regenerate lost revenues.
I definetly appreciate his view point of protecting our rights much more than ESR's gibberish about Cathedrals and Bazaars. It only works for glamourous aspects of projects, or very common pieces that real people can get access to. And, though the FSF/Opensource/whover else has created some great software, as well as some not so great software, I'm not convinced that it reall does lead to better software as eric points out. Freer software, yes. But better? Not always.
I understand... But from an outsiders perspective where all we hear is free source code and not the ethics behind Free Software versus Open Source... It's refreshing to hear his viewpoints on freedom having read so many of ESR's commentaries...
I just think that RMS makes a whole lot more sense than ESR, where rather than trying to hide the truth about certain issues, RMS is quite blunt about what he wants and expects and what the repercussions might be.
You are in impossible territory. The inherent limitation of Language, which is Symbol Making, prevents any valid statements (using language) about the Absolute, God, etc.
A 'thing' can only Be, by implying what it is not. Up exists in relation to Down. Left - Right. Right - Wrong. Light - Dark etc. But as God is Absolute, God escapes all definitions, because any definition would imply that there is also something which God is not... which is impossible, because God is everything, like.
This is why we have Zen Koans.
If you send a stamped self -addressed envelope to us at the Free Beer Foundation we will send you a free barley seed and a pinch of yeast (neither containing patented genes). You may copy these any number of times using our free growing HOWTOS and then turn them into beer using our free malting and brewing HOWTOS.
Enjoy.
Of course, he isn't forcing anyone to do anything. He'd need an army to back up his movement. (sound familiar?)
I think it's absurd of you to stick words in Mr. Stallman's mouth. He is saying that he would rather use crappy free software than good commercial software, every single time and he discourages people from using any commercial styled license instead of the GPL. He would prefer that people have no FREEDOM of license choice.
I got news for everyone tho... your BIOS code ain't free folks. Go home and cry about it now...
Everyone begins with basic prima facie, the starting point and assumptions they make. The rest of their belief system is derived from those first principles, either loosely or rigidly. Stallman states his as follows:
I think of right and wrong as based on how what we could do affects other people--the implications of imagining ourselves in the situation of the people our actions affect.
I would say his rigorous beliefs are direct literal deductions from his basic beliefs, so by your definition he would be a "fundamentalist."
----
Celebrate the finer things in life
While either belief may be "valid" in the sense that they are conclusions correctly derived from their respective premises, they cannot both be correct. Either there is a God or there isn't. When all the evidence and every factor is taken into account (which can't really be done, but if it could...), there would only be one truly valid conclusion regarding the existence of God. Of course, the agnostics would argue that no matter how much evidence you gather, it is an unknowable, indeterminable thing. I happen to believe quite the contrary; that the universe is quite knowable, and that the creation reflects the creator, whether you believe the "creator" to be God, blind chance + time, or anything else.
As is often said, the only absolute is that there are no absolutes.
I would argue quite the opposite. The very fact that we are discussing, arguing, debating, here on /. gives intellectual assent to the fact that we all ascribe to the concept of absolute truth. It's always humourous to here someone arguing vehemently that there are no absolutes, absolutely. You contradict them, and they yell, "no, you're wrong!" It's a delightful scene, which bemuses me. We may not be able to come to an agreement on whether or not there is a God, for example, but absolutely, there either is or there isn't.
----
Celebrate the finer things in life
--
Lewis vs. United States challenged the prohibition of owning firearms attached to being a convicted felon, the court ruled that numerous fundamental rights are lost, including the rights to vote and hold office, so the prohibition was valid since other comparable rights were lost. It was also noted relating to US vs. Miller that for a firearm to be protected, it must have a militia purpose, a test which a short barreled shotgun did not have.
The best recent one is United States v. Verdugo-Urquirdez, where the court fuled that the meaning of "the people" in the second amendment is the same as its meaning in the first, fourth, and ninth amendments.
That puts the second amendment in the same position as some other important amendments, a constitutionally protected individual right.
Well I'm the doctor and I say you're dead, so shut up and take it like a man!
(On calling it Linux vs. GNU/Linux; one small portion of his larger statement)
The occasional few users that do know about the GNU Project often think we played a secondary role--for example, they say to me, "Of course I know about GNU--GNU developed some tools that are part of Linux."
I have to disagree with this assessment. I knew about GNU before I knew about Linux (though not all that long ago), and I first knew about GNU as "GNU developed a whole bunch of tools that are used on Unix systems." For a while, I thought that that was all GNU was. As I got more involved in the development world, though, I learned more about GNU, and learned that there was more than just a pile of software to GNU, there was a philosophy.
When I hear RMS insist that Linux be called GNU/Linux, it doesn't make me think that GNU is an integral part of Linux; it makes me think that RMS thinks it's more important to push his own personal philosophy than to provide a quality solution for the end users.
For many people, Linux is not a philosophical issue. They use it not because it embodies the principles of free software, but because it works well. If you attempt to turn use of Linux into a political/philosophical statement, you won't turn people on to GNU, you'll turn them off of Linux.
I like reading, music, eating delicious food, seeing natural beauty. I also like to dance, mostly Balkan folk dance, but an ankle problem means I can't do it any more. I also like sharing tenderness with someone I adore, but I only occasionally have a chance to do that
I just want to say about this that it's my favorite answer in the whole interview. When dealing with public figures, especially those known for a fervent devotion to an ideal, it's easy to forget that there's a real person there, and to judge only by the ideals represented; this answer reminded me that RMS is, in the end, another human being, something worth remembering. :-)
(Gee... I've gone all sentimental... How'd that happen?
People can come to different conclusions about the implications. I don't believe in relativism; I don't believe that any conclusion is as valid as any other. If I and someone else disagree, at least one of us is wrong. Unfortunately, there's no way to place to get complete certainty about what's right and what's wrong. We can only try our best to figure it out.
While it may not be the case that any conclusion is as valid as any other, does that really mean that there is only one valid conclusion. It's possible to have some conclusions which are clearly wrong, but still have multiple conclusions which are equally right.
But even barring that for a moment, if you know that some of your conclusions are wrong (as any of us would know, since we can't be right all the time), how can you believe on every given occasion that you are right and that everyone who disagrees is wrong? After all, some of those times, you're wrong, and you need to take that into account. You can't just dismiss the views of another as wrong all the time.
Take, for example, the question of religion. I am an atheist; I firmly believe that there is no God. However, you'll note that I don't state "There is no God," but rather "I believe that there is no God." It is not for me to know at this time whether there is a God, and thus it is not for me to casually dismiss anyone who believes in God as wrong. Their belief is just as valid as mine, in this case, since the actual existence of God is unknowable.
As is often said, the only absolute is that there are no absolutes. Sometimes, I know I'm right. Sometimes, I know I'm wrong. But sometimes, I think I'm right, but it is impossible to know. To say that there is only one possible right in such a situation seems to me to be either incredibly naive, or remarkably conceited. Desiring to be neither, I must concede that there is not one right answer to all questions.
Religious people often say that religion offers absolute certainty about right and wrong; "god tells them" what it is. Even supposing that the aforementioned gods exist, and that the believers really know what the gods think, that still does not provide certainty, because any being no matter how powerful can still be wrong. Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics.
This seems to just be a clear misunderstanding of the all-powerful god. If you believe in God as an omniscient being, then there is certainty. A being which actually knows **everything** would not be wrong.
(Note that I don't believe such a being exists, but if it did, then it could provide answers with absolute certainty, if it chose to do so. Note also that even the presumed gods of the major religions don't choose to do so on many matters. Much of morality is left up to the constituents to interpret as they see fit.)
-Joe
Where do people get the idea that Stallman (or anyone else who agrees with Free Software) is forcing anyone to do anything? He (and again anyone who uses the GPL) is merely controlling how people use their work. Stallman is saying freedom is important to him, and doesn't say anything about anyone else (This is at least my interpretation of the GPL and its ideals, I hope I'm not misrepresenting Stallman). If you don't agree with Free Software, don't use it. If defending freedom is important to you, do. It's that simple.
You have a point there. Most people use Linux for purely selfish reasons - not because of ideology. I'm not really sure how I would rate myself here.
On the surface, it is nice to use this free (as in speech) software and be part of the larger movement. On the other hand, I have a lot of proprietary software in my system, and I've even paid for some programs. What would I do if there was no netscape for Linux, or it was commercial ?
Consider mozilla, for example. Unlike netscape, it is free (as in speech). Do I choose to use it ? No, because, for me, it is still not as good as netscape, it doesn't work as well.
Certainly you have the right to produce software. The FSF vigorously defends that right. You also have every right to keep your source closed. You're even permitted to keep your modifications of copylefted code private, unless you decide to distribute it. Any software you do legally distribute, though, you have every right to charge money for. However, I reccommend that you read Anarchism Triumphant by Eben Moglen -- essentially, RMS would not have your right to produce and sell proprietary software denied. He also would not have our right to copy that software and other media denied, whether the originator likes it or not. You probably couldn't make money selling proprietary software in such a world, but you would be perfectly free to try. This issue makes both proprietary software developers and the RIAA angry, but that unfortunately cannot be helped. This is the critical issue for which you have not indicated your stance.
I believe Bertrand Russell demonstrated that relativism, particularly in the field of ethics, is the enemy of useful philosophy. He went so far as to call it "the anthropologist's heresy" in the article I read.
It doesn't help us answer any difficult ethical questions, of which there are many. It states that all possible answers are just as correct as each other, and there the discussion ends. How can it possibly go on?
The purpose of ethics is to provide a method of answering difficult questions. Relativism answers none.
I'm more interested in the freedom-related issues related to ASP's in this case. For example, whose freedom is beng infringed if the source code is not distributed along with the software? Does the end-user need his freedom to modify and redistribute a program written to be distributed across a large network by a central server?
It would seem to me that the end users are unlikely to benefit from the source code, and are very unlikely to set up a competing ASP server using their workstation as the hardware platform for it. Even if they are qualified to suggest patches, those patches would have to be approved through the sysadmin anyway. These freedoms would be more valued by the system administrator who runs the ASP server.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
I think that C.S. Lewis would agree that the Bible is a higher authority than he (though *I* might not), and the Bible says, "Faith is the evidence of things not seen", which is an excellent definition, IMHO. It shows that faith is supposed to be in and of itself evidence that whatever the faith is placed in exists! I think that "belief without reason" is probably a good paraphrase of that sentiment. :)
Property law should use #'EQ, not #'EQUAL.
Anyway, in the KJV, Hebrews 11:1 says: Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
If you click over to the KJV, and search for "evidence" in the New Testament, it's the only hit.
Property law should use #'EQ, not #'EQUAL.
I would say that the first part of the quote, the substance of things hoped for, clarifies that "seen" is being used as a token for "experienced", in the same way that people use it in I'll believe that when I see it.
Property law should use #'EQ, not #'EQUAL.
Not only would I say that I've never had an experience that I would attribute to "God", but beyond that, I can't imagine an experience that I would attribute to "God", no matter how bizarre. Given what we (think we) know about the brain and computers, any experience that would make one believe that God exists could more plausibly be attributed to the existence of a simulation in which you are living. This explanation would require fewer complexities than introducing "God" into one's explanation of the world, no?
Property law should use #'EQ, not #'EQUAL.
True. And? Are you suggesting that Occam's Razor is wrong? If so, please elaborate. :)
Property law should use #'EQ, not #'EQUAL.
Further, science doesn't claim to have all the answers, and the best science usually follows an "I don't know". Science has been best at finding answers to questions that ask how things work, and is currently unable to answer questions that are asking why things happen, except when those question are really reducible to "how" questions.
Anyway, Occam's Razor isn't logic at all, still less "false" logic. It's a meta-rule for how to do logic in the first place.
Property law should use #'EQ, not #'EQUAL.
Let's not forget that as George Carlin put it, claiming that all men are created equal while still owning slaves is known as being, "Stunningly, STUNNINGLY full of shit."
With this in mind, how can you so casually use verbage such as "The bill of rights guarantees..." ???
Wake up man, there are no guarantees any more.
An excellent and insightful rebuttal. If I had mod points right now, you'd get a double helping.
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
Not to bright. You have failed to pick out that I obviously agree with you. I don't like them either. I like the NAACP even less. My eyes are open, I don't need a group going around with toothpicks to prop them up.
Lowmag.net
<sarcasm>But clearly they meant "the military" when they wrote that!</sarcasm>
And clearly they meant only newspapers have the right to free speech. As usual the Anonymous coward collective is correct.
Lowmag.net
(In 1988, George Bush called Mike Dukakis a "card-carrying member of the ACLU", in effect comparing the Bill of Rights with Communism and its defenders with Communists. This insult to the US Constitution inspired me, as it did many others, to join the ACLU. Let's hope the Shrub will not be president; one Bush was too many.)
The bill of rights guarantees that all are equal under law (despite its wording) and the ACLU tries to force the distinction on people. Constitutional rights are guaranteed, and Civil rights are assumed. I'm not saying that the ACLU is wrongheaded or evil or something, I am simply making a distinction.
BTW, a good example of this is the second amendment. It guarantees the right to keep and bear arms, but a "civil" right is the right not to get shot. The constitutional right would be the right to shoot back. Which is more important, and which is more feasable to guarantee?
Lowmag.net
Freedom freedom freedom. Give me my freedom. Damn the cost!
I'm a very big fan of Open Source, and the benefits to me as a consumer it generates. I am not such a big fan of Stallman's zealotry.
Stallman and the Free Software model fail to recognize that people, and companies put a great deal of effort, energy, and time into their works. His goal of making all software be Free Software (by annihilating non-Free Software) is absurd.
His goal would kill the commercial software industry. Every piece of software we use would be made by volunteers who worked on it when they felt like it. Which may be less often than people realize -- if the intellectual property industries are annihilated, we'll all be working blue-collar jobs.
Yes, many Free Software projects are very very good. Better even than their commercial counterparts. But the Free Software movement has shown itself to be nowhere near as good at certain things as the commercial software industry.
Example:
The Open Source/Free Software/Linux/BSD communities have shown themselves to be incredibly arrogant when it comes to end users' ("my mom") needs. It's only in the past couple years that a serious effort has been made to produce an operating system that can be used by end users. Previously the prevalent attitude was "well, if they wont take the time to read my 30MB of man-pages, they can go to hell." But now, we have collectively set our sights on toppling Microsoft and so we have to fight them on their own ground: Ease of use.
How "free" can one be, if one cannot even access the tools that you have so kindly "liberated" for them?
For all the bad they've done, Microsoft and Apple have done a great deal of good: They've made PCs accessible to the "average" person.
The reality is that we need companies to produce the things which we as a community do not *want* to produce, or *cannot* produce. Unfortunately, Stallman's unwillingness to compromise, or to work with the "other side" is a scorched earth policy. Most software companies would go down the drain, the few that remained would be dependent upon venture capital, and community-written software.
Redhat is great and all, but Gnome isn't exactle knocking Windows off the desktops en masse.
Stallman will be viewed as a zealot and a nutcase until he recognizes that software doesn't appear out of the ether. It *costs* people to develop software. Whether that cost is in time/energy/effort, or good old fashioned money, people deserve to be compensated for their expenditure.
People may even deserve the freedom to earn a little profit. But that freedom of course conflicts with the Free Software movement's goals.
The Nut is dead. Long live the Nut!
-JF
MrJoy.com -- Because coding is FUN!
if I prefer one kind of tea over someone else I don't think either of us is "wrong" in any meaningful sense - it truly is relative.
No, it's absolute. Both of you are making statements about a personal preference - tea x tastes better to you, tea y tastes better to the other person. You're not going to argue that the other person really likes tea x better, are you?
I believe the same holds for less trivial examples of differing opinion.
The difference here is that your initial example is about personal preferences - "I like this tea". Less trivial examples are about something that people have in commmon - "companies shouldn't take me to court for viewing DVDs on my computer". While it may be true that you and another person disagree about that statement, you are both still talking about the same thing - the goodness of viewing DVDs on one's computer.
While socialism does have it's fair share of problems, the poster obviously never lived in a socialistic society and is basing her opinion on "common knowledge". It's the attitude of someone who doesn't know what the issue is, and isn't really interested in finding out.
There is always a large gap between political theory and practice, which you can see in any country. What was implemented in Russia during most of the 20th century is usually named Stalinism - a bit part of that political ideology is that the government knows everything the best and that the citizens shoud do what the government tells it to do (since the government knows it all). That is a far cry from the theory of socialism.
The basic morality as expressed in Christianity is really not unique, and forms of it has long predated the religion. It can be argued that such a contract (thou shalt not kill each other) is neccisary to establish a society in the first place.
Here's an advice: Broaden you mind, think outside the box that your culture has framed you in. Travel around the world, meet other cultures, be open! You'll find out that the way of your hometown may not have been the best, and that there are thousands of other ways of managing your life.
Fundamentalism is ugly in any religion, but christian fundamentalists are often the worst.
-henrik
There are a couple of gotchas you need to watch out for when discussing politics.
Practice vs. Theory - Some systems sound great in theory, but doen't work in practice.
Speech vs. Reality - The difference between what the politicians say, and what they acctually do
Policial vs. Economic - This is something people often confuse. There's a big difference between enconomic models (like capitalism) and political (like faschism).
You can implement socialism under a democratic government, and have a pretty decent country - or you can implement it under a oppresive government and the people will be oppressed. That has nothing to do with socialism itself though. You could do the same thing with capitalism.
And as for Sweden not being fully socialistic, that's right. It's very rare that any country follows a docrin to the letter. The theories tend to be fairly extreme and unsuitable for a implementation without softening them. The US for example, isn't 100% capitalistic (though, it comes pretty close - but you also see a lot of the bad effects of capitalism in the US).
Let's try to define the basics of socialism in a short sentence: Socialism is a form of government where everybody puts a part of their wealth into a big pile, which then people (according to need) take stuff from.
Likewise for capitalism: Capitalism is a form of government where everybody works for themselves. Wealth is not distributed artificially.
Socialism tend to produce a flat society (almost no super rich, few rich, a large middle class, almost no poor). Capitalism on the other hand makes a more heirarcical society, where the rich are really rich, there's a decent sized middle class and quite a few really poor people.
I'm not sure what this has to do with RMS interview though *grin* :)
-henrik
I think it should be GNU/Linux, but RMS is more or less forcing it down everyone's throat, that is what I am against. Even if it becomes mainstream to call it GNU/Linux, when I talk about it Linux will still be its name for the sake of being easier. Just like windows is windows not microsoft windows. I think that a move by distributions and others to have GNU/Linux on packaging and written materials is a great idea, but my impression is that whenever somebody is not referring specifically to the kernel RMS wants GNU/Linux not just Linux. Imagine microsoft trying to force everyone to say microsoft windows everytime, no exceptions, "its microsoft windows not windows."
Basically I'm for GNU/Linux I'm anti Mr. free software himself being a nazi. (not in Third Reich Nazi, but in Seinfield Soup Nazi (controlling, strict)).
I'm glad that the GNU software is here to help Linux, I'm happy that my computer runs Linux and GNU and BSD and other style licenses software and some propriatery stuff (Q3), and don't think I'm picking on GNU, if the BSD people want it to be BSD/Linux since software of theirs makes the operating system, I'll raise hell then too.
I have no doubt that without GNU Linux could have made it, it would have taken longer to get going, but think about how the kernel was in those early days and tell me that getting Linux working on your machine didn't mean you were capable of writing software.
Since when the heck has religous fundamentalism been a problem?
This post is Copyright 2000 AdamX
HAH! What world are you living in? Crappy software gets chosen over quality software everyday in this industry. Consumers buy things because a)its a standard, for better or worse, b)because they are uninformed of the alternatives, or c)because they have a bias towards a certain product that they've used for quite a while.
I'm not arguing for or against free software here, but the notion that the average software consumer buys a product based on its actual value is absurd. Your example of the BeOS is a good one. Be is clearly a superior OS to windows in everything but software and driver support. Are people flocking in droves to go buy it? Of course not.
-kms1
He does not propose a $0.00 price tag. Keep in mind he was, indeed, selling Emacs, though not for profit. Don't forget that we are talking of free as in freedom, not beer.
--AP
"The more people we have on the planet, the better."
Is this a troll?
So you are saying that 100 billion billion trillion people trying to live on Earth would be better than a mere 10 billion? There wouldn't be enough room within Earth's core to pack them in, let alone feed them.
And this isn't just a stupid example. It points out that, even if your "more workers" argument holds water (which it might not once AI becomes sufficiently powerful) it only works up to a point. And that point is where overpopulation becomes a problem.
--
Have Exchange users? Want to run Linux? Can't afford OpenMail?
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Omniscience is "all-knowing", end of story, no alternate meanings. Comprehension is "knowing what something means", therefore it is a kind of knowledge. Therefore, an omniscient diety also has full comprehension (they know everything AND they know what it all means).
I'm not saying such an entity exists, I'm just making an existing definition clear to those who clearly haven't read about it.
--
Have Exchange users? Want to run Linux? Can't afford OpenMail?
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
You don't have any faith? Is that so?
So what PROOF can you offer that induction (which all of science is based on) is a valid method for the acquisition of new knowledge? What PROOF can you offer that your senses aren't being manipulated by Descarte's "evil genius"? None, because these things aren't provable.
Everyone has faith in some set of principles. One of the main differences between science and religion is that science tries to make this set as small as possible.
--
Have Exchange users? Want to run Linux? Can't afford OpenMail?
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
"I believe that [induction] works, and will probably continue to believe so until presented with evidence otherwise."
So you've generalized from a bunch of different cases where induction worked and decided that induction will always work? Congratulations, you've just provided an excellent example of "begging the question". You can't use induction to prove that induction is valid.
--
Have Exchange users? Want to run Linux? Can't afford OpenMail?
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Sorry...but that makes no sense at all. If that's the case then you should have a warning about the trolls and flamebait that are part of every discussion.
If you wanted to alert people who are used to PC websites about the opinionated nature of RMS it could have been done in a respectfull way, something like:
"Richard Stallman is the controversial leader of the free software movement. Richard is known for speaking his mind and his strong opinions regarding somtimes sensitive issues blah blah blah......"
Grow up. RMS was simply warning people about the potential for problems for bundling GNU/Linux with hords of proprietary software, and still calling it 'Linux'. Has Caldera done that? No. He (RMS) gave two examples of companies that favor that approach to business already (Oracle and Corel). What about them? Do they suck too?
Brilliant insight, sd.
Actually, the character RMS is loosely based on Lazlo.
And to keep slaves, and tread down on people who weren't born into the middle or upper class.
Bugger off, trollboy.
I've got three bags of Ramen noodles... send half of it to a family in Bangledesh.
You have X amount of hard drive space on your computer. Set me up and account so I can use half of it.
Do you think starving to death is somehow comparable to not having enough disk space to store your mp3s?
Do you think choosing witch child is going to die is equivalent to deciding witch warez collection is going to get burned to CD?
If you do, then you are fucking moron.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Take an island. Put 1,000 people on it. Give them all enough infinite wealth. Give them zero food.
Welth == Food+other stuff. If you have no food, you have no welth. idiot.
Are you claiming that poverty can exist without people?
Clearly, he was not. Perhaps you whould learn to read? Only that it was not related to an excess of people. Japan has a huge population density, yet no one is starving. Bangledesh has a population on par with large US citys, and People are starving. Understand?
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
There is a finite amount of resources on this planet.
Yes, but for the time being we are nowhere near that point. When it is reached the human race will start to decline, just like every other large animal on the planet.
Since the number of people on this planet is increasing, we are not overpopulated in the scientific sense of the word.
Clearly, it is possible for there to be a super saturation of humans on this planet, but there is no reason to think that it is anywhere near.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
If you think everyone who disagrees with you is a troll, its a good sign that your an idiot.
Witch is much worse, IMO
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Thats why they have the little over prefix in the word. OVERpopulation.
Population, just by itself is a good thing, however. But that dosn't mean you didn't sound stupid...
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
if giving music away for free was such a GREAT idea? why are 75 % of the artists pissed? Because it's violating their RIGHTS! Something stallman sees as OK.
Does Metallica and Dr Dre consist of 75% of the music industry?
Almost all of the artiests, save those two have been for MP3s
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
With Rand, she basicaly says "I'm right", and proves it with her convoluded logic, regardless of the outcome.
And while RMS says that there is a right and wrong, he dosn't say that he is right, only that one must be right, and one must be wrong. Clearly, he belives that he's right.
Also, unlike rand RMS belives the diffrence between right and wrong is in the practical application. (where it clearly belongs) rather then in the fucked up anti-logic of Rand's mind.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
He isn't talking about Linux having widespread success; he's talking about Linux Existing at all. If there was No GPL'd GNU software, there would have been no reason (and probably no impetus) for Linus to create Linux
Also, the GPL is fundamentally different then MS's EULA, the GPL has enabled Linux to be developed for, most of the last decade, for next to no cost.
Linux's widespread appeal over the past 2 years may not have much to do with GPL, but Linux's genesis over the past 9 certainly does.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, acts like a duck... It's a duck. Stallman walks like a preacher, talks like a preacher, acts like a preacher - he's a preacher.
Fire and brimstone!
You seem to have left out the fact that those that call Stallman a communist are in error and, in fact, that his views are mainly socialist, which has only a superficial similarity with communism. And in his calling his opponents "Soviet" he is referring to the great breaches of civil liberties perpetrated by that country and in no way reflecting upon their choice of government. So it's really not ironic. BUt I see your point. It's funny at first look.
oh, and yes, I am a Socialist, but no, I don't believe that, we, referring to humanity in general have reached the point of development in which it will successfully work. Small communities, yes; large nations, no. Our best current hope is for an enlightened democracy perhaps. not that I see that happening anytime soon either. bah.
it's been a long day at work, and I'm damn tired and surly, so if this comes off as gramatically, factually, philisophically, or in any other way incorrect, I really don't care. Just felt like making my monthly post.
Quem deus vult perdere dementat prius
And in typical Stallman fashion, when he gets asked a question about Open Source, he quibbles about the definition and doesn't answer the question. He could have corrected the question and then answered it, and made a good point, but as in every other RMS interview I've ever read, he dodges questions.
Personally, I agree with almost every stand he takes, but his personality practically compels people to splinter away from him.
You later wrote:
I find it interesting that you see this as ACLU vs. conservative Christians instead of ACLU vs. Religious people. Where in the above statement did the ACLU mention Christianity?
Tell me, would you criticize a conservative christian who sued because s/he was forced to sit through a 20 minute graduation speech that glorified pagan gods?
You wrote:
Since when is a graduation ceremony a "highly public forum" where anyone can voice any points of view at the microphone?Methinks you want conservative christians (and no one else) to have the right to use the govt as a tool for spreading their faith.
Oh, bullcrap.
Play Nethack, or any of its relatives.
And then play Diablo, or Septerra Core, or Baldur's Gate, or Gauntlet... I could continue, but it'd be easier to name the CRPG's that *weren't* influenced and copied off of Rogue/Angband/Nethack/Moria/etc.
And then play the old ones again and see which you keep around longer... :)
That said, the free software/open source world doesn't lack for crappy tetris/asteroids/missile-command clones cluttering up sites.
------------------
"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - Major Mike Shearer, UK
Stallman's views are interesting, and certainly have some grain of truth. But you have to be careful to pick only the parts of his theology that seem right to you. Otherwise, you might find one day a glass of funny-tasting kool-aid in your hand.
Sorry, you seem to forget again that not everyone reading slashdot is American and able to decipher these abbreviations. So, what is this ACLU that Stallman mentions?
('cause my favorite color is blue)
/., although interesting and informative at times, is not "activism". It is not "striking out at the Corporate Scum" It is soapboxing in a generally Pro Free Software forum.
/. and any other protest rally? We talk about stuff we'd like to change and then make actions that would change it. It's not particularly organized, but like the article a while back, chaos likes to organize itself from time to time.
/. and the nightly news with Danny Koppel, is that here I get to see real people's opinions, real people's links, and real people's mistakes. I don't get the corporate viewpoint, I don't get some guy who's paid $7 million a year 'cause he's got killer hair and can annunciate effectively, I get real people's thoughts and ideas, all sorted by score and served up on request, flames and trolls included. Just like real life. That's the better part.
Posting on
While the audience here is fairly sympathetic, what exactly is different between
However you do imply that television and radio is inherently worse than the Net.
First off, "better and worse" are vague terms that really shouldn't apply to media forms. However, I will state boldly that the Net is better than both. And we don't even have high-speed wireless yet.. The biggest difference though, from
--
+&x
Don't you feel sorry for the ppl who are so scared of their identity that they pay to advertise company logos on their clothing?
:( T-shirts are fun.
It's more fun to laugh. I had a friend who worked for Hilfiger (ya'know that company that who wrote that horrible song), and during the training course they were instructed to start saying "oh, that's soo Tommy" when they saw something cool.
Of course, getting confused looks for your clothing is fun too. You probably wouldn't be surprised about how few people know what to make of "Got root?" or my Debian "100% Suck Free" tees. I started telling girls the Debian one was "an unfortunately accurate descripition of my current romantic situation."
--
+&x
"Prohibition doesn't work"
:)
You know, the last time I heard that sentence was in a public service video put together by Anheiser-Busch.
It's one of those concepts that just gets drilled into the American psyche without being questioned -- "We tried prohibition. It didn't work."
Please consider the number of crimes which are committed as a direct or indirect result of alcohol. The American society pays an enormous price for this legal drug.
Obviously, you have drunk driving deaths. Did you account for the number of assaults where alcohol is a factor? Beaten spouses? Homicides? How about robberies committed after the perpetrator had a few drinks to get his/her courage up? How about accidental deaths where people do things that they shouldn't do in an inebriated state (mow the lawn, work a chainsaw, etc.) It only takes a little while in an emergency room or at a jail booking desk on the weekend to see the cost of the American drug of choice.
I constantly hear the argument that drug legalization will reduce the prison population. If alcohol is your example of what drug legalization will do for society, I'm not impressed. On any given weekend, count the number of people in jail whose stories begin with, "Well, I'd been drinking and...."
The argument that people commit property crimes to get money for drugs because drugs are illegal and therefore expensive doesn't hold water, either. Illegal drugs have in fact become very cheap. Furthermore, we STILL have people committing thefts and robberies to get money for legal booze. How is it going to work when they're using far more addictive substances with more intense physiological effects?
And yes, people DO suggest that drug users should not be punished for their actions. These are the same people saying addiction is a disease. It IS a disease, but it is a disease that you CHOOSE to get.
I don't know if other coutries have these problems. I do know that the US has got a real maturity problem where alcohol and other drugs are concerned. It's just too cool to get smashed and do stupid stuff. Until we collectively grow up, I sincerely believe that legalizing the hard stuff is a bad idea.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
This thread received many more replies than I anticipated. Yours struck me with both its mischaracterization and its condescending tone.
Thank you for the review of the Bill of Rights. I simply did not read it enough times in all the law, government, and criminal justice courses I took en route to my diploma.
As I said in nother post, the ACLU uses the opening clause of the Second Amendment to enforce a *narrow* view of the amendment. In all other amendments, however, they take a (sometimes exceptionally) *broad* view. You are correct that we no longer have formal militias. Threats to our citizens' lives and liberties are often internal rather than external today.
However, nowhere does the First Amendment mention the internet. Are we to assume that my words on slashdot are not protected? Of course not. The "spirit" of the First Amendment clearly suggests that they should be protected. We assume that, had the authors of the Bill of Rights foreseen it, they would have included the internet in the First Amendment.
In the same manner, we may assume that these authors intended the Second Amendment to provide protection of an individual's life an liberty. Indeed, the concept may have been so self-evident that they would have found such a statement absurd -- like guaranteeing a right to breathe air.
The part of your reply which galls me the most, however, is your assertion that I am pining for bygone "good old" days of racism and intolerance. Are you sure you replied to the correct post? If you are trying to characterize me as an extreme right-wing "back to the good old days" character, I find THAT truly obnoxious.
What I DID say is that selfishness and disregard for others is the root cause of many problems in America. This problem extends from corporate boardrooms all the way to your county jail. Furthermore, I am not suggesting that this is a new problem. The very abominations you listed had the same cause. What upsets me is that we continually choose to create scapegoats (drugs, television, or corporations) rather than attack the real problem. Maybe it's just too hard to fix.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Whoops. You're right, of course. Thanks.
:)
(to further nitpick, I should have said "e.g. welfare"
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
It's not a question of whether or not prohibition worked. I'm not sure what "working" would have been. People simply didn't want to give up their booze and it was repealed. It didn't "work" because Americans didn't have the discipline to give up their little luxury. I think we collectively accepted that.
I agree completely that the majority (not all) of the people in the criminal justice system end up there by their own hands. I also agree that they would resort to whatever they could get their hands on to get a buzz. I would even go a step further and suggest that the "forbidden fruit" syndrome of certain drugs gives them a mystique. I drank when I was underage. When I was old enough, the thrill wore off.
My core argument is that legalization of drugs will not cause a net decrease in the prison population. We have many people in there right now because they did things on alcohol which they would not have otherwise done. We have people in there who did things on speed, coke, etc. that they would not have otherwise done. If we give the green light to drugs which are much stronger than alcohol, we have to be prepared for the consequences. Maybe it will work out ok, but we should be prepared in case it doesn't.
You seem to be guessing at what my real position is (hey, I just like to debate sometimes). Ideologically, I think a person should be able to do whatever they want to their own body. If you want to suck down two packs of smokes a day, fine. If you want to power-drink yourself into a coma, fine. If you want to shoot heroin until you waste away, go for it.
Where I draw the line, however, is when a drug user asks the people who choose NOT to do these things to pay for straightening him/her out. Furthermore, if you can't handle your drug and it causes you to hurt someone else, I want to see you out of the gene pool.
So, are we still arguing?
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
...
BTW it should be Linux/GNU since the kernel is before the programs
In other words, do you really think that gcc, gdb and the binutils were developed because there was the Linux kernel source and the libc that needed to be compiled, or perhaps it was vice-versa?
Surely, gcc is not the only C compiler on the Earth. Nevertheless, having it readily available, free as in speech and as in beer, gave surely a boost in Linux developement (and *BSD, btw), didn't it?
You know: an OS is valuable to commercial mainly because of the software that runs on it. Without an easily portable compiler for Linux, or *BSD, do you really think that there would be anyone making a commercial compiler for a "toy" OS (as Linux was in 1991)? Or would it be always dependant on some commercial compiler like Borland C, or Microsoft C, hacked over all the ways without sources in order to generate code for a different platform ?
The GNU project benefits from the Linux kernel, and the Linux kernel and several other kernels benefit from the GNU project. Telling that it goes only one way or the other is IMHO deeply irrespectful of both. Deal with it.
My 0.02 Euro.
You know, there are many strategies to go through life without being annoyed by people.
You could, of course, chose not to identify with the targets of snippy comments.
Another way, if you fail on the first, is to only care when you actually respect the person giving the disparaging comment. The problem with that is it leaves you open to insults by people you respect. So, to solve that, temporarily lower the respect rating on the person giving the comment. Since the person is now someone you (currently) do not respect, you can blatantly ignore the comment.
It works very well, and you wont be as easily upset.
If RMS is scary for your customers, how do they feel about those who want to sell them programs that they can install any backdoors they want into, that they can legally terminate access to at any time, and will terminate support for within a few years?
RMS may be the cookie monster of buisness, but corporate software makers are the Aliens. The GPL and the GNU project stands for and protects the freedom of freely distributed and created code, while most ordinary software licenses are written to protect the revenue stream of the company selling the product, to any extent possible, wether or not it is disruptive to the clients actual buisness.
Are stranded on a desert island with only a can of beans to eat. The mechanic finds a rock and says 'lets bash it open'. The engineer finds another rock and says 'no, no, lets use this rock to fashion the other rock into an edge, and cut it open'.
The economist looks at both of them and says, 'no, no, no, you have both got it wrong. Lets just *assume* we have a can opener.
Ignorance like yours is truly stunning, but I found one thing that I can agree with: "Sending them checks and food only prolongs the condition they are in." ... What is this condition? I think its called 'living'. So ... 'Sending them checks and food only prolongs their life'. Serious organizations are about change, not charity, and promote active measures, such as education about alternative and sustainable agriculture, take steps to reduce the enforced poverty of cash-cropping (which it seems you know nothing) and other deliberate, poverty causing policies of the West, and its agent, the World Bank.
Oh well, lets get seriously offtopic ...
It is arguable that 'overpopulation' is a created artifact of food distribution, despotic regimes, world bank policies such as cash-cropping and more.
There are ecological definitions of overpopulation, but with a global food distribution system, the earth is a long long way from overpopulated.
That there are people starving is a situation created by greed and not by lack of food, or means to distribute it.
No, it's the fault of shortsighted people. There's no natural law that forces people to breed uncontrollably. There's no natural law that says go ahead and plant the same crop year after year until you have completely destroyed the nutrient value of your arable land. There is no natural law that says go ahead and shit in your drinking water. Look at the world, there are many areas that are desert wastelands now because of poor land management. Look at the US. We produce 30% of the food year after year using substantially less than 30% of the land area of the planet. We have starvation because people don't think about the future, and it's not the people in developed countries that aren't doing the thinking.
Um, I live in Utah and have zero kids. Now explain to me why I have to pay for your two stinking brats? Everybody has different opinions on what is the "right" number of children. You seem to think that two is OK and five isn't. Sorry, but two is just as bad to me as ten. It is not a human right to have society pay to support your breeding habits. If we are going to start regulating birth rates then I say we put it at zero and let the parents do their own paying.
BTW the people who settled Utah, drive the economy, and generally make it a nice place are the Mormons. If you want the world to be the way you want it to be, you do the work to create your utopia.
Now, explain how planting desert plants is doing a good job of using our resources. If you want to argue using resources responsibly then argue that public lands should be carrying food producing vegation or some other resource that can actually be used. You average sagebrush doesn't have quite the utility as an apple tree. Nor does it do as much to control erosion as grasses.
You left out the bits about "inventing rights" and the fact that they actively take stances to diminish some rights that are given by the constitution.
No this doesn't make sense. There is no evidence that shows that the GPL is responsible for the adoption of Linux rather than, say, FreeBSD.
Here's a little adaption for you: "The reason MS Windows has done so well is because of the EULA. There are many other x86 OSes out there that are just as good or better than MS Windows, but they are not EULA'd." Does that make sense? No.
So what does this mean? Does it mean that Russia doesn't imprision as many of it's criminals? Does it mean that the US is a safer place to live? No offense but in a civilized country you don't just let people do anything they want, particularily when it comes to violating the protected rights of others. If some asshole decided he wanted my TV, broke into my house, pulls it off the shelf and finds himself crushed under the weight... well once people show up to help get it off his ass, I say lock the fucker up.
The same drug policies have continued for eight years under Clinton's administration -- does that make them ok? The high rate of imprisonment in this country continues under a Democratic administration, yet the implication is that it's the fault of Republicans.
You're reading too much into RMS's comments. He didn't say anything about Republicans or Democrats. He talked about corporations, government, and people, but didn't say that one party or the other was the root of all evil (or the fount of all good).
As others have pointed out, there is very little difference between the Democratic and Republican parties. Once upon a time, there was a greater difference. But for the last 20 years or so, the difference between them has been decreasing.
I know it's hard to realize they're not significantly different. If you read only the mainstream press, listen to mainstream radio talk shows, and watch mainstream TV, you'll hear the minute differences between them emphasized again and again and again, until you start to believe those differences are huge.
But if you back up, and view it all from an objective standpoint, you'll start to see that the policies of each party are very similar to those of the other. Oh, sure, on the issues of little economic worth they differ (abortion, prayer in schools, gun control, etc.). But when you look at the issues which matter the most to corporations, you'll find that the parties are in almost total agreement with one another, with only quibbles standing between them.
Thank you for the GPL, Mr. Stallman, but I can't in good conscience align myself with your view of the world.
Again, I know it's hard to see this stuff right away. But please take the steps necessary to learn about these issues. Work on your own to get the facts about the political situation in America, evaluate those facts objectively, and you will come to a different conclusion about RMS. I'm not saying he's perfect or that he's right on every subject. But his core views are laudable, when viewed in light of the way the world really is.
I grew up in a staunch Democratic household. Yet my teen years were under the Regan administration, and I came to admire him greatly. I went to University for Business Administration, and ended up arguing with one of my professors (Dr. Michaels) about business and government from much the same perspective you're taking. I thought she was sadly mistaken, and believed I was seeing things more clearly.
Eventually, though, she gently convinced me to do my own thinking rather than believing what I was told. So I started researching the issues on my own, using objective materials and media where possible, comparing and contrasting the various viewpoints where possible, and so on. Eventually I came to the conclusion that Dr. Michaels was right. I only wish I'd been able to tell her so...
At any rate. All I'm trying to say is that I know where you're coming from, that I've been there, and that I know the way out. Give it a shot - if I'm wrong, then you just have a more airtight case that the typical reactionary, unthinking stuff that passes for reasoned argument in public fora. But if I'm right, you'll have begun the process of moving yourself out from under the domination of those who would rather you work for their interests, even (perhaps especially) when it goes against your own interests.
Best wishes,
-Joe
The GNU project exists (well is so big now) because of the Linux kernel, not the other way around. If the early Linux users had not found GNU they would have hacked out their own tools.
Emacs, gcc, the GNU utilities already existed in 1991. I don't believe Linux would have been anywhere near its current popularity without the already existing GNU tools.
I hear this frequently from ACLU detractors, yet I've always found their positions on issues to be completely consistent and logical. Let's look at the First and Second Amendments:
AMENDMENT I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
As you can see, there are no caveats here. No laws can be passed to supress speech, religion, assembly, or governmental petitions. Period.
AMENDMENT II
A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
You'll notice that fully half of the second amendment is talking about why the right to keep arms should not be infringed. I think most of us will agree that today's militias are not necessary to the security of a free state; in fact, given the conduct of militias today they are anything but. Given this, it is entirely reasonable to accept restrictions on the second amendment, since the amendment itself provides a huge caveat.
Just for kicks, let's look at the Fourth amendment too:
AMENDMENT IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
You notice that similar to the case of the 2nd, the 4th amendment doesn't say "no search and seizure". It provides numerous caveats as to when search and seizure is acceptable, and how it should be carried out. The ACLU only fights laws that go well beyond these boundaries (such as no-knock warrants).
Furthermore, the attacks on the "War on Drugs" and conservative politicians in general were completely unnecessary in this forum. The same drug policies have continued for eight years under Clinton's administration -- does that make them ok? The high rate of imprisonment in this country continues under a Democratic administration, yet the implication is that it's the fault of Republicans.
The implication is that it's the fault of authoritarian policies which are traditionally associated with conservative administrations. Clinton has shown numerous times that he's afraid of looking 'soft' on crime and other issues, and thus he supports many positions usually relegated to conservatives.
If you think Clinton is a liberal, then you obviously known nothing of left wing politics.
Yes, there is something wrong in America, but it is not a legislative problem as much as it is a social one. Parts of our collective culture have given up the Golden Rule.
Ahhh, nostalgia for a time that never existed. How obnoxious.
In every decade of this century (except possibly the late 1930s), there has been a common perception that "there is something wrong in America". The irony is that the time most usually associated with this "golden age" is the 1950s. In the 1950s, government was repressive, kids were in gangs, everyone was terrified of teenagers, men beat their wives, women were regarded as second class citizens, blacks were treated abominably, etc. I think that if anything, I prefer the world today.
Your argument, then, goes roughly like this:
P1) To "most people," money is very important -- so important, in fact, that in order to give it up, they must be offered something they find even more important.
P2) The value of the freedom (about which RMS writes) is in question and not desired strongly enough by "most people" to persuade them to give up large sums of money.
C) Therefore, "most people" will not give up their money for RMS's notion of freedom.
So, in other words, you're attacking an ethical position with a merely practical argument. It's like saying, "Most people won't be persuaded by the statement, 'Thou shall not kill,' so obviously the statement is ethically incorrect (or irrelevant?)."
Don't you see that whether or not people are *convinced* has no philosophical importance at all? The art of persuasion without agumentation is called sophistry, not philosophy.
RMS doesn't have a coherent ethical position, but at least he *admits* it. And his position, such as it is, isn't exactly *bad*. Immanual Kant, who knew more about these matters than I (or Mr. DiscoStu), believed very strongly that people's ethical impulses are most often correct, even though most people have no idea how to *argue* in favor of them.
Software related questions? Why? Slashdot isn't a software site. Stallman doesn't write software (anymore). That kind of makes it pointless.
I don't think Stallman is duping anyone. If you find that you don't agree with his views after hearing them, fine, but that doesn't mean everyone else should follow you lemming-like as if you were the third coming. A good rule of thumb is to assume others are as intelligent as you ('Did you see that advert? So many people are buying that product because of that advert, they're all sheep. Of course, advertising doesn't affect *me*'.., etc.) - to assume otherwise is to disrespect someone else and their views, and not only is it a lack of respect, it's usually an underestimation also....
"Elmo knows where you live!" - The Simpsons
> (Side note: FWIW, I think marijuana is a less
> dangerous drug than alcohol. Drunks want to
> fight. People who are stoned just want to eat
> and be your friend.)
hey come on. i'm from vancouver and we smoke a lot of weed here (when it's the world's best, how can you not?) i don't necessarily just want to eat and be your . . . ummmmm munchies.
...
I like open-source... I think Linux is great. I'd like to see it be a standard way of doing software. I just don't think that governments, or anybody else, should force people to write open-source, versus proprietary, software.
Your arguments are based on why you believe in open-source, which is fine. But my original argument was not for/against open-source, it was against forced open-source.
Haha... that is the most pathetic argument I have *ever* heard.
Why don't you post all your financial information here? I mean, it's money you made using building blocks from other people. Those tax forms were prepared with software other people wrote. Or with paper that other people made. We should all have the right to see it.
You forgot to mention that those things were created because they had the opportunity to be proprietary, and that companies made money off of those things - what, you think that Intel makes CPUs out of the goodness of their own heart? They sell them, with the intent to make money.
Posting as an AC after moderating me down, eh?
Offtopic->
You might want to check out this month's Scientific American. It has an interesting article on exactly that. It looks like the rat studies have been superceded by some ape studies. Interesting reading. (sorry, it's not online)
-nme!
Nagora wrote: "If someone can use a product to do work then that product has been distributed. ... I may be foolish but I can't see even the most out-of-touch judge supporting the idea that an item can be used by many people and yet not have been distributed to those people."
Without trying to discount this point of view, I don't think it's the only one. ASPs can be thought of somewhat like a remote library (of the book variety) which accepts requests from patrons to search their stacks, collate information, neatly format the results and send it out. ASPs are still obligated to have paid for the software whose use they provide --assuming it's commercial software -- whether it's on a single-fee, a per-use, or a per-active-copies basis, so that imaginary library has (say) only the same number of copies of Catcher In the Rye after a reader has gained the use (but not posession) of the book.
All analogies stretch and fail, but there's mine;)
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
A copyright holder has certain legal rights even if no license exists. Any technological measure that enforces any of those rights is automatically protected from circumvention; there doesn't have to be a license of any kind.
If the technological measure also enforces a bunch of obnoxious policy, the user still can't circumvent it, even if the user hasn't accepted the license. That's the "trojan horse" aspect of the DMCA... you create a measure that protects you from copying, and then use that same measure to put all kinds of other restrictions on fair use.
The DMCA actually doesn't say anything at all about click-through or shrink-wrap licenses. The interesting parts of the DMCA are about technological protection measures and about the liability of Web service providers.
I'm not sure that the GPL's permission to create derivative works really matters, but if it does, it wouldn't be hard to modify the GPL to allow modifications to everything but the hack that forced release of modified source.
Somebody else has pointed out that there may be philosophical objections to doing this. I could buy that, but I think the law would let you do it if you chose to do it.
but your burgers would be 10 cents a piece. Every thing you buy would be cheaper if advertising did not exist.
War is necrophilia.
I always enjoy reading what RMS has to say. I applaud his uncompromising defense of the things he believes in, even when I don't agree with him.
We all know about gcc, but I think RMS himself is actually a pretty damn good compiler. Witness:
$cat src.c#define OPEN_SOURCE = FREE_SOFTWARE;
$rms src.c
semantic error:1000:OPEN_SOURCE != FREE_SOFTWARE, refer to the GNU Manifesto.
and in the end don't we all agree:
"Garbage in, garbage out."
"Hey... don't be mean." --Buckaroo Banzai
Area Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn't Own A Television.
-Bruce
I've never seen anyone imply that he is in any way dangerous. Most people just think he's a bit of a nut.
What scares people about Stallman is that he's effective.
He was an effective programmer, but he doesn't program anymore. He has never been an effective advocate for his ideas, capturing only a handful of followers who believe that non-GPL software is morally wrong.
The people who are effective now is whoever is giving me free stuff today. If Red Hat and VA Linux and SGI and IBM want to develop and give away free software, then they're being pretty effective!
Stallman's best legacy will be the development of the GPL, but not for the reasons he planned.
-Bruce
>In fact, current day drug
>prohibition, is a failure in ALL of the same >ways as Alcohol prohibition of the 1920's.
>In fact, in an interview, the head of the DEA
>advocated bringing back alcohol prohibition, and
>stated that he believed it could be done within
>"the next 10 years".
Wow. I didn't know that. If they were going to bring back alcohol prohibition, though, wouldn't it make sense to bring in tobacco prohibition too, and be consistant with allowing no recreational drugs/substances of any kind?
Personally, my own ideology is that all substances should be free, regardless of recreational use potential. Let the druggies weed themselves out! =)
-=Canar=-
The problem is that the potential exists for an ASP to circumvent the GPL. If they don't distribute, then they can take GPL code, modify it, close the source, and use it all day long without even infringing on the GPL. Unless I'm wrong, of course.
> Posting on /., although interesting and informative at times, is not "activism". It is not "striking out at the Corporate Scum" It is soapboxing in a generally Pro Free Software forum.
The most difficult part of activism (based on my extremely limited experience), is getting people to understand how what you are doing relates to what they already believe in. The details might be very complex and subtle and difficult to grasp, especially in today's political world of intimidating legal documentation.
I agree that preaching to the choir doesn't achieve very much, but Slashdot Trolls, bless their little contrarian hearts, often provide us with an opportunity to practice advocacy, and to hear how we sound to people who not only don't agree with us, but are openly hostile and irrational, while perhaps attempting to use logical argument to prove us wrong. Having your position straight ahead of time is helpful when you have to explain to the people around you why you've decided to be such a weirdo. I think this is what Blue was getting at with the 'souding board' comment.
Your Holocaust example is well taken. It wouldn't be that hard to make a 'nazix' which is a fork of linux, and contains revisionism and propaganda of all kinds. But the problem with that is that it would not recieve wide acceptance, since most users don't want that crap. If a publisher is willing to print a Holocaust-revisionist history textbook, then they are probably willing to print anything that furthers the agenda.
Put simply, the responsibility of separating good books from bad books lies squarely on the shoulders of the publisher, and a publisher should be judged by its ability to do so.
You're right, it's exactly the same. And while Slashdot did the right thing by releasing GPLed code which was in public use, the GPL currently fails to apply to ASPs. So really it hasn't been remedied. That was Bruce Perens' concern - that the GPL must be amended such that distribution refers to any application which is made available to the general public via the internet, or by sale over other networks (dialups, for example). And there may be other problems. Legality, for example, since at present GPL is based on copyright law, and the revision would not be. IANAL, but this was RMS's concern.
> where does his basis for judgment come from?
From "the facts," I'm guessing. An atheist doesn't believe in God, but does believe in positive truth that God does not exist. Admitting that he is willing to entertain the possibility would make him an agnostic. That doesn't mean he can't conceive of alternatives, just that he chooses to live his life a certain way based on what he does believe.
They very carefully pick and choose which rights they will defend, and invent rights where none exist.
I doubt that they invent rights where none exist, and as far as picking and choosing what rights they wish to defend, that's their right. They aren't a government agency, they are under no obligation to be completely neutral on which cases they wish to take on. If they wish to take cases concerning the 1st amendment, instead of the 4th, 8th, or 10th, they can, and have every right to. Another constraint is that they do not have infinite resources.I think someone mentioned the second amendment, which, AFAIK, is already pretty well protected by the lawyers of the NRA, so why should they spend the money on it?
You may wish that they had more interest in what you want protected, but there is no reason to disparage them for not doing so.
I know it's hard to realize they're not significantly different. If you read only the mainstream press, listen to mainstream radio talk shows, and watch mainstream TV, you'll hear the minute differences between them emphasized again and again and again, until you start to believe those differences are huge.
When I was growing up my parents would tell me about countries less off than the United States in terms of governments. One thing I remember was how in countries such as the U.S.S.R. (as it was at the time) how voting consisted of one candidate which you basically had to vote for.
Now we are in a similar situation - there was even a sketch on Saturday Night Live about how alike Bush and Gore are. So what's the difference between having two nearly identical candidates to vote for and one? How many people are going to vote independant when no independant candidate has gained an electoral vote since early in this (20th) century?
I'm not a journalist, but I play one on slashdot
Actually, the main thing was that when I found out what the GPL was and I understood how novel it was I thought, "I'd never have come up with something like that, that's clever." So, it was my hope that RMS would come up with something equally clever to defeat MPAA/DVD CCA/DMCA. Unfortunately, he only confirmed what I was already thinking, it all depends on a) What kinds of laws get passed and b) How the courts interpret those laws.
Unfortunately, years and years of seeing demagogues frighten politicians into taking away our rights and large political contributors bribe politicians into taking away our rights, have left me somewhat cynical about the current state of the American Republic. Oh well, it's just going to take years and years of convincing people that it is not helpful to them if they aren't allowed to own things like movies (and even books! Read about Steven King's Riding the Bullet eBook for an example... he couldn't have it cracked so he could read it on his own MacIntosh because of the DMCA. That bit of information is scarier than anything he's ever written... well, except possible Pet Sematary) that it isn't good for them, no matter what the Intellectual Property marketing guys say. People managed to do this with the Divx format but I can tell DVDs are going to be an uphill struggle.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Personally, I think that the reason that Linux has done so well as opposed to FreeBSD or some other Free Speech, Free Beer, or even Non-Free operating system is the penguin. Tux is so much cuter than that damned little Daemon.. Sig? We don't need no steenking sig!
I'm sorry. What kind of ceremony was there at school that was specifically for the people of a certain religion? Are you talking about Christmas?
I don't ardently believe that "there is no god", anymore than I ardently believe that "there is no FuBar the Pink Fuzzy UberDragon" or "there are no Underpants gnomes."
Most babies are born atheists.
Or perhaps a little closer to home, there have been people who swear that they are the second coming of Jesus (e.g. David Koresh).
Also, how do you reconcile your experience with God, with all the various people in the past who have claim to have congregated with Zeus, Vishnu Quetzacoatl, Odin, Osiris, Guan-yin, Anu, Allah, Amitabha, etc..etc...? Someone's gotta be in the wrong here, could it be you?
What then, happened to you to make you believe that God was directly involving Himself with your life? At least if you heard God's voice and had a conversation, you would have a good basis for hypothesizing it might be God, himself.
You must realize that if scientists could prove things just through "gut feelings", science as we know it would be much different than it is now. Scientific method requires conclusive evidence.
Thank you.
Commercial
I am an 8hrs a day code monkey for Oracle, and there is only a small chance of the code I write there being Open Sourced/ GPL/LGL'd
Open Source
I work part time for a small software company http://www.applepiesolutions.com , and we will open source GPL LGPL out stuff if/when this will make us money. [Give away the product / sell consultency.] We are unlikely to Open Source/ GPL/ LGPL the software initially as this may effect venture capital, and can be done later.
I am doing applepiesolutions work largely to get more varied experience than the experience at Oracle.
GPL
If I was not doing applepiesolutions work in the evenings, I may consider doing FSF work, but it would be harder to motivate myself without having the support working with people in the flesh (Are there many FSF coders in Dublin Ireland?). I am going to see what the local linux group are up to [Gnu/linux may be more accurate in some ways, but it seems a bit pedantic to try to insist on it.]
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
Well, that and relativism is logically self-defeating....
--
"HORSE."
"HORSE."
-Flaming Carrot
So why is the U.S. per capita imprisonment rate so much higher than the rest of the civilized world's, then? Are we just generally nastier people than everyone else?
--
"HORSE."
"HORSE."
-Flaming Carrot
That's why (IMO) the Utilitarian position is better than Lockean "natural rights". But, of course, I'm a damn fool.
--
"HORSE."
"HORSE."
-Flaming Carrot
There is one factual error in your post- Stallman isn't/wasn't/never has been against "paying for software"- IIRC he used to charge quite a bit for a couple of floppies with emacs on them. Ridiculous amounts, for a few floppies... but he used that cash to found the GNU project. This is of course what I remember from my self-taught history about GNU/Linux and all... take with a grain of salt. However, I'm pretty sure that he's always meant "freedom" as in liberty, not as in gratuity.
-Chris
What? I think I had a point here.
Alright then... bring it on
If he persists with his idealistic crusade against paying for software
:-( ).
:))).
He never engaged any such crusade. Quoting the GPL preamble : Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish) RMS actually has made a living for a long time by charging people to send them emacs copies.
Getting a bit more ontopic with the philosophical issue, I think that there *ARE* cases where there's a right opinion and a wrong one, mostly in "scientific issues". Galileo was right. People stating the sun rotates around the earth were proven wrong.
Now, this sure does not apply to personal beliefs ; nobody should for example say that RMS is "wrong" to be an atheist. But either there is a god or there is no god, so he is "right" or "wrong". Point is, we have no means to objectively know, so we should respect both opinions (well, this might be a bad example, as there may be more than two opinions in this issue ; I'm sorry this is all I managed to come up with at the time being
Statements like "propietary software is wrong" fall in between. You can certainly show how proprietary stuff does harm to its users, but you can also show the contrary.
Though I think relativism is necessary, so that you acknowledge the fact that your 'opponent' may be right in those issue where you can't prove who's right, I also believe that it is a bit hypocritical to pretend to be a pure relativist. When you say "I am a firm believer", you obviously think that you are right on your views about relativism. You need to hold certain things for true just to live. You need to have ideas about what's right and wrong to build your personal ethics ; RMS needed to believe that propietary software is wrong to start the GNU project.
So that was what I think of relativism. I may be wrong, but I think I'm right
Regarding drug laws -- I am not in any way convinced that legalization of drugs will reduce imprisonment numbers. While alcohol is legal for many, a huge number of people end up commiting harmful acts as a result of their alcohol consumption. The same applies to currently illegal drugs.
Alright, but what if alcohol use was made illegal ? I bet there'd be a tremendous increase in imprisonment numbers ! With current legislation, you might go to jail for drug use, even if you don't have committed any other crime. I think that's the way legalization would reduce imprisonment number. Of course most imprisoned aren't
You acknowledge the fact that marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol, so why should marijuana users go to jail ?
Of course if some drug was legalized its addicts would still be held responsible for their actions. As you said, some people commit "harmful acts as a result of their alcohol consumption". I guess they don't get away with these acts in court by saying "yes I did this but I was drunk".
disclaimer : I don't do drugs nor advertise their use. Coding is my drug. This I do advertise, and am glad it's legal.
BTW I'm French and arguing about US drug legislation, but as I happen to be interested in this issue I have reasearched it and found out that the laws are pretty much alike in both countries
Where do you get off with "all hardware is proprietary in some way"
Just because you're using an Intel PIII on some undocumented Taiwanese motherboard, doesn't mean we should all put up with such rubbish.
At my place of work they built their own Sparc mboards, not just because they could, but because their's are better suited to the job than a hacked open Sun (cheaper too)
The Sparc CPU, boards, and most other chips are well documented, can be sourced from multiple parties and are eminently Open to software.
The car analogy is daft too, an experienced mechanic *with* the right tools could repair most faults during the lifetime of a typical family car.
There are manuals telling you how on the open market, there are third party parts manufacturers (actually the real manufacturer often just rebadges such parts)
However, cars are not software, so there's a significant up-front investment in materials needed before you can really do anything.
This means that most such work is done by medium-sized companies -- but they're STILL frequently independent of any manufacturer or vendor.
Here is is 16 years later, and still trying to explain what free means. Seems to me that if you go that long and still have to explain that free really means free but not free, then it is time to pack it in.
RMS is a talented coder. Wish he would do more of it and leave the political B.S. alone.
----
Wind and temp at my house
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
It just hit me as I was reading RMS' replies, that this whole DMCA/UCITA thing will die in a few years. The Supreme Court will have to settle a landmark case for the illegality of the (DMCA/UCITA) to be completely apparent, to all. (just because we understand it, doesn't mean the senators/representatives did; they just passed a bill they were lobbied to push.) Consider, the Supreme Court just recently over-ruled the long-standing ban on exporting encryption because a professors free-speech was impaired. The Judges who sit on the Supreme Court are _well_versed_ on Constitutional freedoms. The congress is not. Remember of course the Supreme Court does _NOT_ get to create new laws. They can only _overturn_ them. I hate to think we'll have to live with the UCITA/DMCA for awhile, but give it some time. If someone decides to break the law claiming the illegality of DMCA/UCITA, it's gonna have to be well thought out, or just very simply point out the fundamental flaws of those laws.
.02
Just my
Bob
Just having labor is not enough. Unless you have resources to turn into something useful, labor is useless. What you see on the streets of Calcutta are not a bunch of lazy underacheivers, but a bunch of people without any resources.
If I put you out on a barren rock in the middle of the north atlantic, you could work your hands to the bone, day and night, and you'd still starve. Put you on the streets of Calcutta with no education and no possessions, and you'd not do much better.
That's one reason the US a smaller percentage of dirt poor than India does. Not because Indians are lazier than Americans. Because India has fewer resources to go around than the United States.
The cake is a pie
I'm really cool with this idea.
I've got three bags of Ramen noodles and three boxes of store brand macaroni and cheese in my cabinet. I'll send half of it to a family in Bangledesh.
You have X amount of hard drive space on your computer. Set me up and account so I can use half of it.
Fair, no?
Of course not. You pay for your computer equipment and for your bandwidth. I paid for my food. Just because someone somewhere is starving and I'm hard drive poor doesn't mean that we should run out and give up what we have.
When the rest of the world works as hard and as smart as farmers in this country have to provide food, then it will be equitable to share food with those countries. But if they did that, we wouldn't NEED to share.
And no, I'm not blaming the people out in the field. Farmers in Bangladesh probably work as hard if not harder than American farmers to produce a crop. Their government, however, likely is the cause of the problem. Soviet Russia had that problem for years. As long as food was grown in the "politically correct" way, people nearly starved. The tiny plots of land that people kept behind their houses fed most of the country. Today, of course, the Russian mafia intercepts the large amount of food coming from the Russian countryside and dumps it to keep prices high.
My ancestors braved much hardship to bring their family to this country so that we, their descendants, would have the opportunity to live well. And we have. The poor starving people of the world have three choices. They can rise up against their oppressive government and overthrow it in favor of a representative republic, they can move to a representative republic, or they can live like they do now. Sending them checks and food only prolongs the condition they are in.
Hard facts, hard choices, but life is hard.
"...history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest." --Ghandi
Ignorance can be cured with education. Stupidity like yours cannot be so I'll post for the benefit of the other readers.
Actually I know quite a bit about cash cropping. And I also know that the forcing body in those countries is not "the policies of the West and its agent, the World Bank" but the government and major landholders in those countries.
Just another hand-wringing America-blamer. Get over it. Lots of countries in the world are all fucked up and America only helped some of them get that way. The rest managed to get fucked up all by themselves.
"...history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest." --Ghandi
Micro$oft has worked for years in the media to promote their propeganda and create a lifestyle change for millions of businesses and end-users.
Yes, it would cost a lot of money, but what about the periodical "Public Service Announcement"? You know the one's I'm talking about, where famous actors lecture parents on spending time with their children followed by the "shooting star" logo.
My point is this, if we want to change the way consumers view the software/hardware industry, we need to bring these concerns to the forefront of their minds, concerns they may not even know exist.
assert(expired(knowledge));
that RMS and his detractors (those of whom call him a "Communist") are really calling each other the same thing. When "Communist" is used in a derogatory way, it carries with it the association of old Soviet communists (otherwise it would be equated with being idealistic, which isn't zealous or evil or forceful). Both parties are generalizing the brutal behavior exhibited by a society across the Pacific Ocean. It's just silly.
___
The ends are ape-chosen, only the means are man's. -- Aldous Huxley
This, of course, is Christianity. Think of others, not yourself; walk a mile in another man's shoes, blah blah blah.
But Stallman is also an atheist.
Judaism proscribes pork.
I don't eat pork.
Am I thus a Jew (or a Hindu, or a Muslim)?
Clue-by-four for ya: it is entirely possible to make ethical arguments, and even come to the same conclusions that an organized religion might have come to, without having to posit the existance of a Big White Guy In The Sky.
Everyone has freedom, and freedom can never truely be taken away. Using the trespassing sign analogy, you can put up a "No Trespassing" sign, but then I am free to go and rip the sign down. If your not happy with the current government, your free to go and shoot the president if you like. It is the consequences, and threatened consequences of your free actions that keep you from doing such things. Maybe the issue isn't freedom, but what is morally right and wrong. But then you have to ask, what is right or wrong?
- *Normality Is The Root of All Evil*
It occurs to me that the second amendment's right to bear arms was so that militia's could protect themselves from oppressive rulers who wanted to curtail their rights. In other words, the right to bear arms exists only in order to protect the other rights we are entitled to.
--
Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion, freedom of thought. These are what the second amendment was made to protect...
I think it's reasonable of the ACLU to fight much more harder to protect our rights themselves rather than to try to fight for our right to use violence to fight for our rights.
..
Course, I guess if the new world order comes and martial law is declared, I guess the joke will be on me. But in the meantime, I think the ACLU can do a lot more to protect my rights than my uzi can.
Interesting that this story was posted on May 1, the International Worker's Day.
I, for one, am extremely glad that RMS is out there fighting for our freedoms. Even though the software industry is a small part of the problems that the world faces, you have to start somewhere.
There's a huge difference between you clicking on winword.exe and how ASP's work. When your machine runs a program (winword.exe), it's copying the program to the memory of your local machine for execution. All of it's activities take resources on your machine.
In the ASP case, you run an applet (be it java, or some thin client) that connects to a central server. Your machine is merely display things. The program's activities consume resources on the server.
This is very much like the "old days" of computing where everyone sat at terminals connected to a central mini- or main-frame computer [my high school has such a system.] As technology advanced, the X windowing system was developed and people then sat at "X terminals". The concept of "run program foo on machine A and display it on machine B" has been around for decades -- in the UNIX world [I've even done this from OS-9 without X]; windows still hasn't sniffed the clue. The modern world has taken this a [insane] step further to push everything [including X] inside a web browser as "Everyone has a web browser." (Plus, "if it's on port 80, it's gotta already be secure.")
heh, you use Slashdot frequently, yet has Slashcode been "distributed to [you]"?
I've seen it stated as being obvious, But since I haven't seen it explained, I'll throw my hat in... Basically put, prayer is a type of ritual, subject to separation of church and state. Quotations from religious text are speech, protected by the first amendment.
Basically you dont understand what Stallman was saying. He no longer is worrying about the development of specific software but has moved into a much more sociological and political mode of software development. I dont necessarily agree with what he has to say, but i do see that he is making a valid point (especially valid about having had one Bush too many). Try to be a bit more openminded about alternative concepts people may have in their personal manifestos.
RMS: I made free software a movement.
That's right. None of us have had anything to contribute whatsoever. It's all about Richard Stallman. He is the shit. Just ask him, he will tell you.
It is disturbing when an irrational egomaniac becomes an icon, voice or leader of a movement.
If commercials on television don't revulse you, if you can't see the social conditioning inherent in modern advertising, if the idea that someone might tatoo themselves with the NIKE symbol does not make you ill and sad, then you're already lost.
OK, so to promote freedom, would you ban these commercials? Or just put out restrictions on what can or can't be said on TV? Or on their shirt? 'Social Conditioning' as used by anti-business zealots, could mean virtually any kind of persuasion. So while RMS is to be loved for advertising his development model, Nike should make people ill and sad for doing the same thing?
the problem is that people dont know they are being conditioned or brainwashed or whatever. most people dont even realize it
Only an upper class, silver spoon feed, white boy like stallman could equate the his free software stichk with human rights, curing cancer and world hunger, racism. This clown is out of touch with the world, and you rms groupies need to spend a day to or two in the real world away, far far away from your thearapist.
How about the freedom to take a BATH! Does he have that one figured out yet?
If you can't explain FS in on buzzword, then
you shouldn't try. FS is a complicated concept.
That explaining you must do is an opputunity
to educate someone about the idea of FS.
I admire RMS for his attempt to change things.
Look at how much has already been changed, in
only 20 years!
VOS/Interreality project: www.interreality.org
Here is is 16 years later, and still trying to explain what free means. Seems to me that if you go that long and still have to explain that free really means free but not free, then it is time to pack it in.
So when your mouth is burning because you just ate some hot food, is that hot as in spicy, or hot as in high-temperature?
How long have you been around? Still trying to explain what hot means?
Lemmings are silly; dinosaurs are extinct.
Every time I read material from Mr. Stallman, I remember Socrates and what Plato said he did.
Socrates, a man with sound philosophy who argued ethics and morals, walked around his world spouting stuff that didn't make him too popular with the established crowd. Socrates went around and questioned the very belief base of his society. For that he was jeered, vilified in the mainstream, and was ultimately killed.
Here we have Stallman. From what I have read so far, he seems to have sound philosophy in his morals and ethics. He walks around the real world and puts stuff out on the Internet saying stuff that isn't very popular with the established way of "doing things". He questions the very notion of how software companies have based making their money which is selling software with proprietary code. People point at him saying he is "kooky" and a nut case. They also vilify him by saying "Open Software is for hippies...you can't make a successful business doing it."
I'm not saying that RMS is heading for the same fate Socrates is (in dying or becoming a philosopher that will be known 2400 years after his death) but it does have some interesting parallels.
I was actually thinking of the Shire after the Hobbits' return.
:-)
Saruman was in control of the shire and doing his best to destroy it. Trees had been cut, sherrifs were hassling the populace, and black smoke was choking the air.
After the battle in the square, Saruman could have been easily taken, tried, and executed for his crimes. As a matter of fact, that's what most of the town wanted.
Frodo said no.
Worm was the one who killed Saruman. Frodo knew when to pursue, and when to lay off.
That was actually the example I was thinking of...
(Tolkien ru13z)
Here's my copy of DeCSS. Where's yours?
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
Actually, no. Nobody said that. The post you're replying to accused you of being a kook not for recycling and/or driving a small car, but for taking the dictatorial, absolute position that your ideology is Right and that everyone else is Wrong. Your post was an angry rebuttal to an argument that was never put forward.
I am not a fan of corporate advertising and the culture that goes along with it.
So?
It is difficult for anyone to say that they oppose freedom, that they are for a homegenous, restrictive society. But the weak link here is what's linking freedom to free software.
Or, to be more specific: exactly HOW does not allowing others to profit from the software that I have spent months writing lead to the world not being able to choose between smooth and extra-crunchy?
These days, almost everything is being defended with passionate calls to freedom, democracy, rights, and so on. This is because no one can disagree with it; it's the old "Do you enjoy killing small, vulnerable babies? Well then, you obviously must be a member of the Church of Eckankar!" trick.
Saying "Well, if freedom's crazy, then I guess I'm a nutcase!" is empty Hollywoodish rhetoric. Nobody is chanting "Down with freedom!" in the streets. If you want to make a good argument, tell us in excruciating detail exactly HOW our freedom is being destroyed.
Until then, I will not consider the release of binaries equivalent to killing small, and surprisingly cute, babies. And, though I don't want a global corporate police state, nobody has yet given me a good reason why not waving pages of source code in the streets will cause this.
I would say that communism is a political model and its economic analog is socialism.
huh? Are you saying music and that fashion driven marketing spiel known as popular music are somehow connected?
...
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Whoa. I gave up long posts a long time ago cuz I couldn't decypher them afterwards. No offense, really just had to read that a few times.
In any case... Rand groupies are the sheep. I totally agree with you on not following any sort of group. The problem is you cannot successfully conduct a conversation that goes like: That group of people who want you think for yourself, who are not the group of people who just talk all day about thinking for yourself but aren't that group of people who really think for themeselves.
I needed a reference point.
I think comparing Rand's commie phobia to Mcarthy's is stretching things a bit.
What I mean by Real Randers is:
I believe in Free Software and Open Source, however I find that when shit happens all the morons on both sides of the issue at each other's throat while all the Real Randers are either tired of it or drowned out.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
i for imaginary btw
That is either the funniest post I've read or the worst can't decide.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
I just don't get it. Ayn Rand would fall head over heels for RMS. You Rand groupies give us real Randers a bad name.
Paraphrased - From For the New Intellectual: Watch money. When you begin to see the likes of the Twentieth Century corporation making laws that protect them and do not protect, then it's time to act.
Ever heard of DMCA, UCITA. Both these laws are ridiculosly biased toward the corporates (corporatism is not capitalism... capitalism is not about creating product addicts).
Rand continues: The masters of the Twentieth Century Corporation demanded that people buy peoducts from them. They thought that their tradermark had some magic power that would keep them in power. But people would not be fooled when the engines did not work.
Can you Say Microsft Windows sucks and no one who is concerned about his future buys into their crap.
I knew you could.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
I had no clue what half of that was even about. But ya know what? It still seems like this guy has his shit together.
Anyone willing to try and go after America's horribly corrupt system of government(if it can even be called so anymore) by campaign funding in this rapidly expanding and changing electronic mess gets my respect is the best way to put it, I guess.
I don't see where you get this from Stallman, and I don't think he'd agree with it. Mandatory disclosure, possibly. The right to reverse engineer and share, certainly. But a fixed $0.00 price tag has never been part of his philosophy, as far as I can tell.
And the price bit is a red herring--the GPL doesn't require 'gratis' software.
Ohh, come now, be realistic. If you release your software under the GPL, you effectively give up your right to collect royalties, thereby, in real life, reducing your price tag to $0.00. I get tired of the crap about, "GPL doesn't mean Gratis, it means Libre." The right to control copying (the definition of copyright) is the only practical enforceable way to guarantee (sort-of) that you get paid the amount you set your price tag to. I mean, sure you could charge to give people copies of it, and some people would buy it from you, but many more would just get copies "from their neighbors" and you couldn't effectively charge for the software.
Don't get me wrong. I like the GPL, I like the freedom it gives (at the discretion of the author -- there's the most important thing if you truly believe in Freedom like you claim) to those who use my code. I'm working on contributing code to a GPL project, and in the future I plan to GPL any projects I might start. But that's because I _choose_ to, because I think it's a great thing. However, I think Stallman is way, way, way off base to call anyone who wouldn't GPL their software "evil". His argument is that I'd be trying to restrict some innate right that people have to share with their neighbors. Unfortunately, I just can't agree with Stallman's base assumption (which is what it is, he _never_ defends it, just assumes it) that people have the innate right to share other people's creative works. Look at it this way, if I share apples with you from an apple tree I have in my backyard, that's a great thing for me to do, because I was the person who did the work of planting the tree and pruning and taking care of the tree (or purchased it from whoever did), and thus, because those apples represent _my_ work, I can choose to share that work out of goodwill. Likewise, if I write software, and choose to share it with my neighbors, that's great, because I am the one who did the work for that software (or have been given permission by the one who did). In the world of software, of course, the cost of duplication is very close to $0.00, and thus some people have the idea that since the software "doesn't really cost anything" that they should be able to share it without the author's permission *. But let's face it, anyone who has ever written software knows that there is a cost in time of creating that software.
Thus, it seems to me, only the one who went to the expense of developing the software has the right to share that software. If they choose to license it under the GPL, great, kudos to them, they've made a wonderful contribution to humanity.
I know personally, I'd like a sort of middle-ground license. Something that is similar to the GPL in that it guarantees that people who get the software also get the source code, and the right to modify the source code and distribute their work (after all, what they do should be their's to share) under the same terms. But, my hypothetical license would still allow me the opportunity collect royalties if I should so choose. If people don't want to pay royalties, they are free to make a work-alike, pro bono. I suppose in this hypothetical license, I would be more than willing to include a clause that allowed for gratis use by people from developing nations, educational institutions, non-profits, and students. (That is one of the things that most endeared me to the GPL early on, the fact that I could use GNU/Linux, GCC, et. al, as a broke student who wouldn't have been otherwise able to afford access to it, gratis.) But those who could reasonably afford to pay me, should.
*And by that, I mean, that when RMS pronounces someone as "Evil" because they don't release software as Free Software, he is effectively trying to say that they should be forced to (even though he would say he isn't interested in forcing people through regulation to do so). Whether you force through regulation, or force through social-stigma, anytime someone released software under the terms of the GPL because of such coercion, it would fundamentally be without their permission if they had no choice. I say this, because I can picture a neo-puritanical world headed up by the Most Rev. Richard Stallman where anyone who didn't release software under the GPL would be villified by Stallman and Co. and so stigmatized that nobody could, in practical terms, release software under any other terms.
-BBB
You have a very flawed perception of Christianity.
Yes, we are flawed. Do you deny that? If you do, look around, it's plainly evident in society. Fortunately, Jesus gives me hope that I can rise above that. I'm forgiven, and I find immeasurable peace and joy in that.
Turning the other cheek and loving your neighbor are things that happen because of Jesus. If it weren't for him, I'd probably be content to be selfish, because I'd be without hope of anything better. I'm not scared of God, though I fear (in the biblical sense) Him. He is holy and awesome, and worthy of love and honor.
The message of Christ has done more to influence the world for good than anything else ever has. Look at how Jesus treated women. Truly a departure from what existed at the time. Read the book of Philemon. Before you say it advocates slavery, remember that life was cheap. A slave owner would just as soon kill a slave and buy another one, yet Philemon is told to treat Onesimus as a brother. Radical. Christian churches have a long history of rescuing orphans, starting in Roman times when it was customary to expose unwanted babies to the elements for them to die. Throughout its 2000 year history the message of Christ has been raising the standard of human rights. No other person can claim to have done as much. Again, read _What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?_, especially if you think that would have been a great thing.
And to head off the obvious reply, yes, many horrible crimes have been committed in the name of Jesus too. Which just goes to prove my point that we're all sinners in need of redemption. Jesus never taught hatred, he taught love.
Constitutionally Correct
You're right, in a sense. The 2nd Amendment doesn't make sense any more because it's not strong enough.
An armed militia (populace) is necessary to keep gov't from becoming tyrannous. Can you imagine what would have happened the American Revolution if George III had forbidden Americans to own guns? That's right, it wouldn't have happened. Today, owning a couple shotguns is not enough to keep gov't in check. Technology has far outstripped that. But at least we can still defend ourselves against the criminal element.
Yes, the gov't has full-time paid servicemen to defend citizens from foreign threats. But who defends citizens from internal threats? That's right, the gun owners.
Constitutionally Correct
First, sorry about starting a new thread. I wanted to reply to several other posters at once.
DonkPunch said, "[...] However, the Second Amendment is one of those freedoms and the ACLU chooses to ignore or "interpret" it in a such a way that it becomes meaningless. Therefore, painting the ACLU as the Grand Defenders of the Bill of Rights omits a pretty important detail.
"[...] The high rate of imprisonment in this country continues under a Democratic administration, yet the implication is that it's the fault of Republicans."
I completely agree with you here. I tend to lean quite conservative. In fact, I think the Republicans give in to the Democrats too much, so I'm looking into the Constitution Party as an alternative. I see them as doing a better job of protecting Constitutional freedoms than the ACLU. killbill said, "I would love to join the ACLU, but not until they stop their bigoted prejudices against people of faith. If a validictorian senior wanted to quote Nietzce in her speech, the ACLU would be defending her to the death. If she wants to quote the New Testament, they would have her for dinner. I believe she should have the right to quote either." That's exactly what I mean. The framers of the Constitution were Christians, but they knew that the natural rights of mankind were universal. I have more trust that God-fearing men would have the moral fiber to protect the rights of their fellow man than men who don't acknowledge God.
TraceProgram wrote, "It goes along with what Stallman is saying about morals as well. They are defined by the society in which they are constructed (whoa I think that was circular logic there)." And that's exactly the problem. RMS may have said he doesn't believe in relativism, but any time you let society define its own morals that's exactly what you have. There must be an objective entity to set the moral/ethical standard, or you have relativism.
Let me add that I agree with RMS's basic idea of free software (I think the RIAA is wrong and needs to adapt to the times, down with UCITA, etc...), but I strongly disagree with his basic philosophy.
Also, angelo said, "The bill of rights guarantees that all are equal under law (despite its wording) and the ACLU tries to force the distinction on people." Yeah, what's up with that? The ACLU uses terms like "Afro-American" or "Hispanic-American". If anything, that's just more divisive! Hyphenation makes adjectives into part of the noun. It makes our differences into barriers rather than just adding flavoring to life. He continues, "[The second amendment] guarantees the right to keep and bear arms, but a "civil" right is the right not to get shot. The constitutional right would be the right to shoot back. Which is more important, and which is more feasable to guarantee?" Amen, brother. I want the right to defend myself. I will not give that up to someone else.
There were some more very good posts, too, but I don't have time.
Constitutionally Correct
Actually, the US is a representative democratic republic. The Constitution did not create a democracy, but a republic. I'll admit it has mutated into what you describe, "elements of socialism" and all, but that's not what the Founders intended.
Constitutionally Correct
RMS is not very charismatic. ESR is more charismatic than RMS. And Linus is a nicer guy than either one, though I think ESR is more charismatic, and has a more dangerous agenda than RMS, though that's a different post.
Charismatic? Excuse me, but we are now talking about computer geeks, and geeks, almost by definition, are totally anti-charismatic. If they weren't, they really would dominate the world.
You can't take on all of the worlds problems. Solve the problems within your sphere of influince.
First of all, on a picky note, you spelled "influence" wrong. As a member of the grammar mafia, spelling falls underneath my sphere of influence.
Now, to the meat of what I actually intended to say. Good sir, your logic seems to be as obfuscated as the code that I write (trust me, this is not a compliment). That viewpoint is exactly the same system of thought that leads to oppression and the stifling of progress. What would have happened if certain key historical figures had decided to focus on their spheres of influence?
First of all, unlike what you said, they wouldn't have founded the Black Panthers. Rosa Parks would have never moved on the bus, a Catholic would not have sought out the English throne after King James...et cetera.
Secondly, your view is dependent upon the idea that a person can objectively define what is within their sphere of influence. Objectivity within this statement implies that a persons social role is fixed from birth and unchangeable.
Please don't make ignorant statements such as these, they hinder progress and make you sound intelligent to the stupid.
--
If there is a God, you are an authorized representative. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
If there is a God, you are an authorized representative. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
I wonder how many times RMS uses the "freedom" in any given day.
In all seriousness, I had no idea that RMS was so ideologically aligned with the far-left in this country
What's wrong with that. The others parties are at the far-right and nobody's complaining. I guess one thing hasn't changed since the end of cold war: fear of communism and communists. Whenever you want to discredit someone like RMS, you call him a communist.
I don't agree with everything he's saying (especially about the GNU/Linux issue), but there's no reason to say he's wrong because he's communist (regardless of whether this is true of not).
Disclaimer: A am far from being communist, but I am even further from the american Republicans...
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
i think that is kind of his point, if i read the article correctly. I would agree that just opening the source for software isn't good enough. Now that Open Source software has taken place of Free Software, corporations can take something that was intended to give us freedom, and just use it to make more money. Open source shouldn't be a business model.
One thing that did kind of bother me about stallman's article was what he said about rather using an inferior piece of free software than using something propreitary. What about piracy? I think that piracy would be a good way of using good quality software, and also a form of civil disobedience
---
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
Firstly, my message wasn't a flame and if it came off as such I am sorry. However, you somehow had the cojones to compare the Black Civil Rights Movement to Free (as in speech) Software which is about as ridiculous as comparing Stallman to Stalin.
. I don't think I'd be spending all day answering flames if I were as complacent as the rest of ya.
Once again you seem to be missing my point here. Posting on /., although interesting and informative at times, is not "activism". It is not "striking out at the Corporate Scum" It is soapboxing in a generally Pro Free Software forum.
This whole thing, to me, was supposed to be a quick defense of RMS - I never thought I'd spend all day defending myself instead
Well then don't make inflammatory comments (see above).
(/., btw, is hardly a media site as in 'a site which reports news.' it is, to me, a sounding board for reactions to new or opinions. also, your assertion that all corporations and all media are equal, or, your assertion that i imply that all corporations or media are equally bad, is false and baseless.
It would be a site which reported news if it only mirrored other sites. However,
1. It has editors who choose what stories get posted.
2. It does not post the original article but usually an opinion on the article.
Note, this is not a bad thing it is what I look for on this site.
But I do realize that there is a bias.
That's OK. I can deal with it. However you do imply that television and radio is inherently worse than the Net. I wouldn't say that I totally disagree, but if you are intelligent and proactive about the things you hear and see noone will be able to brainwash you. Are you so afraid that big bad Dan Rather is going to convince you that Elian should be sent back to Cuba, and that you should smoke Camels, drink Bud and buy Nike?
Love,
-Marc
p.s. You shouldn't stick your tongue out so much your face will freeze that way. :P
Flame all you want, I'll post more.
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
I don't know about you, but my reading of the second amendment leads me to believe that it is possible to interpret in more than one way. You seem to feel that any controls on guns are in violation of the second amendment. My reading of the second amendment leads me to believe that it is less about and individual's right to own a gun, and more about the right of citizens of this country to participate in an armed militia, ie the police.
The amendment in question is definitely vague enough to support both premises, leaving it up to the courts to determine where in the spectrum the law should apply. It is interesting to note that to my knowledge a court has never struck down a law controlling or regulating arms as unconstitutional.
This is kind of a retraction....
I did a little more research on Dr Nahas.
While his work has been bunked by many of the
people in his feild as being woefully inadequet
for the conclusions he comes to, I can find no
reference to him actually denouncing his own work.
I DO remember that one of the medical researchers
who was comming out with "Marijuana is bad for
you" studies DID come out and denoucne his work.
However, it apears that it either was NOT
Dr Nahas, or it was, but it wasn't highly
publicised.
On the whole though, it is well known that you
can't get the legal permission needed to study
marijuana, unless your study is designed to
skew the results in the favor of saying bad
things about it...even real medical researchers
find it incredibly hard, if not impossible, to
get the permission needed.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Yup...like the DARE program, started by none other
than Daryl "Recreational Cannabis users should be
shot" Gates. Its still around, even though it
has been shown that kids who graduate from it have
a HIGHER instance of teenage drug use than kids
who don't.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
True....but how many cannabis smokers smoke even
1 joint per day, every day, for the majority of
their lives?
Ill tell you its very very few.
Sure, most go through their binges, but very few
smoke THAT much for THAT long.
Of course the first question my pediatrician asked
how much I smoked, I said maybe once a week or
less (it was true) and he said "Oh ok"...that
was the end of the subject, he never brought it
up again.
My next doctor got a bit of a chuckle when I told
him that I smoked a tiny bit of pot to help me
eat when I had the flu (I litterally went from
not being able to keep down water to eating
solid food in 4 puffs)
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
From the web page that you point to:
> Main Entry: religion
...
> 4 : a cause, principle, or system of beliefs
> held to with ardor and faith
Well...Mr. Stallmen stated his belief, which is
in line with what I would call the Atheist
Religion, which is a system of beliefs, held to
with ardor and faith, specifically centering on
the belief that there is no "God".
Sounds like a religon to me. In fact, I consider
myself to be a member of that religion.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
> That depends what you consider success/failure.
Actually what you should ask is WHY are we
fighting a "War on Drugs"?
There is very little, if any, evidence that drug
prohibition does anything "good". Switzerland
recently held a study where some heroin addicts
were given the ability to buy heroin legally and
use it in "safe rooms".
What did they find?
They found that, while most continued using
heroin, they became productive members of society
able to hold down normal jobs and no longer needed
to rely on stealing and crime to pay for their
habbit. It was inflated prices of drugs on the
black market that was causing them to turn to
crime to feed their habbit, NOT the drug.
Everyone always points to "the children" and
"teen drug use". However, it is harder for kids
to get alcohol than cannabis, or heroin. Black
market dealers don't check IDs, only reputable
merchants who have licences to worry about.
Look at Dr Nahas (sp?) who was in charge of many
of the studies that "proved" marijuana was
harmful to people and "hurt productivity". He came
out years later and denounced his own work. He
admitted that all of his work was biased and he
did it for the money, the US gov was paying him
to come up with bogus study results. You will find
prohibitionists still cite his studies as proof
that "drugs are harmful"
I don't know about you, but fabricating lies,
refusing to listen to scientific data, sounds
alot like a religous war to me.
I will note a couple of last things on this topic
(which is fairly offtopic already but..is a pet
issue of mine):
1) The AMA was against cannabis being schedualed
2) I worked in a hospital as a tech, my mother
worked in a hospital for 25 years, she tried and
was unable to find a doctor who has a problem with
cannabis use.
3) my own doctor had no issues with the fact that
I smoked cannabis (my peiatrician that is) when
I switched from a pediatrician to a doctor who
focuses on Adult patience...my new doctor had no
problem with this fact either.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Now that you point it out, it does sound a little patronizing. (Not as bad as your high school example - that would have been irritating!) Still, I didn't take any offense at all when I read the interview intro. I knew it didn't apply to me, and I further knew it did apply to a lot of slashdot readers.
I just wanted to remind you that "Open Source" is not the same thing as "Free Software". Stallman would be quite irate if he knew you were lumping him in with the "Open Source" crowd. Read what he said in this article carefully... he addresses this very issue.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
Your comment seems to unfairly suggest a few things:
I hereby declare youre "broke and somewhat off your rocker" comment to be genuine FUD. Go FUD yourself.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
> RMS is the strongest religous fundamentalist ... This word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
XML causes global warming.
I posted this to the katz article but it applies here even more. Part of the problem is that we've all been socialized to accept that intellectual property belongs to one individual or organization. Even the founding fathers of the United States only promoted copyrights to give more of an incentive for people to create origanal works. Before copyrights all information was free. People got paid for the work that they did not the ideas that they came up with. A musician was paid for a performance. A playwrite for writing a play. These people didn't own these ideas they made their money off of the use of commonly held ideas. Copyrights and patents in my opinion only slow inovation. A company that had to create something new to stay on top instead of hiding behind their patents would create many more products. Cost would also be lower. What if we completely eliminated patents and copyrights. Society as we know it would not collapse. Musicians would be paid by radio and websites wich would make their money from advertisements. Writers would create a work and people would buy it. Lets admit that for books we all like to have the feel of a book in our hands and no one could copy whole books more cheaply then publishers could mass produce them. Publishers would be forced to sell books, cds, and videos at prices low enough that pirating wouldn't make any sence. I for one do not believe that just because someone came up with an idea first that it should be theirs forever. If the patent system and copyright system in this country were sane I wouldn't have a problem. But, no song writer, movie maker, or book writer deserves to exlusivly own copyrighted works to the detriment of the society for more years then they'll be alive. I don't expect to see any more important copyrights expire in my lifetime. What changed my views was when I was showing my nephew the books on project guetenburg and he asked how it could possibly be legal for people to place whole texts on the internet. I mean who should be able to keep anyone from viewing classics like Poe, Verne, or Doyle. Yet he could not understand how any book could be free. That bothered me. I realise what we are talking about at the moment are mp3s. Anyone can hear the same music for free on the radio. Does that keep people from buying the cds? You can copy songs from the radio and with good enough equipment and a good signal get very close to cd quality. Does that keep people from buying cds? I like to see what I'm buying before I pay for it. With a book I can sit at the bookstore and read it *before* I buy it. Hell I can check it out from the library and read the whole thing. Does that keep me from owning the book? No, I own several hundreds of books. If I want to buy a pair of shoes I get to try them on first. I can test drive a car before I buy it. Why is it wrong to want to download and listen to these songs before I buy them. Software, music and movies are the only things you *have* to buy on faith why is that? Go ahead and read back the propoganda that our society has filled your head with. Ideas are free. Deal with it. Information wants to be free. Man I used to think that was a korny line but the more I see information being shut away and reserved for the people that can afford it the more I believe that information not only wants to be free it must be free.
Environmentalists are their own worst enemy. ~tricklenews.com
The ACLU will, I'm sure, be glad to defend the right of conservative christians to share their beliefs in a "highly public forum." The public forum is not the issue, that term would easily apply to the lobby of your local grocery store. The issue is an "institution of religion." That's a verb and it applies to the state. The public schools are an institute of the state. Their "sponsorship" of religious views is what is being fought. Any youngster is welcome to walk the halls of their local school preaching the good word, whatever that may be by their lights, at the top of their lungs. The moment the school provides a meeting room or PA system for said student, it crosses the line.
illegitimii non ingravare
From personal experience, I must say that its usually "left-wingers" who are the most ready to give up individual rights for the "good of the people," and "right-wingers" who fight to defend them. That's not saying that those two statements apply to "left-wing" and "right-wing" political parties. From what I've seen, both terms are now meaningless and have little relevance to a politician or individual's views. Especially politicians, who tend to call themselves whatever will get them elected.
I personally like MOST of RMS' views. Not some (especially not bits of the "war on drugs"), and I can't say anything about his actions (the M&Ms incident mentioned in another post). But I like his stated philosophy of individual freedom and co-operation.
-RickHunter
Um, what happened to all that native american property?
The most powerful and wealthiest "citizens" of the U.S. are corporations, entities which have the same legal presence as persons, due to inexplicable rulings by the Supreme Court in the 19th century. I think that folks often anthropomorphize corporations, despite the fact that they are not human, and as organizations do not necessarily have a human agenda. The fact that they are run by humans doesn't belie this; history is littered with human organizations that have been vicious or genocidal. IMHO, it is the corporations that have abandoned the golden rule, and too many folks just sleepily follow that moral lead. My own feeling, along with R. Nader, is that corporations need to be stripped of their legal status as person, and instead be chartered.
This is not a troll.
I've got a question for everyone that puts their software under the GPL: Why?
I can think of no better endorsement for the free software community than a company saying "A lot of the quality code in this great product is from free software authors all around the world."
Personally, I think it would be really neat to find my name on a successful product if I ever wrote a nice piece of code.
Maybe I'm wrong.
face
...but if you are intelligent and proactive about the things you hear and see noone will be able to brainwash you. Are you so afraid that big bad Dan Rather is going to convince you that Elian should be sent back to Cuba, and that you should smoke Camels, drink Bud and buy Nike?
:) I don't watch TV (ok, I'll admit an occational Simpsons :), and my radio listening is minimal (I won't listen commercials.) But as you can see, I do participate in the internet. A discrepency? I don't think so. I see the internet as fundamentally different from TV.
Ok, we are getting offtopic, but I can't resist biting at this one
The internet allows me to choose my content and view it when I want. TV says "You will watch X program at X time. VCR taping is hardly practical
The internet allows me to filter my content. I block banner ads. I use search engines like Google that don't use ads at all. TV, however, bombards you with ads every 10-15 minutes. Where are the TVs that block commercials?? You'll never see one as long as the Networks have total control over the medium.
And finally, my biggest reason I support the internet over TV: Interaction. Slashdot may have it's share of problems, but where else can you dialog with so many diverse people than on the internet? TV is 100% passive, no interaction, you take what you are given. Have a problem with how the news is reported on ABC? Tough, there's no forum for you to post your dissention, or read about others views on the news.
I'm sorry, but TV is a tool use to push propaganda and keep people from thinking for themselves. Yes, I agree that intelligent people can "fight the brainwashing" but even the best of us can be swayed over time without knowing it...and I don't think most people (Americans in this case) fall into that category. One of my favorite web sites on this is here: Kill your TV
--------
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
IMHO, Mr Torvalds solved the hard problem -- the kernel. So, his brainchild -- Linux -- should have top billing. "Linux with GNU extensions" is correct; "GNU/Linux" is RMS self-aggrandizement, and is worthy of a marketing droid.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
Doing *whatever* I want with my code means, putting a license on it that restricts (or doesn't) it's use with whatever terms I wish.
No, it doesn't. You cannot own thought in the same way you can own a physical object. You can't control the use of ideas like you can control to use of your car.
Intellectual property/Copyright are not at all new ideas.
Yes, I know. It all started witht the Gutenberg press. Copyright was origionally just an agreement between publishers and did not really affect average Joes like you and me. Unfortunately, a few hundered years later, copyright has grown into a huge abusive monster that seeks to allow those in power to continually screw the general public.
All "rights" are artificial, period. If you want to appeal to philosophy or religion, there is always another out there that espouses the opposite.
The difference between an "artificial" right and a "natural" one, is that natural rights do stem from philosophy and/or religion, artificial rights do not. I classify my right to life as a natural one. Most religions/philosophies condem murder; it's just plain wrong. Laws are made to protect my right to live becuse, in general, we belive it to be a fundamental part of the human exitence. On the other hand, artifical rights are invented by those who govern a civilazation for (supposedly) the good of society. I know of few philosophies that include the fundamental right to own thought. Intellectual property was invented by the lawmakers to encourage creativity and make it economical. Copyright law protects and artificial right in that it has no ethical basis.
My code, my music, and my writing are not "thought". They are creations. As much so as any house, car, or toaster oven designed and built. It may be practical to define different aritifical rules on them given the fact we have the ability to easily duplicate things, but I certainly feel I own my works at least as much as I own my car or land, or whatever physicial possesion I've purchased with artificially valued currency.
A "creation" is an abstract term. It does not necessarily pertain to a physical object. Music, writing, and code are all thoughts and ideas. They exist only in the human mind. Sure we can encode thought onto physical objects, and one can own the medium that is temporarily holding the thought, but you can't control the thought itself. For example: If you paint a picture, you can own the physical medium (the canvas and paint) that you used to express your thought, but you can't prevent someone from taking a picture of it, making copies, and showing other people. Thats why your comparison to houses, cars, and toasters is bunk, you are comparing apples to oranges.
In a world without copyrights, we're going to need to convince authors that people using their creation for purposes they may consider annoying, offensive, or even harmful is palettable. Not likely to happen. Additionally, we're going to need to find a way to economically support the very sizable number of people on the planet who make their livings through the (now fairly old)existence of copyright and intellectual property.
You are absolutely right. I do not expect to see the death of copyright in my lifetime. It may even out-live the US government itself. But I do hope that in the government and economic systems of the future, copyright law will not be necessary. What we _can_ do now is make an effort stop the current copyright abuses. The DMCA is apalling. 96 years of ownership is rediculously long. I can go on and on... The point is, things like these can be fixed now.
The only solution proposed by RMS that begins hinting at the tip of the iceberg here (no, please don't tell me advertising and co-sourcing by buisness will do it, even if we're just talking about software) is a "Software Tax" levied on all hardware sold and then distributed to developers.
Like I have already said, RMS is alarmingly radical and idealistic, but people like him are necessary to get things moving in the right direction.
thePsychotron
Life is pain. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.
He has the same kind of distaste for the mushiness of the open-source stance, as some open source people did about Apple's original "open source" license attempt.
Granted, the name leaves some room for improvement, but the truth is that there may be nothing in the english language that is both sucinct enough for the likes of you and accurate enough that he wouldn't have had to say "open as in free, not open as in you can look at it for a thousand dollars".
--
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Once again, a piece of art, be it code, music, writing, or what have you is not "thought". It's an entity of it's own - that exists whether or not anyone is "thinking about it". Simply because it is easily duplicable does not render it a "thought".
I *can* control my works completely if I hoarde the physical media they are on. Good luck on making any sort of duplication of a symphonic piece by listening to it, then attempting to recreate it with your own orchestra. I may make the greatest movie int he world, keep one copy, and tour it to theatres and simply charge per showing. This is ridiculous of course, but certainly possible. Copyright allows me ot share and control my work without having to resort to such extreme stupidity to do so.
"seeks to allow those in power to continually screw the general public."
And how are you getting so screwed? You have the freedom to do whatever you wish with your own works. If someone else decides they don't want to share them with you in the same way, you're somehow getting screwed?
"I classify my right to life as a natural one. Most religions/philosophies condem murder; it's just plain wrong."
You're beginning a completely indefensible argument. Right - so murder is wrong. Many people consider abortion murder. Many people consider the death penalty murder. You may disagree and say "No, aborition isn't murder" just like you might say "No, piracy isn't theft". Let's just forget that tangent - there is no natrual law or anything resembling it. You can espouse all day about what you might consider more "reasonably natural" but it is simply a matter of your opinion, regardless of how many people, religions, or whatever agree or disagree with you.
"Music, writing, and code are all thoughts and ideas"
Once again, no. I can not recreate listening to a piece of music or running a program in my mind anywhere near to perfection.
"If you paint a picture, you can own the physical medium (the canvas and paint) that you used to express your thought, but you can't prevent someone from taking a picture of it, making copies, and showing other people."
Sure I can - what exactly prevents me from doing this? Heck, most art museums I've been to forbid cameras of any sort.
"Thats why your comparison to houses, cars, and toasters is bunk"
No, it's not bunk. I consider the things I actually create far more personal and "mine" than material goods. "But I do hope that in the government and economic systems of the future, copyright law will not be necessary" This will not happen. Most people, at heart, are individualists.
"What we _can_ do now is make an effort stop the current copyright abuses."
I'm all for that on both sides of the fence. However there is very large difference between making sure the rules make sense versus abolishing them.
You of course, get nowhere appealing to folks in control of copyright to be more sensical about the laws when you simply ignore them in the first place. Why bother listening to arguments about mitigating copyright abuse who's going to violate copyright regardless of what the laws are?
"Like I have already said, RMS is alarmingly radical and idealistic, but people like him are necessary to get things moving in the right direction."
Radicals really aren't very alarming. Anyway, I'm pretty convinced these days most people who espouse his belief system are in it for the free beer, not the actual idea.
They sure as hell better outlaw guns before they try to outlaw alcohol (again) :-). But don't worry about alcohol, the big corps know that without alcohol to deaden the emptiness, the whole capitalist con-game goes down the toilet.
...is going to be that it will force us to stop accepting half-measures. In the U.S. (possibly other places, I don't know), we keep drawing the middle ground when we can't agree on a solution.
For example, the abortion battles. On one side, we have those who say that abortion is murder, and on the other we have people saying it's merely something that the mother has the right to do. So, instead of really coming up with a clear solution, we limp along by discussing bans on "partial-birth abortion", and similar legal/medical vagaries (Life of the mother in danger, also).
As I was saying before I got off on a rant, I think copyright will be one of the issues that forces this country to decide which of a set of artificial rights (all rights are artificial. See Heinlein) has precedence. Here you have two sets of rights in direct conflict: My rights as an end user to do whatever I want with a piece of work, and the creator's right to sell a product under whatever conditions he/she/it see fit. Hopefully, this conflict will lead to a decision one way or the other. Either the rights of the owner are more important, or the rights of the buyer (I say the buyer, but other people don't see it that way).
What we've got right now is a middling (and therefore, IMHO non-optimal) solution, where the creator's rights are more important for a given period of time.
The above comment is CopyWrong (K) Erisian Entertainment. All Rights Reversed. Ewige Blumenkraft!
I think (IANAL) that you could very probably enforce the DMCA against anybody who tried to bypass (say) a makefile hack that e-mailed any modified source to the FSF whenever it was compiled.
To do so would put a restriction on users of FSF software, making the software not completely free. While there are probably lots of ways to "protect" GPL'd software, they all would violate the underlying principles of the FSF and the GPL.
Oh now, we know this isn't true. :) There are so many other factors that come into play when buying software, other than actual quality: marketing, hype, investment in previous versions, cost of upgrade to a better brand. Most people don't know if software is good or not before they buy it. Often it's how slick the package looks, and because it's "brand X".
They're creating things like the gimp (OR pirating music + software), for free, hoping it will be used instead of products like photoshop, thus putting those companies out of business
This is just silly. Are you suggesting that if there is a free alternative to commercial software, consumers are obligated to buy the commercial version so as not to put them out of business? Investing time and money in a product creates no obligation in anyone. I don't like having to pay hundreds of dollars to Adobe for Photoshop. And since it's not Photoshop that I'm using, there's no problem with that. The problem never was MS giving IE away for free. Never. It was building it into the operating system as a method of attacking Netscape. That's where the problem lied.
Sadly, Worldcom has already decided to call it "Generation D" Maybe we ought to get together and nail this thing down before the corporations do?
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
Ever seen any advertising from the sixties? It's thoroughly disgusting. Not that I disagree with you. I think advertising in all forms should be abolished. But as far as the sheer, in-your-face "buy things or you're a commie pervert" attitude goes, I think things have gotten a bit better. Not much, but a bit.
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
This sounds reasonable. However, the same applies to GNU. If the Linux kernel had not come along, they would have hacked out their own kernel. I really doubt if the troubles with HURD are technical, it's probably a lack of developers. For most people, working on Linux is just more rewarding, since it already works so well and is so widespread.
My impressions of RMS as a kook, however, has little bearing on the quality of code he has produced -- I have used Emacs nearly every day since 1980 (starting with the original TECO implementation) -- nor the impact he has had on Computer Science. We must not forget the dissociation between a man and his work. Emacs would be great even if it were a proprietary product because it is engineered beautifully, not because it's GPLed, Open Sourced, or written in Lisp.
Cheers,
- pz.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
1)Who are your clients and what are they trying to do? A bank, as an example of a capitalist business, could use GPL software all day and all night with no worries at all.
2) Whether your clients use Linux or not, it will still be there.
3) Your clients could use *BSD. FreeBSD has at least one non-GPL C compiler in the packages and ports.
Now then, as for the other idea, the "give tax breaks to people who don't have kids" idea, that might work. Of course, there are probably much easier ways of doing it: simply cut out the existing tax breaks for people who DO have kids (only a couple hundred bucks, but still), or eliminate government schools. Nothing like forcing parents to pay for their kids' education to dissuade them, huh? Seriously, if you examine this policy you'll realize that the people it hurts the most are the kids, because any policy involving monetary compensation has the effect of transferring money out of the hands of parents.
Still, maybe it would be worthwhile to impose a little hardship on families now in order to prevent disaster 10, 50, 100, or 1000 years from now (whenever you think consumption will outstrip supply). The problem though is that the countries that are actually causing population growth are third world countries that consider other matters (like finding food) more pressing. Industrialized countries like America are almost stagnant, most growth comes from immigration (from the aforementioned third world countries). Indeed, the average number of babies a Japanese woman gives birth to is approximately 1.9, so their population would be declining. Industrialized countries practicing population control would be silly. So the population would double in 32 rather than 31 years... not very worthwhile.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
From the Open Source Definition:
3. Derived Works
The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.
I don't think that StarOffice satisfies this, which is why it's license is called a community source license, not an open source license. Source available does not equal open source.
take a class in Philosophy, and you will find out that you too can believe him and be more enlightened and aware of the infinite possibilities inherent in human societal co-operation.
-- This sig is.
But RMS is religious in another way. He pursues his beliefs and never lets up. But this is the same as saying, for example, that someone programs religiously.
You, on the other hand, want to describe RMS as no different than a Christian in his religiousness. A Christian is religious, however, because he believes in a religion. What is the religion that RMS believes in? Free Software? I think people would disagree that everyone who believes in Free Software is religious.
On the ACLU. They're motivation is, or at least should be, this: In a government sponsored activity, where religious views are allowed, so are anti-religious views, and where anti-religious views are not allowed, neither are religious views. In that way both sides get an equal playing field or no playing field at all. This keeps the government from playing favorites. Most fundamentalists do not mind the goverment playing favorites, as long as they are the favored.
On women: I find the act you described above personally disgusting. But I wasn't there, so I can't make a judgment. But assume it did happen as described. Despite what people think, however, a hypocrite can be believed sometimes. A smoker can tell others the dangers of smoking even if he continues smoking himself. A professor can speak of the injustice of the current social schema even if he is a contributing member. We could also look at it from the other direction. We should not disbelieve someone who says murder is wrong, even if he is murdering someone while saying it. We simply say that he is not following his own sound advice.
I believe it is also budhism, and a few other religions.
Mr. Stalman says "I also believe that the freedom to share software and other published information is also a natural right." He presumeably thinks that modifying ("improving") them is included, not just sharing. Whether that is so or not, he is failing to distinguish between facts about the universe ("information") and creative works. What can Mr. Stallman say to an artist who feels that when someone takes their work and changes it or plays with it their creation is perverted and destroyed? What happens to the expressive and emotional value of art when others are free to do whatever they want with it? Art is meant to be experienced within a context - outdoor sculpture is created with its eventual location in mind, and films are created for a movie theater's acoustics and screen.
Take, for a modern-day example, "remixing" music. An artist (or sometimes a collection of artists: singers, musicians, songwriters, producers, whatever) creates a song. In its original form, it is presumeably exactly as they wish it to be. It likely holds significant personal expressive value, just the way it is and only the way it is. Then, someone comes along, decides they happen to like some aspect of the song, but would rather mix it around and create something different that is built off the other artist's foundation. There are several ways this could be viewed by the original creator. In some cases, he/she may be honored that their expression was appreciated by others and gets pleasure from its use (I use the word "pleasure" here very particularly, as it appeals directly to Mr. Stalman's apparent utilitarian views about the greater good above all). But some artists would feel that this utterly destroys the value of their creation. It is akin to culling selected words and phrases from a speech someone gives to create your own speech with a totally different purpose and meaning. (For example, selectively quoting someone to give the impression that they are advocating something they are not.) If I know that someone is going to pervert the meaning of my words and I will have no recourse - or, if we go by Mr. Stallman's views, that society will view that as perfectly fine - I will not open my mouth in the first place, and the musician will not play.
One may argue that that's just too bad. That someone with such a narrow mind wanting to monopolize their own creations is not helping society as they could, is not contributing to the greater good. I think that's a despicable view point. Demanding that people subvert all their own wishes to that of the greater society is, as Mr. Stallman is so fond of using to vilify a viewpoint, exactly what they did in the Soviet Union.
Please read our beloved second amendment: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." I'm curious - all you second ammendment supporters out there. Has the supreme court made any rulings on its interpretation of this ammendment? I'd be interesting in reading a little about them.
That's right. If RMS were really as fanatic as his critics claim, he wouldn't be willing to grant the People's Republic a pass on the terms of the GPL, citing as he does the justifiable material necessity of being a developing nation. It is certainly mature of him to be able to cast a blind eye to the fact that the Chinese government actually kills its citizens who demand freedom of speech. After all, what's a little state-sponsered murder, when there are earth-shaking issues like those bastards in the Open Source Movement stubbornly calling it Linux instead of GNU/Linux?
"And he still won't let the
GNU/Linux thing go, although at least he's stopped pushing "LiGNUx" as I once heard him say."
Hardly surprising since just calling it Linux is pretty incorrect - It's a little like Americans calling Great Britain 'England' - just 'cos lots of people do it, doesn't mean it's right.
" His time as the leader of Open Source is over."
He never was leader of the Open Source movement. In the interview he statest on numerous occasions that he sees a lot of problems with OS and holds a lot of differing views.
"Perhaps he should see the kind of cruelty and callousness exhibited by elements of our society. Perhaps then he wouldn't be so quick to complain about high rates of imprisonment in the U.S."
Perhaps he thinks that locking people up isn't always the right solution, for society as a whole, or for the person who committed the crime.
Plenty of other countries appear to manage well without incarcerating such a huge percentage of their population!
heh caldera sucks! that ransom love link definately has me shying away from all things caldera. too bad; they have some good people. "Extremism in the face of tyranny is no vice". B. Goldwater. ...and it is tyranny, when the protocols, the pipe, and the software which use them are kept secret. look at other disciplines -- architecture, mechanical engineering -- you can't hide that. you can go to a library and look up every detail on how it's done. but the proprietary protocols used in a number of areas in the software industry are an anathema to this freedom.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
take a class in economics, and you will find out that you too can believe him and be broke and somewhat off your rocker.
Hi,
:-) ) and they issue a new version of the GPL, this would not harm us as much as it seems, because you can let the OLD GPL apply to your code. Now pretty solid for copyrighted freedom, eh?
I had the occasion to moderate the "is there a plan B" question up, when it was asked, and I am glad that it is asked. But it took a while before RMS's answers came in, and meanwhile I, impatiently, came up with an idea how the answer could be.
RMS says now: "we could change the GLP a little" but does not cover further details. Let me explain what I think these details are, and why they are, actually, very nice.
If you apply the GPL to your code, you do this with a sentence saying this program is GPL "as published by the Free Software Foundation", version 2.1 (or so) "or, at your option, any later version".
Which means, that ANYBODY can relicense a GPLed piece of code to a newer version of the GPL without having to ask all the people who worked at it (because these people agreed that you could choose under which GPL version you'd use the code). In other words, any time the GPL fails, it is relatively easy to make a new one and adapt that new one to your software.
Off course, people who own older copies will still have the option to use the then "deprecated" version, but this is about the biggest harm that can be done. NOBODY can stop you from licensing GPLed code under a newer version, and thus keeping THAT version free.
And even if the Free Software Foundation gets bought up by Microsoft (
Got that eerie feeling that I forgot to mention something... oh, yes: IANAL
It's... It's...
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
He is just the kind of guy who scares my clients away from Open Source. And I don't believe his slashing attacks are representative of most developers I know, who are rather apolitical and quiet. For Linux to get mainstream we must get rid of the radicals and focus on the quality of the results.
Stallman could take a few lessons from Torvalds, especially in learning that one gets more bees with honey than with vinegar. Ultimately, that's why Linux is Linux, and not GNU. Stallman may be blessed with some exceptional abilities, but he's still an immature jackass.
but not all "free as in speach" software has to be under his licensing terms. Maybe I want to write code and produce a program. I can still let you see the source, but I can charge you for that when you buy the program. But hey, you have the source now, eat lunch off of it.
i thought I had a point to make... i forget what it was. Stallman is a good guy, how's that?
I disagree. There are several free Web services that I don't use now because they have ads and I don't want my data stored on someone else's server. I'd love to be able to download such an app and run it on my own computer.
I would guess either flattered or disgusted, depending on how she views rms, but not repressed.
This kind of behaviour would get you fired under existing sexual harrasment guidelines in any US company.
It would be harrasment if he had power over her somehow, eg. could hurt her career/social relations or could beat her up. I don't think depriving a grown up person of an M would qualify.
This 'harrasment' where one can't control the other is commonly known as 'flirt', I think.
What's next, a big building full of books that people can borrow for FREE?!?
So would you boycott all books that are not available in this big building? Even if these books were more useful?
You're right. What does make them perhaps as bad (from the standpoint of a civil libertarian) is when they fight against civil liberty in favor of civil entitlements.
Ongoing case in point: the gays-in-the-Boy Scouts. The ACLU argues that the Boy Scouts are a "common carrier", like the phone companies, offering services which must not be denied to a certain segment of the population. They argue that this is more important than the freedom of association which a private organization enjoys.
The ACLU does not fail to fight for our 2nd or 10th amendment rights because they lack resources to wage all battles, but because most of their members are on America's traditional "left". The same considerations inform their stances on affirmative action, welfare, and sundry other issues.
Now whether you think their stances are good or bad is another matter. I sometimes do, and often don't. But Reality Master is at least quite right in saying that "they are NOT the defenders of rights that they would like people to think".
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
I've not had an opportunity to study this subject with regard to China, but the problems in India and some African nations have little to do with the land's ability to provide for the current population.
There are a couple of primary factors behind India's "inability" to feed their population. One that is alluded to in several of these posts is overcrowding. This is different than overpopulation in the sense that there are large masses of people crowded into relatively small geography -- the majority of the people live in urban settings. It is far more difficult to be self-sustaining in an urban environment since you must have skills/goods that may be traded for what you need rather than providing your basic needs yourself. Another factor is that a significant percentage of the population are tied to a belief system that will not allow them to do any harm to other creatures. While this prevents them from eating meat, that is not as much a part of the problem as the refusal to shoo vermin from their grain bins.
Many of the problems we see in Africa are the result of political upheaval, tribal factions and despotic governments. When government tanks destroy acres and actes of crops in an effort to "relocate" portions of the rural population to neighboring countries, blaming lack of food on overpopulation doesn't wash. These same governments often commandeer relief supplies and very little actually gets to those who need it most. A great deal of it rots on the docks or finds its way into the black market at prices too high for the neediest people.
carlos
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
I guess I read the article as saying that "all software companies are inherently evil" - maybe I'm misinterpreting what he said.
OTOH, relativism is interesting, isn't it? ;) I actually said I'm a firm believer in Hegel's dialetic principle, which isn't relativism anyway. As you say, how can one be a pure relativist, any more than one can be a pure determinist? Practicalities intervene. However, I don't believe there's anything wrong with taking an intellectual stand on the subject, while totally ignoring that stand on a day-to-day basis.
Anyway, my take on that issue is that I find it impossible to take the view "proprietary software is bad". But I *do* find it possible to take the view "free software is good". Stallman seems to be fighting something which believes is evil, at the risk of being incorrect (in his own words, he's either right or wrong on this). All he really needs to do is pursue something which he believes is good, for its own sake. Then he can never be wrong!
Of course, we wouldn't have these interesting discussions in that case ;)
--
It's a
-- Danny Vermin
I guess relativism is different things to different men <sic>
--
It's a
-- Danny Vermin
Russell's opinion would have come from a pragmatic desire to generate a consistent ethical viewpoint rather than a desire to know the truth per se. This is the Marxist approach to philosophy (it must be pragmatic), and I find myself rejecting this attitude. The truth is, there are no consistent ethical viewpoints. This is the problem. Once we face this, we can begin the study of ethics afresh.
Relativism, in my understanding, does not state that all possible answers are just as correct as each other. It merely accepts that ethics is viewpoint dependent. This is not the same thing at all. It is however possible that my definition of relativism does not match yours. YMMV.
--
It's a
-- Danny Vermin
The vast majority of people who program for a living are not involved in the production of commercial software for sale. Rather, they write programs used in-house to run the business, agency, or whatever. You don't have to give up programming just because you don't want to write commercial software.
There is one proven cure for overpopulation; development. Large-scale family planning, such as that practiced in India and China, has pretty much failed because of social pressures; the only way to reduce global population pressures is to spread resources, both technological and educational, around a little bit more evenly.
As for those posters who claim that the earth can support an even larger population, they're right. But it would be at an incredible cost in terms of ecology, health, and quality of life.
Blind devotion to Stallman? I think that I've heard more negative opinions than positive ones here and elsewhere, by a factor of at least 3 to 1. I personally disagree with a lot of what he says, but he's always interesting to read, and I still don't understand this blind hatred of the man. I can't speak for everyone, but he never broke into MY house and forced me at gunpoint to only use GPLed software.
And what fragmented UNIX was simply corporate greed.
At some point the resource consumption of the population overwhelms the resources of the planet. This idea was stated by a guy named malthus in the eighteenth century. Or maybe ninteenth. This is known as the malthusian dillema -- more people = good in some dimensions, catastrophic in others.
circa75.com
Everytime I read RMS, I begin to see things 'his' way... Hes beginning to ... make... sense.. oh god.. help me!
I don't know too much about China's population-control program, but what I do know is this: many of these families under population control want to have a son as their only child. So, if the mother gives birth to a girl, they kill it.
Naturally, there are feminists everywhere railing against this, and rightfully so. But what gets me is this: I'm a single guy who's having a really hard time meeting women. Imagine what it will be like when all these only-child boys get to their teens and early 20s. There won't be enough girls and women for them! Damn! And I thought I've got it rough...
Anyway, that's just one of the problems of population control. The number of abortions would probably rise, too, although since I don't care for the Church's political views, I'm not all that bothered. However, much worse things could happen...
Population control might even cause something similar to Hitler's Aryan race to start to emerge. People would want to have that perfect baby, so all mentally and physically defective ones would be aborted or killed. It might get to the point where, now with genetic engineering and sex-selection technologies, babies would be born looking like the models and supermodels of the day...
Those who couldn't bear to kill or "engineer" their baby may cause the orphanges to start to fill up. I'm having that classic vision of a baby abandoned on a convent's or church's doorstep...
Don't get me wrong, I'm no right-winger. I can't stand most right-wing people. But I'd take old-fashioned family planning, birth control, and selective chastity any day over this...
Incidentally, and please forgive the fact that this is somewhat OT, but my local library is now renting out educational and informational CD-ROM titles. These include things like phone directories, anatomy edutainment proggies, and map software. Did they have to get a special license for something like that, or are they just allowed to flat out do so?
It seems to me that they must have gotten some special license from those companies, seeing as how if I just decided to let all my friends 'borrow' my copy of Codewarrior for Linux, without any ability to prevent them from making copies, that the software publishers would be up in arms!
How does renting out electronic media work? Is it under a system similar to that used for media such as audio/video tapes, and audio CDs?
Of course, this comes back to the same old problem. Let's say I go home tonite, dump all my CDs and all my videogames and scan all my books and dump them all on some ftp server. Assume you get maybe a quarter of the US population to do it (I'm being really optimistic here). Suddenly, the work of hundreds of thousands, even millions of people becomes worth less than the paper it was printed on (or CDs it was pressed on, whatever). What happens when IP becomes worthless because it cannot be protected? It would probably continue to lumber on for a year or two while the lawsuits went on and on; then the record companies, etc. would drop dead. And what then? Well, all those writers and musicians and game coders that you love so much? Time for day jobs. Oh, but wait. They've honed their skills for years, even decades in a particular direction. That means they can either a) do what they love doing for free and hope that someone will pay them to do it or b) become unskilled labor or c) train themselves up on something that doesn't require as much creativity or skill, such as business and leave their art for when they get a chance to use it.
Of course, there's another possibility: becoming the court artisan. If you think things are bad right now, when the artists have some type of handle on getting things past their companies that may be objectionable because they can convince them that consumers will buy it, imagine what it'll be like when there's one consumer per artist, and the artist is terrified of pissing off his meal ticket.
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of free software, and even free music and free art. The problem is that, while it will be free to the consumer, what about the artist? Beyond that, while I think that there can be a system, a style of government that can be setup where free IP is beneficial to everyone involved, forcing the outright collapse of the current system without having a good plan is not the way to do it. I think the most likely outcome of governments collapsing under unenforceable IP laws will be a feudal system with the corporate types STILL in charge, but even moreso.
So, does being the big, badass, unthinking rebel still sound as appealing to you? Maybe it does, especially if you don't actually contribute any IP, just use it.
"This is your world. These are your people. You can live for yourself today, or help build tomorrow for everyone."
Apples and oranges. I can automate metal cutting or stonecutting. If you can tell me how to automate the creation of a new song or piece of art or novel (and that doesn't create one that sucks), then that would be a fair comparison.
A skilled stoneworker or woodworker or metalworker is still needed to make the templates for the automation process. A musician is needed to create the song that is to be burned to CD.
"This is your world. These are your people. You can live for yourself today, or help build tomorrow for everyone."
Very often I hear ppl telling me about this or that commercial they saw on TV. It's so gratifying to be able to say "Sorry, I don't watch TV, and so I didn't see that funny Mastercard (tm) commercial."
Don't you feel sorry for the ppl who are so scared of their identity that they pay to advertise company logos on their clothing?
If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.
I recognize the above comment as flamebait, but it does spark one interesting notion in my mind...
RMS is not denouncing capitalism. He is not advocating socialism. Capitalism the law of supply and demand as the altering factor in the economy. If you want to compare the folks RMS is denouncing with anyone, probably Nazi Germany or Fascist Spain is a better analogy. Both practiced largescale censorship and central planning and control. Just these companies are enforcing it through strongarm legal methods instead of strongarm physics methods. Essentially we are looking at psychological vs. physical terrorism.
I have never read anything involving RMS that would indicate he is so soft in the head as to be a socialist. Instead, he is more akin to the philosophes of the 18th century in mindset. Is this so bad a heritage? The 18th century was one of the high points of civilized thought and ideas.
And now back to listening to Mahler's 4th symphony in mp3...
Many were Deists - People who believed in a supreme being but did not subscribe to any organized religion. The author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, was one.
Microsoft's VP of Customer Service is Helen Waite. If you are having problems with their products go to Helen Waite.
read the post. Free software gives you that choice! RMS can not and will not stop you from selling or buying anything you want. 99% of the uses in the world can rest better knowing that if Open source or free software did something outrageous like send someone all of your files every time you logged in to the net. they know they would hear about it Slash Dot or elsewhere close software it is almost impossible to know what the software is doing except what the writer wants you to know. If you don't like it thank RMS ( jpl and others Open source for giving you the choice to not buying closed source software.
Im sorry but you dont get it! Itis more than just tinkering the free software movement was and is about having software avalable for anyone to use so that they have a real choice they are not locked in with no choice of sighing you freedom way. open sorce is good better than not knowing what your sonftware is realy doing but GNU made it possable for programers to have tools to write software GCC GNU was and remains a big deal imagin a world were the cost of entery into the market is biuilding a hardware switch box so you can build you software base from complete scratch ala the 1950's. Big companyes will try anything to stop peope from coming in to the marcet to compet with them. Including telling you what you and and can not write with there software. Free software has given programers the option of not having to sighn your life away in order to use the tools that alow programers to write new software. By the way anyone can hire a programer being able to modify your code is a very big deal and you shold not need to stuck with software you cant leagaly change!! The only real reason to stop people from doing it is so you can control them. normaly locking them in to your platform If you ever have this happen you you in a buissness you will finaly get it. when the cost of redoing everything from scratch hits. Free software helps stop that.
I agree on your point, but I'd also like to point out that they may be right in not mentioning the 2nd Amendment for another reason. Perhaps the reason they don't defend it is that it doesn't ^need^ defending!
Let me elaborate on this briefly. The 2nd Amendment protects the rights of citizens to bear arms for one reason- so that they may participate in militias. If someone wishes to organise a militia to protect his civil liberties or his country, he can do so (Constitutionally). Unfortunately, it is ^this^ right that is infringed.
The right of ordinary citizens to bear arms for hunting or other purposes is ^not^ Constitutionally protected, unless you read the text out of historical context. It is exactly this sort of reading that causes so very many of our problems with historical documents (the Bible springs to mind; leaving out the Jewish context in which it was written obfuscates the meaning of all of it!).
Just my tupence on this issue....
~wmaheriv
~wmaheriv
"Shema Yisroel- Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Echad!"
I appologize If someone has asked/answered this question already.
As a CS student graduating in the next year, I see a $50,000 or better "starting" salary upon graduation. I chose software as my specialty because I love solving problems and working with the abstract concepts programming provides. If software becomes universally open/free I'll still love writing it but, will I still be compensated at this phenominal rate? Obviously people will still make money on services provided by/for their software but, will a company still want to pay me huge amounts of money to write software everyone will be able to modify and use anyway they want?
In terms of earning potential, should I be regretting my decision not to study hardware engineering? Can we excpect to see a change in the dynamics of the IT labor force?
I'm not doing CS for the money, but it's certainly a very nice perk.
------
www.chowda.net
------
YouTube & Google Video -> podcast http://castcluster.blogspot.com/
There is a big difference between pacifism or communism and FSism. Communism and pacifism apply to peoples. Free Software apply to software. Furthermore, RMS don't beg corpos to open their source. He just want to unite programmers to code free alternative to proprietary software. Of course a lazy way is to try to persuade societies to open the source of their products, but it's a rather uneffective and unused way. AFAIK, only the KDE guys succeed at open sourcing TrollTech's Qt, and it was because TrollTech was rather friendly to the Free Software Movement already. Most Free Software was Free Software from start. Most proprietary software are still proprietary.
> To clarify, you'll want the most vehement racist at the front of the KKK,
I want it nowhere! Or at least, far away from any position where it could spread its obnoxious ideas. I don't like racism, and see little need of vehemence.
> (poor people just can't pathom the idea that it's not the guns but the people who kill people).
OK, I digress. But I must be a poor boy then, 'cause I believe guns are tools designed to harm and to kill, other living being, including peoples. And that if weak-minded crazened peoples weren't possessing lethal weapons, there will be fewer "accidents".
sigmentation fault
I admire Mr. Stallman for being willing to share his opinions, especially in light of the fact that his views are shared by so few. For someone who is so technically advanced, Mr. Stallman seems to want to go back in time to when his ideas about capitalism hadn't been disproved. The irony is that only in a capitalist economy can one even care about these issues. Prosperity gives people the money and time to worry about free software and improving the environment and the other problems mentioned. sigh. Another point of interest is how these posts are moderated. As of this posting (11 comments), most of the comments that were critical of Mr. Stallman had been moderated to a -1. Freedom doesn't tolerate disagreement well I guess. I won't get started on the rest, as I bet there are over 100 comments now.
Nick http://www.nickspace.com
Mr Slippery: You can find up-to-date stats in the August 1999 Scientific American, which also points out that crime rates (other than homicide) are approximately the same in the US and Europe. Prison population per 100,000 (1995): Iceland: 40 Germany: 85 France: 95 Britain: 100 Canada: 115 USA: 668 Russia: 690 Russia was about 268/100,000 in 1991 (pre-collapse), ranking 3rd after S.Africa (333) and the US (426). Yeah... I know it's off-topic, but people are talking about it without hard facts to deal with...
What would Lemmy do?
Christianity is an amalgamation of numerous historical religious myths.
Christianity is the Microsoftian innovator of religions.
Horus of Egypt
- Horus was born of the virgin Isis-Meri on December 25th in a cave/manger42, with his birth being announced by a star in the East and attended by three wise men.
- He was a child teacher in the Temple and was baptized when he was 30 years old.44 Horus was also baptized by "Anup the Baptizer," who becomes "John the Baptist."
- He had 12 disciples.
- He performed miracles and raised one man, El-Azar-us, from the dead.
- He walked on water.
- Horus was transfigured on the Mount.
- He was crucified, buried in a tomb and resurrected.
- He was also the "Way, the Truth, the Light, the Messiah, God's Anointed Son, the Son of Man, the Good Shepherd, the Lamb of God, the Word" etc.
- He was "the Fisher," and was associated with the Lamb, Lion and Fish ("Ichthys").
- Horus's personal epithet was "Iusa," the "ever-becoming son" of "Ptah," the "Father."46
- Horus was called "the KRST," or "Anointed One," long before the Christians duplicated the story.
reference: http://www.truthbeknown.com/origins.htmThe point is not that he's controlling their minds. It's that his proposal is absurd. From what I've seen, he and his followers don't respect the rights of the producer. Of course people will follow someone who says, "We deserve this expensive software free." They don't respect what the producer put into making and that the they deserve compensation. That's the insentive that makes these things possible. Hundreds of years ago a writer observed what allowed the giant city of London to be fed. It was that there was a market for bread there so that the people transported it in would be PAID. If the people would have demanded free bread, they would have got none.
Discussion Never Hurt Anyone.
Libertarians
(The countries that are not so bad, like Sweeden, are that way because they are not fully socialistic. They allow private enterprise. State-run monopolies are only a portion of the economy.)
I find it puzzling that people always want to make exceptions for socialist nations. They say exactly what you did: that the Soviet Union, East Germany, et al were not socialist. Well, the results (millions of dead people) might not be the socialist utopia you wished for, but their methods were socialistic. Government planners ran the economy. People were not permitted to make basic decisions like: where will I work? where will I live? how much bread will I buy? After all, how can you have a planned economy if people are to make economic decisions for themselves?
Do you make similar exceptions for fascism and Nazi Germany? Were all the people killed under Hitler just some epiphenomenon? Or is it the case that when governments are given virtually unlimited power, as with fascism and socialism, terrible things will result?
-- Diana Hsieh
-- Diana Hsieh
GeekPress: The Weirder Side of Tech News
This, of course, is Christianity. Think of others, not yourself; walk a mile in another man's shoes, blah blah blah. But Stallman is also an atheist.
This really shouldn't come as a surprise. Socialism relies upon a watered-down form of Christianity for it's moral foundation. What's pathetic is that Stallman probably has no idea that he's really a Christian at heart.
It's always an eye opener to see socialism in action. Let's talk about how unfree business makes us, but forget that Lenin and Stalin killed more people than Hitler. Were the people living under the glories of socialism in the Soviet death camps free? Is the bounteous freedom and prosperity of socialism the reason why every socialist country has had to shoot people who try to leave to prevent a mass exodus?
Stallman should go back to what he's good at: writing software. He obviously sucks at political philosophy.
-- Diana Hsieh
-- Diana Hsieh
GeekPress: The Weirder Side of Tech News
It seems to me that the best way to fight bad law is not just with software and a license, but through political action.
RMS always seems to stop short. Maybe he doesn't see the use? Or maybe he's just not interested?
There's quite a bit on the GNU site about what's wrong with the legal system but almost nothing about how to change it. In a way, free software kind of side-steps the issue. Why change bad copyright law if you can just help write a patch for your own free software system?
There is political power in community, but not if the community only sticks to its own. Free software is about serving the public interest.
It's all well and good to identify the issues and express your moral outrage, but you really should also be talking to your elected representatives. I used to work with Amnesty International and I've seen high school kids help pass good laws at the state level. It can be done!
Everyone seems very aware that big money influences the hill to push through laws that protect commercial interests. Why not join the fight to regulate soft money? The GNU/geek community would find broad support among the general public.
There are sparks of activity around the nation with Linux users groups staging demos and protests against UCITA and the DMCA, but we need to be pro-active, not just reactive. Call up your rep.'s office and set up a meeting! Start a dialogue! Maybe someone needs start political action mini-HOWTO... Maybe I'll take a crack at it..
Eerg - to all the replyers - the point is that I don't want to boot my system and see GNU/XFree86/MIT/BSD/Linux! I wanna see Linux! I know there's GNU software in it. I also know there's GNU software in BeOS, my OS of choice. Do I call it GNU/BeOS? NO!
---------------------------------
---------------------------------
Visit
The entire GNU/Linux naming thing gets me upset - there's nothing on my Linux partition that couldn't be replaced by something non-GNU. bash? Replace that with ksh. GNOME? Replace that with KDE/QT! Poof. Problem solved. If RMS wants to be an ass about it, I'll delete his software.
---------------------------------
---------------------------------
Visit
Actually, isn't it because some people (like me on the last one, sorry) started complaining when their +5 comment didn't get submitted?
---------------------------------
---------------------------------
Visit
Somebody publishes information about a new cryptography routine in a book. I'd like to tell my friends/the internet/slapdash about it. What do I do?
It sounds to me like RMS would do number 2 - or at least see nothing wrong with it. I see something wrong with it - I'm not gonna copy all of his explanation. I'll quote one or two paragraphs at most, but I won't jip the author for his hard work at explaining his idea. Ideas, not implementations, want to be free. This was the original point of copyright law.
Now maybe I'm not as radical as RMS, bt I'm not the kind of guy that advocates promiscuous copying of material.
---------------------------------
---------------------------------
Visit
Ambigious. I'll leave this meaning up to the reader. I can't make heads or tails of it.
...im kind of wondering what they're teaching you kids these days.
obviously you don't understand the true nature of Microsoft. You only see all capitalism as bad.
Really? Exactly what beginning are we talking about here? The beginning where Billy stole time on his school's computer to make his BASIC? Or, the beginning where his mommy got him in the door because she knew a big wig at IBM? That beginning also includes him buying QDOS off of a friend, then licensing it to IBM. A stoke of genuis if ever there was one.
how is that not fair??? it was purely being at the right place at the right time, but I would hardly bitch about it being Un-fair.(That's how MANY business get started, it's all about who you know)
if you hate microsoft so much, why do you care, anyway? because LINUX is the best.....RIGHT????
What The hell are yo talking about???
In the beginning, Microsoft played the game fair and square. They sold DOS, people were buying it, everyone was happy. They only fucked themselves when OS important files were being replaced with the installation of software like Frontpage or Office (That right there is deserving of a breakup of Microsoft, among other things). Capitalism surely has worked well. I mean, Microsoft came from a small piddly-ass company, and Transformed into an empire. Does money scare you? I love capitalism, and having the ability to create a huge corporation from nothing is great!
Do you even KNOW why Macintosh failed??? it was because they were greedy bastards! If they were on top now, they would have a Monopoly over the Hardware (Which is propr.) and the Software (and MacOS* is horrible!). Im glad Macintosh is long-forgotton.
I can imagine communism is what you have in mind for the U.S. That's JUST what we need.....................
if not? what solution do you have in mind?
if someone claims it is his natural right to rob a bank or kill another person, how can you prove otherwise? (just another law being broken)
well,let me translate it: property rights will be gone as we know it, if everyone followed stallman's gospel.
stallman is the great leader, and everyone else are his followers: the Free Software Movement. Whatever radical, garbage ideas that spew out of his mouth and onto the internet, seem to be followed by slashdotters as a new form of Religion.
in reality, the average end-user doesn't give a flying fuck whether software is OSS or not. Most of the Time, if it looks good, is marginally fast, and does it's job, people will buy or use it. That's the problem with 99.9999999% of OSS software. Look at gnutella. It may run alright, but it's slow, clunky, and looks like it was hacked together in a night.
against what most slashdotters believe, money rules every commerical industry. Capitalism is perfect in the software industry because of the following: if software sucks, people just won't buy it. Only the best of the best will survive ( and im talking about the consumer end-user not programmers), and it will give the programmer incentive to only release software that's higher quality. If it's free, knowledge will be gained, it can be added upon by other programmers, but programmers will have no doubt in their mind when releasing shitty software.
Beos is a good example. Look at x-windows. In my opinion,The gui sucks (no matter what manager is used) , there's not really any standard, and it's still using technology from the 60's. It could be 10 to 20 times quicker, but no-one seems to want to create a totally new windowing system for *nix. That brings me to another point. Re-inventing the Wheel is sometimes better. If we try to figure out how to do certain things ourselves, sometimes new optimization techiques can be found.
If you look at what stallman is doing, he's doing the same exact thing Microsfoft is doing, but legally. Microsoft
1) abused their power as a monopoly and started forcing companies to go out of business by doing what?????? making the same product, but free and building into their OS(Netscape is an example...Remember when you had to buy it?). Just because something is Not Microsoft doesn't make it better. (IE. Netscape is still slow as shit on my k62-300, but IE is fast as hell)
The Free Software Community is doing the same thing. They're creating things like the gimp (OR pirating music + software), for free, hoping it will be used instead of products like photoshop, thus putting those companies out of business
if linux is ever going to achieve the popularity of Microsoft, there has to be a big change in attitude. It is going to have to be "Free".
1) people that want to make money on software can and 2) people that want to use the Gnu license can. API standards are also going to have to be created(ie. x-windows,etc).
I guess linux will always be a hobby
let's get something straight..source code/programs/music is not considered information (if it is, it's only an altered rule to please the pirates)
how is the right to share information less valid than the right to have ownership of information
well, if I create something, and copyright it, it is MY right, under U.S. Law, to stop anyone I choose from violating it. You can share information, but only if you own the rights to it, or the author/creator gives you permission.
Actually, it's my FREEDOM (and if i wanted to do that I could), which you don't seem to have an understanding of.
For the record, I'm assuming what you really meant is "How is overpopulation a problem for us, now?" and not "Overpopulation is good!"
If this is the case, then I'll somewhat agree with you. There is no world overpopulation problem, but there are many local overpopulation problems. China, India, many African countries, etc are having problems with feeding their current population properly. The land they live upon, apparently, simply can't support the number of people that they have.
Of course populations in industrial nations are actually on a decline, or are projected to be in the near future. The U.S. is currently just barely replacing the people that die off, for instance.
This, hopefully, will mean that there will never been a global overpopulation problem, because one can speculate that because this is occuring to developed nations, now, that given help in reaching this point, other countries will follow the same pattern.
For our current world population, there really is the world land area and technologies to grow sufficient amounts of food for everyone. If people in overpopulated areas gradually moved to less densely populated regions, living areas could also be guranteed to everyone.
Unfortunately people care more about finances than providing the neccesities of life to all people. Sad, really.
And unfortunate aspect of modern agriculture is the increase in non-natural means of fertilizing land. This may be a good way of easing the burden of shifting crops, and going through the hassle of managing your own nitrogen cycle, but at the same time it has an impact on the wildlife and neighboring sources of water.
This said, there's certainly a decrease in the total land area used for agriculture, due to improvements in agriculture, and the increasing inability for U.S. farmers to stay in business.
India and China aren't really members of the third world, but rather have a large distinction between classes of wealthy and poor, with a large portion of their populace falling in the latter. With a large gap in education between the classes, and with marginal interest in the ruling class to care after the poor, you're not apt to see their situation improve.
A free market never helps the poor, only social reform does. A free market to a man without money, is akin to food to a dead man. If anything, a free market in the Libertarian sense, simply condemns a large group of people to poverty, while they're forever exploited by their owners. It's little more than economic feudalism.
Too many in a region, perhaps. If instead of worrying about personal economics, we worried about social reform and environmental protection, we'd be in much better shape.
People should breed in a responsible manner. If not for the sake of the environment, for the sake of the children they so eagerly look to bring into existance. It shouldn't be a matter of Government, but personal respect of the long-term survival of the planet's ecosystem, and the suffering of children raised in a hostile environment.
If you can't feed yourself, don't have children. Do you like starving? Do you think they will?
Of course we all, collectively, should remove the problems of being able to feed the population. Until then, making increasingly more children in a strained environment will help no one.
What good is a planet expended of all of its resources? Or a planet where we drive land requirements for farming down, but requirements for living up. We're not at an overpopulation limit, now, and the point is we never should be.
It's amazing how industrial nations, for all of their advancement, continue to create unbelievable amounts of waste and destruction. Every time I see a yet another disposable product on the shelves, I feel a certain amount of sadness.
No, the opposite is not true. Perhaps you should spend more time following EPA (and non-Government organizations, too, for that matter) reports regarding these things.
...), while providing them incentives to insitute reforms.
According to the EPA, from 82-92 there was a 10 million acre loss of range land with a 26% increase in urban land consumption.
From the '97 National Resources Inventory:
"Since 1982, cropland, including land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), declined 13 million acres, pastureland almost 14 million acres, and rangeland 12 million acres. Forestland increased by 800,000 acres. The largest increase in acreage by land use was for development, about 30 million acres, from 5 percent of the land area in 1982 to more than 7 percent in 1997. "
Also:
"The 1997 NRI indicates that an annual average of 54,000 acres of wetlands was lost from 1992-97 on cropland, pastureland, and land enrolled in CRP, while an average of 30,000 acres was gained. Nearly two-thirds of the lost wetland acres was due to agricultural production, the rest to non-agricultural activities such as development."
And:
"From 1992-97, the national rate of development more than doubled to 3 million acres per year."
From Trends in the Potential for Environmental Risk from Pesticide Loss from Farm Fields:
"there are still areas of the country where there is no evidence of progress, and areas where risk levels for protection of drinking water, fish, algae and crustaceans remain high."
From the USDA's Understanding Agricultural Water Quality Problems:
"Nearly 20 percent of sampled wells in the study unit have nitrate concentrations exceeding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's maximum contaminant level."
From The Greenhouse Gases in the United States 1998 Executive Summary:
"Total U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases in 1998 increased by 0.2 percent from their 1997 level, below the average growth rate of the 1990s (1.2 percent). During 1998, crude oil prices dropped by one-third and the U.S. economy expanded at a 3.9-percent annual rate. The slowing of growth in emissions resulted in part from a muchm wamer-than-usual winter in 1998 and in part from lower emissions from the industrial sector. Overall, 1998 U.S. greenhouse gas emissions were about 10 percent higher than 1990 emissions. Since 1990, U.S. emissions have increased at an annual rate of 1.2 percent, slightly faster than population (1.1 percent) but more slowly than energy consumption (1.4 percent), electricity consumption (2.2 percent), or gross domestic product (GDP) (2.6 percent)."
From the EIA:
"The United States is a major source of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, primarily because our economy is the largest in the world. With less than 5 percent of the world's population--but about a quarter of world gross domestic product (GDP)--the United States produces over 20 percent of total anthropogenic carbon emissions. Current projections show U.S. emissions increasing by 1.2 percent annually between 1995 and 2015 absent any policy interventions (see Figure 4). The emissions for the other 28 industrialized nations that are members of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are expected to increase at a similar rate. Developing (non-OECD) countries, with 81 percent of the world's population and per capita emission rates that are currently very low, are expected to increase emissions dramatically as nations such as China and India fuel economic development with fossil energy. EIA projects that non-OECD carbon emissions will increase at an annual rate of 2.9 percent between 1995 and 2015."
I could go on and on with the quotations, but it's a waste of my time. I suggest you stop spewing the Ayn Rand rhetoric and take a look at some of the facts. Even our "improvement" in our rate of destruction in some environmental issues is a matter of social beliefs, and not economic growth. The technology developed to help reduce damage isn't constructed because it was economical for the businesses, but because of our "draconian" environmental laws. You won't find many corporate lobbyists fighting for forcing industries to institute expensive reform.
The best thing we can do is to first straighten our own act up, prevent corporations from just moving their industries to other countries without environmental laws (Gee, there's that free market! And they get $.30 labor to boot!), donate technological advances to developing industrial nations (China, India,
Of course we can't expect them to reform while we still promote environmental protection with our mouth, and toss our disposable U.S. crap into the landfill with our hands.
For the Free Software Movement, proprietary software is the problem, and free software is the solution. Free software is often very powerful and reliable, and I'm glad that adds to its appeal; but I would choose a bare-bones unreliable free program rather than a featureful and reliable proprietary program that doesn't respect my freedom.
Here is the point where he begins to depart from normal human beings. Setting aside from the hyperbole of closed-sourced products "not respecting his freedom"... I, like most people, am willing to pay for a product that works well enough to justify the cost within my budget. This does not mean that I am a blind fool being exploited by a company that is disrespecting my freedom. It just means that I am not a Cheap Bastard.
I like Free Beer as much as the next guy, and if RMS wants to buy the rounds I'm drinking... but he seems to think that we will all help him overthrow the Csar and build a worker's paradise behind his leadership. Unfortunately for the Revolution, there is no Csar this time. Gates, Jobs, and Ellison are all very rich, but we are completely free to ignore them (and many of us do). Capitalism is not a monarchy, no matter how much you enjoy hating it.
Hey, spewing absolute dogma like this is fun. Maybe I could be a stubborn techno-political pundint like RMS!
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
We would kill the cute ones last, of course.
Seriously, though, we already produce far more food than we are able to eat. Malthus based his predictions on the notion that populations would explode exponentially while the resources we developed would grow in a linear fashion. In developed nations, the trend has actually been the opposite, and in the really well-developed nations (like the US), populations would actually be in sharp decline were it not for immigration.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Obviously, this means man synonymous with humanity. Feminist criticisms aside, this is a proper philosophic term to refer to the species as a whole.
When he 'gets' relativism, his views won't be any better than anyone else. If he takes on relativism, why even bother anymore?
On the contrary. If you say you "prefer one kind of tea over someone else" then you are undeniably right, and so is the other person: you both prefer different kinds of tea. But there has been no contradiction, merely expressions of preference.
If you say, on the other hand, "This kind of tea is better than that kind", you can only be judged to be wrong, because there is no universal standard for tea, or any other kind of subjective preference. Alternatively you can do the sensible thing and interpret "better" as "suits me".
A statement is either right or wrong in the same way that it is either a fact or it is not. There is no in between. Some people might like to state that even scientific knowledge is subject to revision, but this is a fact that science freely acknowledges.
In short, the it's only confused semantics that allows for gray areas.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Could it be that this woman was a prop? Maybe it was a bit of theatre designed to show how women are treated unfairly? Of course I wasn't there, maybe she was indeed "forced" to eat out of his hand. However most females I know would have knocked his hand away if he had tried anything like that. But hey, maybe he is a letch, certainly sounds very lonely. Try addressing RMS directly I KNOW he deserves a right of reply.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
I know, as a programmer, what you're getting at but the GPL is not written for programmers, it has no mention of program counters, memory spaces, forking or the like. The GPL is a document which, ultimatly, is intended for a jury of people who have decide if a program has been "distributed" or not.
Copying and distribution are mentioned as separate cases thoughout the GPL and the method of distribution is not specified. I take this to be because any type of distribution is covered, and specifically the mention of distribution of the program in "executable form" (section 3) implies that allowing the program to be executed by a third party is distribution; if the program is available over the web for me to execute, doesn't that mean that it is in executable form?
The problem really hinges on the use of the word "distribute" when "use" is closer to the spirit of the licence. Of such minor quibbles is a lawyer's income made.
I hate to belabor this whole thing,
Well, if you can't belabour a point on /. then something's gone wrong with the world in general.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
If what you are saying was held to be true then, as you imply, any X-based program which exports its display would need no license for the end-user, and people in the UK would not need TV licenses since all the resources used are in the studio and only displayed on the user's TV. Not a great example for Americans, but there you are.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
In the case of a program used though a terminal the end-user is given control of the program and in that sense the program is distributed to them. The issue is not with the output of the word-processor or the video-toaster or whatever, it is with the ability of the user to control the program. A program that you can control, run, break out of, crash etc. has been distributed to you, no matter how many layers of interfaces are between you and the binary.
At the end of the day this must be true as humans are never in direct control of software: there is always a keyboard controller or some other hardware in-between. If this does not prevent the software from being distributed to me why should a network card?
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
It was just an example of a licence where thelocation of the resources is not important.
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.
We are not talking about the actual act of running the program but the act of making the program available to be run. i.e., distribution of the program.
As you say, it makes no difference whether the program is running locally, over a terminal or where the server is located: I have been provided with the program's functionality so it's GPLed. End of story.
If giving someone the ability to run a program is not distribution, what is? Does it only apply to a binary residing on the individual's disc?
I feel that you're applying a hardware interpretation to a software issue.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
No, take a word processor as an example. The functionality of the wp is to output documents. The document it produces is the output, it is not the function.
If I put 4 into the sqr function the output is 2, the function is sqr - not "2". If my program to calculate the square root is based on GPLed code I have to provide my code too. The person who uses it to get "2" does not have to do anything as the GPL doesn't cover output.
Maybe it's not as clear cut as it seems to me.
I know that feeling!
One final example before I go to bed:
If you write a program covered by the GPL and give it to me on a disc you have to give me the code too, if I want it. If you instead give me a black box I can't open but which boots into your program from startup, do you have to give me the source?
My answer is "obviously". Do you disagree? If you don't then the question is "does it matter if the black box is accessed over the web?"
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Therefore, painting the ACLU as the Grand Defenders of the Bill of Rights omits a pretty important detail.
Agreed. I think most would agree that occasionally the ACLU does some good, but they are NOT the defenders of rights that they would like people to think. They very carefully pick and choose which rights they will defend, and invent rights where none exist.
On balance, they are far worse than any Microsoft or any DMCA.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
What fragmented UNIX was not "simply" anything.
/. a lot.
Read "A Quarter Century of UNIX" for some historical bckground. It's excellent, and gives a LOT of background to what gets discussed here on
I couldn't help but notice that, unless almost all the questions were asked by an idnvidual with the nick 'Q' on here, that all identifiers on the questions were stripped off. Except for the mini-dialogue in the middle that RMS has with Bruce Perens (who apparently is some form of disciple... brings to mind memories of watching to see who's in the picture at the annual MayDay Military Parade in Moscow).
I can't help but think about all the pain and anguish this must be causing the Karma-whores whose questions got answered, but minus their 'handles.'
Yes. Tolkein's work is quite good.
His 'day job' work is pretty good too. He was a theologian, and one of the modern translators of the bible. in fact, he's one of the great theologians of this century.
His fiction is most profoundly not like a lot of the neo-pagan drivel that's followed it in the fantasy-fiction market.
Actually, if nobody ever bought anything because of advertising, we would all be paying $79.95 for a year's subscription to /.
But carry on with whatever your message was there....
I didn't see anybody ranting about what hot means. Did you?
Do you often see such things?
I thought about that, but I was getting a phone call every other minute and wanted to get the piece up at 11 a.m. and ran out of time. :)
- Robin
It's unfortunate to see Stallman mentioning issues about which he does not appear to be terribly informed in a message about free software. I'm referring specifically to his points about overpopulation, environmentalism, and the ACLU.
First, by associating himself with left wing causes such as these, he immediately alienates those who might not share his views on them. Interestingly, he once criticized a free software paper of mine because it used a gun control analogy. The disagreement was not with the issue per se, but rather that a controversial topic simply creates un-necessarily creates division where none should exist. (It's also worthy of note that many people consider Stallman himself a type of religious fundamentalist!)
The second problem is substantive. Overpopulation is not nearly the problem that the doomsayers claim it is. In fact, the biggest problem facing us by the mid-21st century will likely be underpopulation. We already see in the US the affect of a large aged population with fewer working people to support them. This problem will only get worse if population flattens or declines. This is likely to be a particular problem in China, where the long run affects of the one child policy have yet to be seen.
A posting such as this simply cannot do justice to the matter of population. I highly recommend that everyone concerned about this issue read the Overpopulation FAQ and also read Julian L. Simon's tour de force "The Ultimate Resource 2". By all means also read the other side of the issue from Paul Ehrlich or the Club of Rome. But please do read Simon with an open mind, consider the arguments, and reach your own conclusion.
I won't even go into the complicated matters of the environment or the ACLU!
While I don't know about 'a substantial core' of Linux being BSD licenced (not that it isn't, I'm just not familiar enough with a list of the core programs and what licences each is under) you bring up a good point. Calling the system GNU/Linux dismisses the other licences that make the system a useful whole. Calling it Linux, which is a made-up and license agnostic name referring to the system's general heritage as a UNIX derivant and the brainchild of Linus, takes the discussion of licenses out of it. If I were to take Mr. Stallman's way of doing things my system at home would have to not only be called GNU/Linux, it would have to be called GNU/BSD/X/Apache/Artistic/MySQL/other/Linux, which is more than I want to say when I'm asked what OS I run.
I like seeing different sides to people and while this interview was typical Stallman for the most part, the thing that stuck out for me was when he said:
I also like sharing tenderness with someone I adore...
Jeez, I'm a pretty romantic guy but I don't think I would have thought to put something this sappy on an interview for a site like Slashdot. Just shows me that Stallman isn't afraid to tell what he thinks, even when it doesn't involve Free Software. Keep up the good work Mr. Stallman.
No, because the only reason books would not be available there is if the library did not wish to purchase them - this would not be the publisher's fault. There is no way for a publisher to legally prevent their books from being purchased and lent out by a library. Unfortunately, this is not the case with software.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Did it stop people from drinking (and the associated societal ills you talk about)? No. There was plenty of alcohol to be found, all over the country.
What it did accomplish was to create a large black market that was governed by violence rather than brand competition. We still suffer the consequences of that prohibition. Now, we have added another prohibition and another class of criminals determined to make "easy" money from a demand that isn't going to go away because we wish really hard that it would.
As far as your argument that there is a relationship between stupid people and alcohol...do you seriously believe that the kind of lowlifes that end up in the criminal justice system wouldn't be there if it weren't for ? I really have a hard time swallowing that argument. People like that would drink after shave if they had to.
Man has always wished to intoxicate himself, and always will do so, no matter how hard some try to prevent it. The question is at what point do we try to mitigate the harmful effects of the do-gooders?
--
Has anyone suggested otherwise? I mean, isn't it kind of obvious that people would/should be held responsible for crimes committed, drug-related or not?
Isn't that really the whole point...that people who do not commit an act of force or fraud against another person shouldn't be in jail?
I don't see how there could not be a decrease in the prison population if you decriminalized prohibited drug possession.
Prohibition doesn't work; we had a lot of crime last time we tried it, too.
--
For the most part, we're in agreement then. I still think that there are quite a few people in prison (mainly federal prison) purely for possession-type crimes, and that the release of such people would not increase other crimes, resulting in at least a small decrease in the prison population.
--
RMS isn't an academic. The MIT AI lab still lets the FSF use some space (I think), but RMS isn't on the MIT payroll. I don't know if he draws a salary from the FSF, but it would be modest at best. He did get the McArthur fellowship grant a number of years ago, but he basically plowed the money back into the FSF.
He used to make money by consulting when he needed it. I don't know if he still does it. He doesn't live "middle class" beyond the fact that housing alone in the Boston area demands middle class resources for even a 1-bedroom apartment.
I have to say that one of rms's comments on religion seem odd to me. Specifically the comment, "...any being no matter how powerful can still be wrong." While, I acknowledge that I have a tough time conceiving of the idea of a being who never makes mistakes, the fundamental basis for many western religions defines a god in those terms.
Now, I'll accept the fact that such a being is impossible for most people to imagine, but at least in a Christian context this is concidered OK, because it's accepted that God cannot be fully conceived and fully understood by us mere mortals. Indeed, the expression "God moves in mysterious ways" stems from this concept.
Now there are lots of religions in the world where the gods are far from infallable, but I'm shocked and surprised that rms seems oblivious to these variations. It doesn't fit with my existing experiences with the guy.
sigs are a waste of space
In all seriousness, I had no idea that RMS was so ideologically aligned with the far-left in this country.
I think your seeing your own demons here. Ideologies are funny things. In a lot of ways, RMS supports the notion of fewer laws, which in theory is a fundamentally right-wing concept. I think mapping ideology onto an independant thinker like RMS is a bad idea in general. RMS has his own ideology, and I think it deserves to be evaluated independantly, rather than likened to any others. Certainly, I think I could argue that he's a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Communist, or Fascist with about equal ease (and duplicity ;-).
Furthermore, the attacks on the "War on Drugs" and conservative politicians in general were completely unnecessary in this forum.
The door was opened by the questions he was given. People were clearly interested in hearing more about RMS than just his work on GNU. Based on the rules that Slashdot operates, if people are interested, then it is an appropriate forum.
He attacked ONE conservative politican (well, two if you count his son) in a very specific context, which, btw, had nothing to do with the "War on Drugs". He was describing what drove him to become a member of the ACLU.
painting the ACLU as the Grand Defenders of the Bill of Rights omits a pretty important detail.
I think there is little doubt the ACLU works to support issues enclosed in the Bill of Rights. Sure they have specific interpretations of those rights, ones which you might not agree with, but even casual examination indicates the ACLU's work involves defending specific sections of the Bill of Rights. RMS's comments didn't suggest anything beyond that, and only your interpretation of his comments describes them as the "grand defenders" you refer to.
Perhaps Stallman should come down from his throne and spend a few months actually working in law enforcement. Perhaps he should see the kind of cruelty and callousness exhibited by elements of our society. Perhaps then he wouldn't be so quick to complain about high rates of imprisonment in the U.S.
Don't presume to know what RMS's experiences with law enforcement are. RMS comments about imprisonment rates were with respect to the impact the war on drugs has had on rates of imprisonment. Any time you outlaw an activity that a sizeable portion of the population want to do, and you enforce it rigourously, you're going to have that happen. It's also unlikely to be an effective action. Any Christian who knows their history can look back on Roman times to understand that.
Your statements, by implication, suggest that all the people locked up in prison on drug charges are exceptionally callous individuals. It's arguable whether you're right, but beyond that, you have to ask yourself why the U.S. has so many of those types of people compared to the rest of the world (or are you suggesting that countries like Canada and Saudi Arabia just have tons of free exceptionally callous individuals roaming around?). It's fair to say that SOMETHING in the US is making this happen, and it may very well be possible that there's a way to avoid it that isn't being explored.
He simply doesn't see the big picture with regard to social issues.
Actually, I think that is terribly misrepresentative. RMS perhaps doesn't see your big picture, but I've read a lot of material on the GNU website that looks very much at the big picture side of social issues. Indeed, RMS's most compelling argument about free software has always been about the kind of society one creates with it versus without it. That's entirely a big picture issue.
sigs are a waste of space
RMS made comments about religious fundamentalism, not about Christianity. One could argue that there are a lot more fundamentalists out there who aren't Christian than otherwise.
"Dogma" is actually seperate from fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is about imposing a very literal interpretation of basic principles. Perhaps the Open Source movement can be characterized like that, I don't know. However, RMS is not associated with that movement (as he tried to point out in his comments). I think RMS's behavior suggests his views and rigorous support of those views are based on what he perceives as overal good for the society, not some literal interpretations of anything.
sigs are a waste of space
Strong adherence to first principles is not the same as literal interpretation of first principles. Indeed, THAT is the key difference that defines fundamentalism.
;-). It is not anything that indicates a literal interpretation of first principles.
While everyone has some basic assumptions upon which they base their beliefs, there is a difference between this and fundamentalism. Your comments almost seem to suggest that anyone is a fundamentalist who has strong commitment to a set of beliefs. I would argue many leaders of the various Christian churches are not fundamentalists based on the true meaning of the term, even though I would never suggest they were not devout or uncompromising in their beliefs.
It's not possible to make a literal deduction from that very vague and intangible statement. Your quote of RMS's "first principles" is him basically saying that he thinks right and wrong should be evaluated based on what the consequences are for the general public. That's basically a definition of ethics, and doesn't imply any kind of a belief system (indeed, those first principles can be applied to anything from Christianity, Nazism, Communism, Democracy, Anarchy or Objectivism --which one is RMS?
Fundamentalism, particularly with religious texts, is indicated when the meaning of those texts is taken literally from the specific words and punctuation in the text, rather than the context in which such words were written. I can't even think of an instance where RMS has even QUOTED a source in the kind of authoritative terms necessary to be considered fundamentalism.
sigs are a waste of space
His clear and principaled stance on free software is needed in this muddled world.
I have published software under the GPL, and had to remind those porting it to Amiga and Archimedes (hey it was a while ago!) to make source available.
The whole concept of sharing had never occured them before. I felt that the GPL had accomplished something then.
-- Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold.
While I can't speak for ESR, in my experience a lot of libertarians don't take great pains to respect differences of opinion. Anyone who suggests that there are obvious benefits to some level of government regulation is derided as an economic neanderthal, usually with the dreaded dismissal, "Well, then, you're obviously a liberal."
It seems people on both the poles that RMS and ESR represent placidly ignore that America has done very, very well throughout the 20th century with a mixed economy, a market with imposed rules. It boils down to whether the model for "competition" you want the market to use is the competition of a game, or the competition of warfare. Personally, I'm more comfortable with the former than the latter.
Having picked my nit, I agree with the generalities of your post; it seems obvious to me that people should be compensated for their work if they so choose. If there is a way to do that within the definition of "Free Software," great. But RMS' underlying assertion is that using software I do not have the freedom to both copy and modify is an immoral restriction. A restriction, perhaps, but I have always had the freedom to use or not use software as I see fit, to learn enough to write my own applications if I don't like what's out there (for reasons practical or philosophical), or to throw away my computer and use a typewriter. If I were not free to try to sell my own products without being forced to subsidize competitors, this would seem a more serious restriction on my freedom.
...that RMS seems to base his philosophies off of the same "copyrights are wrong" idea that excites the "information wants to be free" dorks around Slashdot so much. At least Stallman is distinguished from all the warez dudes by actually having created valuable information himself, but that just makes it especially ironic, since he protects that information (both software and his writings) with a (lenient) copyright himself.
Frankly, if you don't like the fact that you can't press a thousand Metallica CDs for a few hundred bucks like you can with GPLed software, the solution is simple: use GPLed software, don't listen to Metallica. This is the same thing Slashdot tells clueless companies who bitch about how "restrictive" the GPL is when they're trying to treat free software like a candy pinata: if you don't like the terms an author sets on the use of his creation, don't use it. It's just as applicable in either case.
You chose to consider yourself as an "easily-angered reader" and then took offense. This is rediculous. You evidently identified your self correctly.
I believe his point was if you don't like Stallman, don't read this. No particularly offensive. Quite living in highschool, grow up.
Troy Roberts
How about this:
Give people massive tax breaks for not having any children, or for only having one child. It's not violating anyone's civil rights, it's not imprisoning anyone, and it's humane. It appeals to the one thing that drives most people: their wallets. This is a totally biased solution on my part, though, since I never plan to have any kids.
The big drawback is sheer time it would take to succeed, and it would probably only work in countries where taxes are fairly high to being with. Oh, well...
>I'm becoming more convinced by the day that >humans (at least Americans) simply don't truly >want freedom Sadly, I'd have to agree with you on that one. It seems like people needing their freedom swings like a pendulum - it's well known that in many arenas of politics the pendulum swings from one extreme to another. First, you've got a totally leftist radical culture, which gradually swings to a more centrist approach to more issues, which gradually swings to the conservative end of things. When people find out how much it sucks being in a despotic state, they start swinging back to the left, and eventually you start over with a revolution and leftist ideals abounding. I don't think americans want their freedom either, and that really is sad. Sometimes it takes people dying, and people being silenced and being thrown into prison before people realize that it truly is better to be uncomfortable and have to listen to that KKK member talk than it is to be stripped of your freedom of speech or other freedoms, and have to sit there and take it without having the ability to say anything. So maybe what linux users need is to get MASSIVELY FUCKED before they realize which sacrafices are appropriate and which are merely sellout attempts at popularity. I saw one post that ranted about how RMS was cramming "GNU/Linux" down everybody's throats, and how the poster thought that was evidence that RMS was hiding something or somehow inadequate as a hacker, because real hackers didn't have to hide behind terminology to see their software succeed. If that were true, then there wouldn't be an open source movement, hackers would realize that the temptation of popularity from a businessman isn't worth pursuing. If your software is good, they will come to you even if your software is free. We don't need a "rebranding" campaign, a "remarketing" campaign, or anything similar. People think that "Free Software" and "GNU/Linux" are terms that are "crammed down people's throats.". I say it is what it is, take it or leave it. If your code is GPL'd, then it is "Free Software". It happens to also be open source at the same time, but it is primarily free software. (If you doubt me, read your own license :). If you're using the SCSL, then you may have open source, but not necessarily Free Software. Enough rambling...
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
The problem is, as RMS says, there are no scientific reasons to believe Open Source is a better business model. After all, Microsoft is far more profitable than Red Hat. Lacking such reasons, the only real reason to support Open Source is if it is congruent with one's own personal philosophy. I happen to support it myself, but I admit my feelings are merely ethical in nature. I suspect you and ESR are really idealists at heart but, like Bogart's Rick in Casablanca feel that you have justify your feelings economically
You don't even know you're being oppressed, and that sucks. If you were black and living in 1950, would you say that same thing? Female, in 1890? Do you really not understand that no one is making this 'erosion of freedom' suff up?
If I were black in the 1950's, I would have been a founding member of the black panther party.
If I were female in the 1890's I would be party like it was 1899.
I'm a white guy in America in the year 2000. I think that in the here and now, things are not too bad. Blacks and Females have the same rights/protections under the law as I do. Sure this is debatable, but that is the ideal.
Our rights _are_ being taken away. I wonder daily when my pistol with be made illegal. I wonder when I will be named in the DMCA suit for having a copy of DeCSS. BUT-- I have a life that I enjoy too. I send my weekends on the lake, weeknights in front of my computer and spare time watching good television programming (Example. not Springer).
The point is, quit feeling so guilty. You can't take on all of the worlds problems. Solve the problems within your sphere of influince.
--fatboy
Yup, apparently the DMCA covers such trivial things as the Serial Copy Management System, which is simply a copy/don't copy bit that could easily be ignored, and built-in Macrovision defeaters (such as in Go video decks), which are $5 at Radio Shack.
(On a side note, I've heard that this has already hampered free software to some extent, with Matrox unwilling to release specs for their TV card because someone could just flip a bit and turn off MacroVision.)
I'm not sure how this would be implemented, but I could imagine that your software could contain some sort of "GPL Licenced" signature that must be encoded in the binary. Removing the signature would be trival, but might be considered a violation of the DMCA. Although, perhaps Stallman would rather have folks work to overturn/subvert the DMCA than figure out a way to implement it.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Some of us older farts remember Stallman's plans to deliver a complete "GNU System" long before the Linux kernel had been invented. It was generally considered impossible or quixotic.
So, now his dream has been realized and millions of copies of the "GNU System" are all over the Internet and your local CompuJunk store. The problem is that what people are buying/downloading is not the philosophical "GNU", but a product "XYZ Linux". I don't think that Stallman is looking for credit so much as he is looking to change the approach people take to the system - a philosophy or a product?
I have to admit that I'm part of the problem here - I use Linux OSes because they work well for what they do. While I admire the goals of the free software movement, the bottom line is that Linux is a product that works great and the price is right. If it were not the case, I'd be using something else non-free. I'd guess that's the case with many Linux users, the product (a free unix that runs on your hardware) outweighs the philosophy.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Get rid of the radicals? Did you just get here?!
The whole concept of open source is radical (in today's world).
If getting linux (and open source as a concept) into the mainstream means ignoring our ideals and forgetting how we got here, then it IS NOT worth it.
The way to 'go mainstream' is to beat the proprietary software using OUR rules, by producing better programs. This is already happening and soon the software industry will not be able to ignore it. Then we will have won on our own terms, using our own tools.
Besides, how do ou propose to 'get rid' of someone who is responsible for most of the code in any given linux distro?
Finkployd
Finkployd
Hm, so you *are* certain of the worth of "millions of dollars?" That the pursuit of money is unquestionably valuable?
No, I'm certainly not. However, that wasn't my point (after rereading my original post, I realized I hadn't made my point clear at all). The point is that money *is* valuable to most people (if it wasn't, it wouldn't *be* money). Given a good enough reason, most people will give up money. In the absence of such a reason, people will choose to have money and the things (comfort, power, etc.) that go with it.
Sidenote: I really gave RMS too much credit in my original post. He may have sacrificed the comfort that comes with money, but not the power.
Anyway, my point is just that an ethical system whose greatest promoter is uncertain of is probably not a good enough reason to convince people to give up their money.
And besides, aren't you advocating throwing away *billions* of dollars on an ethical standard (close private corporate tyrannies) which we are quite *certain* is WRONG!?
*You* may be certain, but RMS isn't. He claims that you can't be certain.
I think you are the one misunderstanding his argument. I think Free (and Open Source) Software is a good thing. I do not want to be tied into proprietary solutions. That certainly could result in throwing away billions of dollars. However, RMS's point was that the utility of using Free Software isn't the issue, and is the point of the Open Souce movement, rather than the Free Software movement. If RMS's view, utility is unimportant. The ethics are all that matter. My point was just that that seems to be a silly stance to take (and most people..especially the people whose descisons matter most... *won't* take it) when you claim that you cannot be certain of the ethics.
I get your point (I don't agree, but that's another issue), but you don't get mine. Mine was not about whether or not morals exist, it was about RMS's statement that:
Even supposing that the aforementioned gods exist, and that the believers really know what the gods think, that still does not provide certainty, because any being no matter how powerful can still be wrong.
And why I think that statement is ridiculous.
You can't suppose that the "aforementioned gods exist" by claiming they don't exist. (And if absolute morals don't exist, gods who give us absolute morals don't exist either.)
...and not a very good one. The thing is, his beliefs...etc, all come down do his philosophy.
Let's see: The Free Software Movement raises issues of freedom, community, principle, and ethics, which the Open Source Movement studiously avoids.
Compared with:
Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics.
Oh, yes. I read his little disclaimer at the end. However, are you willing to throw away millions of dollars to adhere to an ethical standard of which you aren't certain? RMS apparently is (or at least on a smaller scale), and I do admire him for that, but I'm not, and most others aren't.
Oh, yeah. And the belief that gods can't be certain about ethics is one of the silliest things I've ever heard. If morals exist outside our heads, then they have to come from somewhere. If, as many religions do, we call the source of those morals "God," then how can "God" be uncertain? I admit I'm fuzzing over the diff between ethics and morals here, but if that same God created the universe and all its laws and inhabitants, then ethics would present no difficulty as well.
RMS is taking a stance that says, "This is the most important because it is right. Sacrifice everything for it," but he then goes on to say, you can't be sure what is right! Not only is he a bad philosopher, but he is incredibly naive about human nature.
and so are you.
You have no idea how correct you are. I'm one of those insane people who hates the idea of having my every purchase planted into a database in order to 'make my next purchasing decision easier.' I don't own a television. I don't listen to the radio. I throw away mail advertisements unopened. I don't buy plastic if I can avoid it. I recycle. I drive a small, crappy car that gets good gas mileage - when I drive. I pick up other people's garbage.
Yep, that's me, obviously fucking insane because I give a shit about the planet I leave behind. Thanks for reminding me how good it makes me feel to be a raving lunatic.
We can think and decide for ourselves what is good. We don't need a spokesman.
You don't even know you're being oppressed, and that sucks. If you were black and living in 1950, would you say that same thing? Female, in 1890? Do you really not understand that no one is making this 'erosion of freedom' suff up?
No, you're right - the status quo is OK with everyone. Forget the fact that there are millions of people suffering over absolute bullshit, and allow me to apologize for being so selfish.
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
The main thing that you must realize with GNU as an organization is that the leader is strong-minded when it comes to the position on how all software should be, however, many of GNU's contributors and supporters just don't agree with him to that extent. And that's perfectly fine. Personally, I think that supporting the free-ing of all software everywhere is like supporting total pacifism or communism. They are very good ideas, and would be cool... if it actually worked. Every one has _way_ to many inherent flaws, because this is an imperfect world.
To clarify, you'll want the most vehement racist at the front of the KKK, and you'll want the most bleeding heart liberal out there to fight gun control (poor people just can't pathom the idea that it's not the guns but the people who kill people). You'll also want the biggest die-hard free software advocate to run GNU.
Thankfully, the GPL doesn't include a clause that say you have to agree with free software idealism in order to use it. Otherwise, RMS would be alone in his quest for free software, and GNU and it's software as a whole would be painfully undeveloped.
Q: Are there any good case studies of large corporations opening up proprietary in-house source code?
:-)
Mozilla, surely
RMS said:
any being no matter how powerful can still be wrong
So, if you postulate a God (who would be the most powerful being in the Universe, rather by definition) and then say he's wrong, who is he wrong compared to? Surely such a being would be right by definition, particularly if they were omniscient.
Gerv
Many people mistakenly believe that the reason RMS insists on using GNU/Linux is his seek for fame; that he wants people to give him credit for his work. This is clearly false, as may be seen from his interview. The difference between GNU/Linux and Linux is the same one as between saying free as in "free speech" instead of free as in "free beer" - and it is very important distinction. Even though he may not crave for it, he does deserve recognition, because the free software movement probably wouldn't exist without him.
Like I said, some things he says make me just want to shake my head, and others - well, there are infuriating ones, like his take on Napster. It is rather interesting how he manages to dismiss the whole Napster case as seeing "nothing inethical" in it - but like I said, it's just his steadfast ideology.
You're scaring me!
I knew I shouldn't have left my cave...
PS. read the one sentence caspule review for "Where The Heart Is" on Toronto.com
Do ya think he reads segfault or slashdot?
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
if I prefer one kind of tea over someone else I don't think either of us is "wrong" in any meaningful sense - it truly is relative.
Stallman said "If I and someone else disagree, at least one of us is wrong. " If you say "My tea is best" and I say "No, my tea is best," I would assert that both of us are incorrect.
And a careful reading of your statement suggests this: "I've tried Darjeeling, one kind of tea, and I've tried Al Gore, who is someone else. I prefer Darjeeling over Al Gore."
Hmmm...after rereading the original post, I couldn't find any mention of doom, or wishing anything of the sort on anyone.
but I agree. I wouldn't wish doom on anyone. The sprite graphics, the low-res textures, the 3D-no-wait-they're-2D maps...I could go on, but you get my point.
> No one *wants* to have a business-free computing environment.
You misunderstand the point, at least as some of us would have it. What some of us want is to be free of is the leaches, the overcharging middlemen, the upgrade treadmills. While ditching those would be a serious blow to the software industry, it would be an even more serious blow for the rest of the world's industries, which just want to get their work done and would like to be able to use computers to do it without being milked poor by the aforementioned highwaymen. For us, the attitude isn't anti-business, it's anti-rip-off.
> but in the fan-boy computer biz people want multi-million dollar corporations developing toys for them: Pentium III, Athlon, GeForce, Voodoo 5, Soundblaster Live, optical mice, 72GB hard drives, etc.
Nice list of hardware there. Did you deliberately neglect to mention MMD corporations developing software toys for us?
The important difference between free/open software and that peddled by the big software companies is that for the most part free/open software is intended to serve the user rather than the vendor. Development is usually cumulative, with incompatibilites introduced for technical reasons rather than marketing reasons. Upgrade when it pleases you, not when the vendor needs to make a good showing for a quarterly report. If you're using two incompatible packages, hack them to make them play rather than throwing one out and paying for an otherwise unneeded replacement.
I'm all for businesses when they operate by providing a good value for the price. The problem with most commercial software other than games is the fact that once you start using a product, the exclusive vendor of that product has you by the yang and cannot, in general, resist the temptation to take advantage of the situation.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
worked in a hospital for 25 years, she tried and was unable to find a doctor who has a problem with
cannabis use.
Folklore has it that RR hand-picked a committee to study MJ and dig up the medical poop on it for once and for all, and their report concluded that the biggest healt hazard of smoking pot was an increased tendancy to smoke tobacco later in life. Funny, if true.
> Actually what you should ask is WHY are we fighting a "War on Drugs"?
Speculating aloud...
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> Would you have felt the same if the relilgion involved was Hindu, Islam, Jewish, or Taoist.
What's going to be funny is when conservative Christians finally get their School Prayer Amendment, and someone stands up at graduation and offers a prayer to Allah, Wotan, or RMS. If you think they're complaining now....
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Because the license expressly says that if the software is running on more than one computer at once. It still has to be 'installed' on your machine. THere is still a 'copy' made in memory on your machine. Hence, distribution. ASP's provide things through their own java/web style interfaces.. under which there is no transfer of actual software.
Great interview! The change from biz-speak droids (like Augustin turned out to be) to speak-your-mind RMS is like a breath of fresh air.
Maybe I should mark the below as offtopic, but...
The problem isn't religious fundamentalism. It's religious fundamentalists. I have (and presumably RMS has) no problem with people who want to handle snakes, or whatever. The problem comes in when they try to force you to do the same. I assume RMS's comment was shorthand for this.
The other item was the end comment about atheism. "No being no matter how powerful can be certain about ethical matters." (emphasis mine and this was paraphrased.
I'm not a "believer". However, even I can see that if you define Entity E as "omniscient" then clearly they must be certain about ethical matters--by definition.
I wouldn't make such a big deal about a logical nicety, except that RMS seems to be basing arguments on this fallacy.
--
Have Exchange users? Want to run Linux? Can't afford OpenMail?
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
I think they were talking about the source to in-house applications - the business support apps the most large businesses have.
This is a very interesting question, because lots of these apps incorporate business rules that the companies would consider highly confidential.
****Warning: The interview below contains mature concepts and strong opinions. It may not be suitable reading for easily-angered readers whose views conflict with Mr. Stallman's****
Was this meant to be funny? It really strikes me as strange that you would say that. RMS agrees to do an interview and you put this warning garbage on the main page...maybe I'm over-reacting here but it seems..well...strange. Sure a lot of people don't like his opinions but so what, to each his own.
So answer this: why do the other 25% think it is a good idea? Doesn't this come down to a tyranny of the majority, where the larger group coerces the smaller group into adhering to the larger group's ideology? If someone claims it is a natural right to copy information freely, how can you prove otherwise?
The largest difference here is that I'm NOT saying I personally met with, and spoke to God - who then spoke back, in English no less, to tell me what to do. I'm saying that things have happened in my life that I simply cannot explain. Good things, at that. I don't buy that it was coencidence, etc. I have faith because of my personal experiance with the devine.
Hey Rob, Thanks for that tarball!
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
Our generation (Generation Net or Generation /.) sees software and digital media in a completely different light.
I prefer Generation Why. There's a half-assed paper about it on my site somewhere...
--
+&x
Let me make my bias clear. I think RMS rocks. Yea, he can be a stubborn, thick-headed asshole, but I think this question defines that side of him the best.
Q: Are there any things that you sort of care about, but not very much?
RMS: Sure, plenty--but I don't argue about those things.
Some other highlights.
I am not affiliated with the Open Source Movement. I founded the Free Software Movement, which has been working to spread freedom and cooperation since 1984, and is concerned not only with practical benefits but with a social and ethical issue: whether to encourage people to cooperate with their neighbors, or prohibit cooperation.
1984, what can you say...hehe. Funny that one of the things will make make sure we don't have a totalitarian regime in the future, was started the same year that totalitarian regime was supposed to take over.
Does the phrase "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff" (I'm thinking of the "GNU/Linux" thing) have any resonance at all with you?
followed by a paragraph long explanation on why you should call it GNU/Linux, hehe. He does have a sense of humor.:)
The DMCA is a perfect example of the harm done when business dominates government and society. One part of the law explicitly says that only commercially significant activities are considered important (to legitimize a program which is often used to bypass technological means of controlling the users)--showing explicit prejudice against educational uses, recreational uses, communitarian uses, military uses, and religious uses.
couldn't have said it better myself, and I've tried (click user info)
So I'm starting to think the guy gets in, but then I realize he's still learning...
I don't play music from files on my computer,
but I've occasionally made tapes of records and given them to my friends.
C'mon d00d, Keep the music flowing! hehe.
We have choices to make now. To insist on absolute certainty before starting to
apply ethics to life decisions is a way of choosing to be amoral.
amen, brother.
--
+&x
Furthermore, the attacks on the "War on Drugs" and conservative politicians in general were completely unnecessary in this forum. The same drug policies have continued for eight years under Clinton's administration -- does that make them ok? The high rate of imprisonment in this country continues under a Democratic administration, yet the implication is that it's the fault of Republicans.
Perhaps you should reread him and reconsider your opinion. Nowhere does he mention Republicans or Democrats or even Conservatives or Liberals. There's not the slightest whiff of a suggestion that one party is better in this respect than the other, or that one ideological wing has been more morally pure on this issue than another.
RMS is an interesting figure, because he's kind of a touchstone. People tend to read what they will into what he says, and react accordingly. Like a Rorsach test. This is ironic that this should happen to RMS of all people because he is particularly forthright and clear in the way he expresses himself. Perhaps this tendency to read him this way is because he is not really aligned with any forces in contemporary politics. We struggle to pinpoint him on some axis that he is idependent of. It's also too bad, because what his ideas deserve attention in their own right.
In any case, he's completely right about the War on Drugs. This war, which we all know has been waged and supported now by generations of Democratic and Republican administrations and congresses, has spawned many egregious injustices. Oh, people are going to jail all right, but not the right people to get the war won. Which keeps the war rolling on for the politicians, left and right, use for political posturing and for the personal gain of their cronies.
In this context, having a proportion of our population imprisoned so large that it can only be compared to dysfunctional and authoritarian societies is nothing to be proud of. Is prison body count the right metric to guage progress?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
They refuse to use banners, though. They are two-line text ads.
They had a questionnaire a little while ago and I said that I wouldn't mind ads, but don't like banners or popups. Appareently, I'm not the only one who responded that way.
RMS: We can also expect to see fierce attempts to catch individuals who use Napster and imprison them. The War on Copying will become more vicious.
And that would be a Good Thing. The French Revolutionaries used to say "The worse, the better." Most people, frankly, don't get too worked up over the oppression so long as it doesn't hit too close to home. (Which is why the War on Drugs is tolerated: it is, in effect, class warfare and most voters don't identify enough with Them to bother.)
Setting aside the ethical dimension, technology has pretty much made a great deal of copyright law unenforcable, which is the real comparison with the "War on Drugs." Data replication and drug use are both going to happen regardless of how much effort goes into stopping them. The difference is that unlike the drug underclass, the beneficiaries of copying have no stake in keeping it illegal (face it, drug laws are a form of price support) and the copiers can't be marginalized.
Efforts to "crack down" on copying will fail, and the more they fail the more Draconian they'll become. Eventually, they'll become enough of a problem for enough people with enough influence that, like Prohibition (and MICROS~1 ?) the balance will tip against them.
Again, this is without regard to the ethics of the matter, both wrt drugs and copying. Some people get seriously motivated by ethics. Others don't. RMS may not like ESR's attempts to get people to do things for what RMS sees as the wrong reasons, but one reason that we have laws at all is to make ethical behavior a prudent choice as well as an ethical one. If that means that some people do the right thing for the wrong reasons, so be it; it beats having them do the wrong thing (except perhaps in some religious sense.) Let's not forget that ESR is also enabling people who want to do the Right Thing but are concerned about the cost.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
No actually. It is the machine, the system, the model which creates tyranny. Do you think business managers get to choose daily whether to be "evil" or "nice" or philanthropic?
Actually, they kinda do get to choose their own actions. It's only a weak person who blaims the system or society or other people on their own actions.
Granted, when you run a company it may be harder to see the consequences of your actions. And as your actions affect more people when you run a multinational, it may be more difficult to act without pissing off (or hurting) someone. However, ultimately the choices you make as a human being are yours--and so are the responsibilities of your actions. That applies to pointy-haired bosses too.
Actually, one of the things that annoies the hell out of me about this whole "GNU/Linux" thing is the fact that a substantial core of the Linux operating system utilities are actually licensed under the BSD (and derivitive) licenses.
And unless I've missed something terribly obvious, BSD is not a subset of GNU.
There are a number of important utilities on Linux which are licensed under GNU. And I would even argue that the whole thing wouldn't have been possible without the C compiler that Stallman wrote. But there are also substantial contributions which were made under other open source licenses.
If putting people and their rights over corporate profit makes you "far-left", then RMS certainly seems to qualify.
In fact, it sorta does.
Especially when you realize that "corporations" are basically groups of people working together under a legal umbrella. Then, "putting people's rights over corporate profit" really reduces down to a question of pitting the rich (corporate managers) against the poor (non-corporate managers). That is, it reduces down to a question of class warfare, and siding with the poor--a traditionally leftist thing to do.
The only problem I have with RMS's view of this (and why I tend to think of him as an Ivory Tower academic with little real-world experience) is the fact that as an academic, he is able to live in a middle-class environment without having to deal with the "real world" of corporations and putting food on the table except in the abstract.
I don't think either of these are a problem; just one of a number of perfectly good ways of looking at things.
And no, "leftist" is not a swear word.
I always find it interesting when people point out the lack of "morals" in our society, usually referring to those who are poor and or do "bad things". It's interesting because this lack extends from the top all the way to the bottom, which most people don't realize. A wealthy businessman can do nearly infinitly more damage with his pen and a contract than can any number of drug dealers with a gun. It's simply much harder to see. A contract is just a piece of paper, it's effects aren't immediatly obvious. A child laying dead in a pool of blood from a driveby shooting is a clear source of anger and disgust.
While you have a good point (that the crooks of our society extend from the poor to the rich in equal proportions), the reason why most of us complain about the poor being crooked is because there are more poor people than rich people--and most of us don't have experience with rich crooks.
Well, my parents design custom homes. And so they (and I) have a lot of experience with rich people.
And frankly your example of a "business man with a pen doing more damage with a poor person with a gun" is a really crappy example. Especially given the fact that rich people are as likely to also use a gun (on partners or spouces), or beat their wives (or husbands) or take hits out or cheat the government or do crack or do all those other sordid things that we normally only associate with the poor.
In fact, I would suggest that it is very prejudiced of us to think that rich people only commit crimes by using a pen.
Furthermore, most of the "damage" done by rich people with their pens, when you really look at it, is not as clear cut as shooting someone with a gun. That is, while we may say it's a "crime" when someone moves a factory to China, is it a crime for those people in China, whose lifestyle previous to that factory was substantially worse? We think a "sweat shop" is bad because we compare the working conditions in that sweat shop to our own living conditions in the United States--but we forget that most of the world, a "sweat shop" is a welcome relief.
Of course it would still be bad if those sweat shop conditions persisted for a generation--but that doesn't appear to be the case, at least in China, where the next generation expects better working conditions than the last.
I'm not saying sweat shops are completely good--though you've (and others) have been feed a line by those in the US who would rather allow the people in China to continue to pull oxen through mosquito-infested rice paddies so we can keep jobs at home (and preserve our own lifestyle). It's just that exporting jobs to third world countries is not as clear-cut as blowing someone's brains out all over.
Trust me: poor people aren't the only ones blowing people's brains out.
The ACLU has been at the forefront of defending student's expression of religious beliefs; for example, in one recent case a school banned wearing of the Star of David because - and I'm not making this up - they classified it as a gang symbol! The ACLU fought and won for a Jewish student's right to wear the symbol of his faith.
On the other hand, if that Star of David were to be displayed by the school as a religious expression, the ACLU would (quite rightly) object.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
(Not, for the record, that I'm a Satanist. I had to explain that just a few days ago to a guy who saw my pentacle earring and didn't know the difference between Paganism and Satanism.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Do you really believe that the reason your incarceration rates are so much higher than ours is because you've got more nasty people? I would fundamentally reject the notion that Europeans are any less likely to be bad people than Americans. Maybe things like higher poverty, greater availability of guns etc. give Americans more opportunity / motive to become criminals, but that is surely a legislative issue and not a social one.
[I misunderstood that for a moment - in Britain, "far-left" neccessarily means anti-democratic :-)]
Wait - those were (IIRC) personal views given in reply to specific questions about his personal views. AFAICT he ain't advocating those views, just stating personal beliefs when asked. Wheras he actively advocates his views on free software. I don't think he's claiming to be a world expert on anti-drug policy, just responding to questions about what he himself thinks.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
"There are ecological definitions of overpopulation, but with a global food distribution system, the earth is
a long long way from overpopulated.
That there are people starving is a situation created by greed and not by lack of food, or means to distribute it."
I agree somewhat. This planet is resilient and food source rich. That the top medical ailments in western society are due to a decadent lifestyle, while the other three quarters of the world lives in uttor squalor is an indication that something is seriously f*cked up. However, an efficient global food distribution system doesn't exist, and most probably will not exist in the near future, if at all. It is obvious we are artificially reducing the quality of life of a humongous percentage of the human population. But we cannot simply ignore it, relying on the planet to "provide" for us. We are entirely capable of continuing to screw ourselves over until some cataclysm occurs. The answer is to move to renewable non-pollutant energy and food sources, and to more equitably distribute the wealth of this planet. With the abundance this planet provides I can't see access to food/shelter/clothing as anything but a human RIGHT. Anything less is a crime.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
"Generation Net or Generation /."
Don't you mean Generation AOL?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
"So tell me: Is it fair for 'jon doe' to have this opinion of Free Software because he had a run in with Richard Stallman?"
Yes, probably "fair", just not "rational". It's a matter of degree. Free Software freaks might annoy you. On the other hand religious freaks have a history of bombing planes, staging military coups, and oppressing people. It's much more rational then to hope they "stagger off into some corner and die", than to wish the same of Stallman. When Stallman pipebombs a bus, holds my relatives hostage, or funds political assassinations, then perhaps I will wish him to stagger off into some corner and die.
Spit out the koolaid man.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Stallman has the right goal, but the open source movement has the right approach. Stallman should get over his emotion about our natural rights. It's bogus and ungrounded. To assert natural rights is to assert some god, and then you're just in a mess of trouble.
Instead, let's see what ethics really boils down to - it all comes to what we, as a society, want. It's that simple. What do we want. How do we want to live. What do we want life to be like? How best do we achieve it? We decide to make murder against the law because it suits us, not because it's "wrong". We don't like it.
Open/Free software is the same - if it creates a more effective, higher quality life for us, then it's good. If not, then not. It's the process of deciding and convincing others what's best that gets us into this useless argument of ethics. What Stallman is really saying, is life what be improved if I could use only Free Software. I think he's correct. But, it is a question of optimization rather than ethics, and the Open Source movement has the better approach.
The same goes for copying music. Does it create a better life if we allow copying of music? On the one hand, it obviously enjoyable to be able to listen to any music anytime for free, but on the other hand, will it mean less music and lower quality music will ever be created? I personally don't think the music will suffer. But, that's the argument we're embroiled in, and it's gonna be a while working it out.
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
I prefer the Open Source tack -- in which the arguments for Free/Open software are based on issues of practicality -- to Stallman's approach, in which he also add socio-politico-ethico-complexo-migraino arguments. When you argue along ethical, political and philosophical lines, your arguments are effective only when the person you're arguing has ethics, politics and philosophy similar to yours. Many people tend to tune Stallman out once he gets beyond the pragmatic issues and into his own socio-politico issues, which smack of the worst kind of grad school sophistry. Rant about commercialization all you want, Mr. Stallman, but this hard-workin' fella would like to keep a roof over his head and chicken fried rice on the table. Not all of us can live off our MacArthur and other awards.
If you want to convince businesses to adopt Free/Open software, tell them how it will be good for their bottom line, and how their workers who have to use the software and the shareholders and customers to whom they must answer will be better served. If you want to convince your average home user that a Free/Open piece of software is better, tell them of the benefits of reliability and trustworthiness that such software provides. If the people you're trying to convince do share a value system with you, you can throw in the social, political and ethical considerations. Doing so when that person's value system is considerably different from yours will only undermine your argument.
What wilderness has been destroyed? Of the land in the US, only 2-3% is covered with cities and houses.
Wilderness has been *increasing* If I remember right, it has gone up over 40% in the last century. How and why? The reason is pretty simple. While our cities are growing slowly, the number of acres of farmland has been dropping precipitiously for decades. Farmland has always required many times the land of cities. We're growing more food with less land by fewer people for less money than ever before in history.
The percentage of the US covered in forests hasn't been higher than in centuries. At the rate we're going, in 50 years, there may be more trees in the US than there have been anytime in the last thousand years.
If this isn't good enough news, there's a lot more. The percentage of rivers and lakes in the US it is safe to fish and swim in has DOUBLED over the last 30 years. Air pollution has dropped by 2/3 over the same time period. And lead has been cleansed from our skies.
In many industrialized nations, the fertility rate has dropped below 2.0. Populations are still increasing though, because old people are living longer. But in a couple of decades there will begin to be a population decline.
There is so much great news to hear, but few people want to say it.
Note how Red Hat ignores the contributions of GNU (the GPL, gcc, core UNIX tools) in their version "Linux History." For someone who watched and played with Linux in 1992-1993, this ignores the major way in which GNU tools enabled Linus and collaborators worldwide to develop Linux. I've talked to the marketing manager personally about this (as an industry professional), and sent a follow-up email with a suggested "80s" timeperiod bullet and got no respose. It didn't make it on the priority list. This is precisely the reason I agree that Stallman's concern is justified. Corporate marketing of the Linux history will continue to ignore the contributions of freedom-oriented pioneers unless customers and contributors complain.
Even if you feel (like I do) that Stallman's attempt to relabel things is impractical, feel free to encourage (nicely) corporate marketing to at least acknowledge the *significant* GNU contribution in their version of 'history' at suggest@redhat.com.
--LP
RMS never fails to worry me sometimes. The Free Software Movement is great, but I always seem to be somewhat uncomfortable with some of his ideals.
"For the Free Software Movement, proprietary software is the problem, and free software is the solution. Free software is often very powerful and reliable, and I'm glad that adds to its appeal; but I would choose a bare-bones unreliable free program rather than a featureful and reliable proprietary program that doesn't respect my freedom."
"I think of right and wrong as based on how what we could do affects other people--the implications of imagining ourselves in the situation of the people our actions affect."
The reason I chose those two quotes is because to me they seem to conflict slightly. Firstly I really have a difficulty with the idea that a proprietary program somehow doesn't respect RMS or anyone's freedom. No you don't have the source, no you don't get it for free, but is that somehow violating your freedom? Let us assume so.
The problem I have is that (well most of the time) in free countries when someone's rights are violated, either individuals or the state steps in to protect those rights that people are entitled to, by either punishing or preventing those whom are violating someone's rights of doing so. Following that ideal, it would seem that often an undertone of RMS's advocacy seems not just to convince people of the value of Free Software, but if possible restore peoples rights by the same means we do so today. That would seem to follow into state enforced Free Software.
This leads to the second line I've quoted. I don't have a problem with Free Software, I also don't have a problem with those who want to create proprietary software and sell it. I believe they have a right to do so as much as The Free Software Movement and Open Source Movement (yes, I recognize there are differences between them) have the right to advocate their ideals. While RMS seems to note that we must always imagine ourselves in the situation of the people our actions affect. This does not seem to apply when the question of his rights being violated would supersede my right (if I exercised this one) to produce proprietary software and sell it.
It all seems to boil down to that line about his rights in the second question I guess. Perhaps I'm misreading and someone can enlighten me.
Perhaps it's the pragmatist in me that is the problem. I can't help but see parallels between the definite and strong feelings RMS has for the Free Software Movement and early those religious settlers in America. They didn't necessarily come for over all freedom, but the freedom to live how they wanted in very definite and strong social rules. Then the parallels between the Open Source Movement and the pragmatic education and government systems America developed into.
First, I admire RMS for being able to always stick to his guns. Let's admit it: there are those of us here who dislike RMS and do not agree with him. There are those who feel he is too inflexible, and that he is doing us a great disservice by being such a zealot. To these people I say, `Are you able to pursue something that's as important to you as Free Software is to Stallman for twenty years without losing your vigor? Are you still willing to fight as hard today as you were when you began?'.
;-)
I am unable to answer either question in the affirmative...yet.
Second: Robin, where are the poster's names? Why was Bruce the only person who received credit for his comments? Does this stem from the Katz-book thing? Can we expect to see only famous people owning their comments?
Did RMS do this?
Third: Though I hate to say it, the more I read about RMS' philosophy and the more I understand, the more I agree. I don't think he's going too far. When one side of an argument goes too far in one direction (UTICA, DMCA, etc), the other side must react in an equally forcefull manner to restore balance. The danger here is going too far after you have won.
Would it have been right for the UN to nuke Iraq after her armies had been destroyed? (Bad analogy, I know, but the only better one I can think of involves Tolkien, and I don't want to go there
In any event, I'm glad the answers have finally been posted. I look forward to the other interviews that are still pending.
Here's my copy of DeCSS. Where's yours?
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
You fail to address the key point:
Is "freedom" placing restrictions on how your code is to be used, or is "freedom" placing no restrictions on how your code can be used?
To me, it's quite clear that the GPL is the most restrictive non-commercial open source license. It may be necessary to encourage software development, at least in some cases, but it no more expands freedom than does putting up "No Trespassing" signs. Obviously, freedom includes the right to put up "No Trespassing" signs, but the signs themselves are a reduction in freedom, not an increase. I'm all for letting people keep others off their property, but not because it's morally "good".
In short, I don't dislike the GPL, but I think it is misleading to say the GPL is about freedom.
Also, your phrase "boycotting non-free software" really gives it away. If it is truly in everyone's best interest, then the boycott is unnecessary. Boycotts are used when there is a product you would buy but you have idealogical or moral objections to some aspect of how it is produced. E.g. No Grapes; Boycott Starbucks until they supply "fair trade" coffee. I don't necessarily object to boycotts either -- I'll never buy anything from Walmart, because I don't like their politics. I don't not buy from Walmart because it's in my best interests to shop elsewhere.
--Kevin
And yet here you are posting to SlashDot. What, do you think that coming here you are avoiding the mass media? Have you forgotten that /. is owned by a corporation? If you are so anti-media why are you even online?
You know it's great when we can pat ourselves on the back thinking that we are so special because we are bucking the party line so much, yet in reality you are just as complacent as the rest of us.
Forget the fact that there are millions of people suffering over absolute bullshit
If you think for one iota of a second that the free software movement has any bearing or relationship to true suffering in this world then you have have your head really far up your ass.
Love,
-Marc
Flame all you want, I'll post more.
You're contradicting yourself. Doing *whatever* I want with my code means, putting a license on it that restricts (or doesn't) it's use with whatever terms I wish. In your world, apparently "whatever I want" doesn't the terms I share code under. Restricting the terms I can release code under to one is certainl limiting freedom of choice, for a communal good, under terms I may or may not agree with.
"Ownership of intellectual property is an illusion, a byproduct of living in a capitalistic system."
Ownership of *anything* is the by-product of a capitalistic system. As an aside, Intellectual property/Copyright are not at all new ideas.
"Copyright laws protect an artificial right"
All "rights" are artificial, period. If you want to appeal to philosophy or religion, there is always another out there that espouses the opposite.
"The original intent of copyright law was to encourage creativity in a capitalistic system by allowing authors to profit from their work for a limited time, not to uphold some sort of fundamental ethical belif."
Supreme court justices with far more experience and historical knowledge than you or I have argued over "original intent" of virtually every piece of the US consistution and continually reargue it. I am sure those that drafted the consitution also held no absolute, unified belief backing the "intent" of the words they wrote.
Regardless, the idea of copyright and the "artificial" right to it are mentioned explicitly. The intent is irrelevant when you are discussing beliefs like RMS's, which intend to throw them way entirely.
"from those who would try to own thought."
My code, my music, and my writing are not "thought". They are creations. As much so as any house, car, or toaster oven designed and built. It may be practical to define different aritifical rules on them given the fact we have the ability to easily duplicate things, but I certainly feel I own my works at least as much as I own my car or land, or whatever physicial possesion I've purchased with artificially valued currency.
"The problem today is that copyright law has been abused to no end"
This is true, but it goes both ways. Witness the DMCA, and in the other corner, Napster.
"In a perfect world without copyrights and licensing, everything would be in the public domain and we would not have to protect ourselves from those who would try to own thought."
Perhaps your perfect world. If everything were in the *public domain* - this would mean there is no resitriction/condition on distribution at all - such as releasing source code or crediting authors.
"RMS is concerned primarily with ethical issues, and that is a Good Thing(TM)"
I certainly respect RMS's views, and the fact I think he truly believes he's fighting for what's right. Of course, I do get sick of seeing endless posts about the benefits of destroying copyright from people who have written no "significant" amount of code, written any music... What most people really want is free beer, and have nothing to contribute.
"Whether or not we can follow his philosiphies today is not as important as recognising that his belifs are fundamentally good. Only then can we hope to see a world where there is no need for copyrights."
I think we can at least agree on his intentions being fundamentally good.
In a world without copyrights, we're going to need to convince authors that people using their creation for purposes they may consider annoying, offensive, or even harmful is palettable. Not likely to happen. Additionally, we're going to need to find a way to economically support the very sizable number of people on the planet who make their livings through the (now fairly old)existence of copyright and intellectual property. The only solution proposed by RMS that begins hinting at the tip of the iceberg here (no, please don't tell me advertising and co-sourcing by buisness will do it, even if we're just talking about software) is a "Software Tax" levied on all hardware sold and then distributed to developers. Extending this idea to all IP is going to be one hell of a tax, and whew boy, deciding who gets what out of it is going to be quite a doozy, even assuming whatever institution was going to handle this was completely free of corruption. I think you'll then find all the free beer advocates dissppearing in cries of "I don't want to fund that! Just let me pay for what I want to support and don't force me to subsidize the creation of all sorts of junk I have no use, or interest, in contributing to!"
Open source software is a good thing - I'm glad the movement has picked up steam, and I'm glad to have contributed to it. I find it an unfortunate that with virtually every philosophy or idea, some must always stand and shout the THIS way is the best way, the only way, and the way everyone should (have) to do it. I'll do it my way, thanks, and respect your choice as well.
As many others have already mentioned, there is a difference between quoting the bible and leading prayer in a PUBLIC school. This should be more than obvious.
As for counterexamples of extremely conservative christians being defended:
In Capitol Square Review Board v. Pinette, 63 U.S.L.W. (June 29, 1995)(7-2), the Court upheld the right of the Ku Klux Klan to place a cross in a public park bordering the statehouse in Columbus, Ohio. As the majority noted, the park was a traditional public forum that had long been used by residents of Columbus for all sorts of speech activities, including the placement of other religious displays during the holiday season. Under these circumstances, seven members of the Court concluded that there was no violation of the Establishment Clause in allowing the Klan display. Significantly, however, five members of the Court, reaffirmed that the appropriate Establishment Clause question is whether a reasonable person would perceive that the state had endorsed a religious message, expressly rejecting the effort by four members of the Court to further dilute the constitutional standard governing the separation between church and state. The ACLU supported the Klan's free speech rights in this case.
There are of course, many, many others if you wanted to take the time to scour through their history.
Of course, your perception is understandable, as the ACLU does deal with Christians more than any group in fighting for the seperation of Church and State. There are of course many possible reasons for this, but I think the largest variable is accounted for: There are more "Christians" in this country than any other group. Not very surprisingly, the dominating religion comes up in these sorts of cases more often. If the dominant faith in America were Muslim, it'd be pretty obvious.
I think he was specifically addressing the perspective of ethical relativism, e.g., people that believe that what is right and wrong depends upon circumstances and/or social, cultural, political, and other perspectives as they exist in a particular time and place. When you say "right" and "wrong", there is an implied moral/ethical dimension. As a counter-example, tea preference is a bit unsatisfying because it lacks this dimension, so you may want to reconsider this objection.
It is not clear to me that Stallman is even against "relativism" per se. His comments about China and copyright protection, in conjunction with his evasiveness concerning the ability to apply basic tenets of the GPL in other areas, seem to me to show some ethical relativity as it relates to circumstances such as place, time, use, and so on. Specifically, he says, "The ethical issues about copying and modifying works depend on the kind of work and how people can use it."
I read this as basically saying that, when there is a moral dimension to a question and all the circumstances have been accounted for, there is one and only one "right" or "most moral" answer. Furthermore, you will never know if your answer will correspond to the "right" one. Despite this, the "right" answer is NOT whatever answers to life's moral questions you come up with when your not coding.
All and all, I think RMS is a fine role model, not only as a programmer but as a human being. It is unfortunate that with all the intelligent people that read and post to Slashdot, that there has to be a warning posted on his responses. Warning: Herein lies a post that might challenge you or get you thinking about things differently than you currently do. Does this really require a warning?
If it does, what warning is it really giving? The warning that perhaps we are so far gone that we cannot tolerate discussions that go outside a limit bounds of agreement or well-worn dichotomies? The warning that "freedom" has come to mean thinking the cage you live in is big and free enough for your needs? And should be good enough for the next person too?
Other postings here suggest that Stallman scares off business users who might otherwise embrace the open source concept. That's what I was referring to.
Stallman's best legacy will be the development of the GPL, but not for the reasons he planned.
Agreed.
Stallman, as others mentioned, is the last remnant of the AI Lab culture. That was a strange world. I saw the tail end of it at Stanford in the 1980s. As others have pointed out, the big four AI labs (MIT, Stanford, CMU, and Xerox PARC) had the heavy thinkers (McCarthy, Minsky, Feigenbaum, etc.) and all those guys bombed. AI their way just didn't work. The second-level people, stuck in supporting roles and often without advanced degrees, meanwhile made video games, Emacs, networking, and word processing work. Nobody really expected that, although DARPA's Information Processing Techniques Office, to its credit, encouraged it when they saw that good stuff was happening. The "free software" culture came from the insistence of DARPA IPTO that the labs share results and code.
Also, I totally agree, I read that line and thought, "oh thats real cute. Nothing like a little note that essenstial says 'if you might disagree with this and feel strongly enough to comment on it, you just shouldn't read it.'" Hello? This is a discussion forum. The people who might disagree and even get angry are exactly the people we want to read and post, otherwise, what's the point?
Basically, it seemed like a way to pre-emptively dismiss those people who would differ with the interviewee, and I think is was insulting and tacky.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
I want free beer. I deserve free beer. Any company that has the audacity to charge me for beer is evil, and needs to be taken down. Non-free beer imposes on my rights. In fact, I would rather drink free watered down piss than non-free beer.
As an american, it is my right to free beer. This is why I am starting the Free Beer Movement. Help me take down the evil companies and governments that would charge you for beer.
and so are you. Wishing doom on people who don't share your idealogy is as much as a sign of intolerance as the opressors you seem to be scaring everyone with.
Stallman does not stand for many people and those many like it that way. We can think and decide for ourselves what is good. We don't need a spokesman.
...is the ability to do things. Often we exchange the ability to do one thing, in exchange for the ability to do another.
Now, if a software package works really well, but I can't hack it, I exchange my freedom to hack it for increased productivity. That increased productivity is also freedom. The ability to copy and hack is not the only freedom that matters.
Until someone convinces me otherwise, I'll continue to discount the idea that there is any moral weight to the Free Software movement's arguments concerning freedom.
Now some will say that software is speach. But if software is speach, then GPL'd software is really just politicly correct speach--the party line as it were, since every GPL'd package must contain the GNU rhetoric in the preamble. I certainly don't see anything morally superior to that either.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
God, I hope not. Poor man! Nobody deserves that.
I have a feeling that his ideas of right and wrong are entirely subjective. Even if you claim to be looking effects to other people, you still look from your own eyes. This is problematic, and unavoidable.
I think you're conflating moral subjectivism with epistemic subjectivism. The fact that you're looking through your own eyes does not mean that there is not an objective truth to the matter. It means that your understanding of that truth is subjective. RMS states as much: Unfortunately, there's no way to place to get complete certainty about what's right and what's wrong.
That's a long way from saying that right and wrong are themselves subjective notions, like "tasty" and "icky".
From a philosophic standpoint, RMS's views are rather weak. His natural rights argument, while practically plagarized from Locke, fall apart quickly when questioned (i.e. What natural right to life does a man have who is drowning in the ocean?).
Natural, in this context, means "inherent", and all moral argument (as with rights) is directed towards moral agents, which the ocean is not. By your reasoning, we have scarcely any basis to make ethical pronouncements at all. What does it mean to have a law against killing someone, when a bear eats him? I'm no Lockean, really, but I'd have to say arguments for natural rights are a bit more robust than you give them credit for.
Rights are really just conventions created by modern liberal thought.
As a fairly red-necked conservative, in most people's eyes, I disagree. Classical liberal thought, perhaps... libertarian, we'd call it these days. Modern liberals don't much hold with the right to keep and bear arms, for instance, or your right to conduct your economic activities as you see fit.
His proclaimed athism also tends to conflict with his rejection of relativism. If there is no God, where does his basis for judgment come from? Natural moral sense decays under questioning in a universe without God. Without God, one must make a personal judgement, which is w/out authority. This is the foundation of relativism.
Not at all. To say moral truths cannot exist without a God is like saying that mathematical truths or physical truths cannot exist without a God. There is no contradiction inherent in saying that the wrongness of murder is simply an aspect of the universe, for instance, like gravity.
Anyway, even traditional Christian theology often has made God the curator of morality, rather than the author. Plato's great question, "Does God love the good because it's good, or is what's good good because God loves it?" divides up Christians neatly into Divine Command and Natural Law camps. (Uh, oh... I'm starting to repeat myself from former posts! Sure sign of ranting!) Catholicism, for instance, says God loves what's good because it's good, thus making good again Natural, and God's existence ancillary (my words, not theirs!). Though be warned, IANAC. :-)
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
I disagree. I found it delightful to finally get him to speak of his beliefs and of larger philosophical issues, because frankly I've heard all the free software stuff before. There's only so many things to say, and so he tends to repeat himself.
This forum was open to ask the man any sort of questions, and we did. Many of them were personal. And anyway, you can't really divorce the issue of free software from its ethical context.
First, by associating himself with left wing causes such as these, he immediately alienates those who might not share his views on them.
He generally does not tie his free software politics to his more personal views. I, amongst others, asked him specifically about his personal views. And I, for one, was not alienated, though I sit on the other end of the political spectrum. I was glad to hear him speak his mind, rather than say something boring and inoffensive.
Interestingly, he once criticized a free software paper of mine because it used a gun control analogy. The disagreement was not with the issue per se, but rather that a controversial topic simply creates un-necessarily creates division where none should exist.
If this were a paper on free software, I'd criticize him for bringing unnecessary baggage to the table. This was an interview.
The second problem is substantive.
The second problem is not a problem. This was a forum for him to answer questions, not to have to defend his answers. That you (or I) feel his views are wrong is beside the point.
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
Your concern is noted, and appreciated. I, for one, have been wailing and gnashing my teeth, stripped of the glory that was rightfully mine. When folks like you care, it sheds a little light into the darkness of our despair, it makes the cruelty of the world easier to endure. Thank you.
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
I also dislike his attitude of "if two people disagree, one of them is wrong". This is totally against Hegel's dialectic principle in which I am a firm believer, and in fact it smacks of pre-Renaissance thinking which is odd since Stallman is certainly *trying* to be a Renaissance man.
Maybe when he gets relativism his views might improve in quality.
--
It's a
-- Danny Vermin
You're operating on the particularly American assumption that political views are strictly linear (right & left only):
Criticising the War on Drugs => Leftist => Democrat
This is simply not the case, and I would argue that if we could just get over this mindset that we only have degrees between 2 extremes we could solve many of our problems.
FREEDOM? what freedom is stallman giving us?
it's my right to start a corporation, make as much money as I want, give away my software for free, or release it under GPL.
stallman wants to gain the public's attention by stealing art, and claiming it's free speech. If our society was based on knowledge, it would be a GREAT idea.
if giving music away for free was such a GREAT idea? why are 75 % of the artists pissed? Because it's violating their RIGHTS! Something stallman sees as OK.
BTW stallman doesn't care about money because he gets large $$$ from the college he works at.
it doesn't matter, though, because arguing with slashdotters is like arguin with a fucking Brick wall.
Providing a remote interface to a locally run piece of software, and distributing the software via a network filesystem, to be run remotely are different beasts.
From a philosophic standpoint, RMS's views are rather weak. His natural rights argument, while practically plagarized from Locke, fall apart quickly when questioned (i.e. What natural right to life does a man have who is drowning in the ocean?). Rights are really just conventions created by modern liberal thought.
His proclaimed athism also tends to conflict with his rejection of relativism. If there is no God, where does his basis for judgment come from? Natural moral sense decays under questioning in a universe without God. Without God, one must make a personal judgement, which is w/out authority. This is the foundation of relativism.
Actually, ASP's do distribute. If multiple users using a cental fileserver with Word on it are counted for licencing purposes as having had the product distributed to them, what difference does it make if the server is hundreds of miles away? If someone can use a product to do work then that product has been distributed.
I may be foolish but I can't see even the most out-of-touch judge supporting the idea that an item can be used by many people and yet not have been distributed to those people.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Why do people always forget GCC?
The GNU folks have done considerably more than just write a text editor.
"What RMS is really talking about is mandatory disclosure and a fixed $0.00 price tag on software."
I don't see where you get this from Stallman, and I don't think he'd agree with it. Mandatory disclosure, possibly. The right to reverse engineer and share, certainly. But a fixed $0.00 price tag has never been part of his philosophy, as far as I can tell.
These are subtle issues, so we need to be really careful when discussing them. Where RMS says, roughly, "if someone rejects my values, there's really nothing we can argue about," he is roughly describing any axiomatic system--for instance mathematics or formal logic, where an axiomatic system is used for clarity (well, some people think it is a religion, sullied by human issues such as clarity). I think he had such a well-thought-out answer for the 'values' bit because he is a careful, thoughtful, deliberate person.
So--mandatory disclosure doesn't jive with freedom, so I don't believe he'd advocate that exactly (IANRMS?). After all, the GPL doesn't propose to force full disclosure for Microsoft's code, unless this code is derived from GPL'd code (which is where copyright law comes into play, deciding what is a derivative, and whether the copyright holder has any power over the derivative). My right to analyze and share publicly distributed information, whether or not I paid to receive that information, is very much about my freedom. And the price bit is a red herring--the GPL doesn't require 'gratis' software.
RMS is trying to analyze and solve a really hard problem, accomodating freedom within a social structure. I don't think anyone has really solved this yet, especially the USA with it's rather inhumane economy (I am a US citizen, and I feel I can adequately justify this statements).
-Paul Komarek
I've had a few run-ins with RMS myself. He's blunt and outspoken by nature, and it's easy to have disagreements with him. However, I'm not particularly ashamed to admit that he's been proven right over time much more often than not, and even if I didn't care for his style I'd be foolish to to ignore that fact.
If you read that interview carefully (and also pay attention to what goes on), you will note that he does not reflexively take the positions that one would expect. For example, when Corel decided to distribute their Linux beta only to people age 18 and up, he jumped in, all right -- squarely on the side of Corel (Corel is not obligated to distribute their Linux to anyone they don't want to, and they weren't restricting downstream distribution). I think he's actually quite careful and measured in what he says. I won't claim that he's diplomatic, just that he thinks carefully about what positions he takes and is very precise in his language.
I won't say that it's "fair" or not to have a low opinion of free software because of personal distaste for RMS, but I think it's very superficial to do so.
There is a big difference between saying that the GNU project "exists" now because of Linux and that it is "so big now" because of Linux. GNU basically owes it's existence to RMS and whatever forces consipired to inspire him to form GNU. To suggest that something which came in to existing 7 years later could be the cause of it's existence is disingenuous in the extreme. Certainly Linux is probably the best poster boy that GNU has to herald the concepts of free software. However, there were other projects before that (gcc in particular comes to mind) which were also quite huge, and indeed without which it's quite possible Linux would not have happened.
That being said, the real contributions of GNU to the Linux kernel are a) all the handy pieces of the Unix puzzle which were made available to Linus and the world at large, and b) the GPL, the use of which even Linus believes was probably his smartest design decision with regards to the Linux kernel. I think it's not hard to argue that those two pieces of the puzzle EASILY represent a more signficant contribution to the movement than the kernel itself.
To suggest that if the "early Linux users had not found GNU they would have hacked their own tools." shows blatant disregard for the magnitude of the situation. For starters, GNU tools were used to BUILD Linux, so there wouldn't be a Linux for users to use without them. Additionally, without those tools, there would not have been a whole lot that that users could do with just a kernel to stare at. One could point to the BSD code base but for the fact that at the time it's "freedom" was severely tainted and people didn't want to come near it. Finally, I think both the BSD and the GNU guys would point out that the extensive set of tools that they built represents signficantly more work than an OS kernel. Indeed, the last time I checked glibc alone was signficantly larger than the Linux kernel.
Finally, you are missing your point about the whole GNU/Linux controversy anyway. The whole point is not to get people to trumpet GNU's horn. The GNU project's work was always meant to be a tangible mechanism to talk about free software, and GNU is trying to keep it in that role. Currently, people easily talk about Linux without talking about free software, and THAT is why GNU is trying to trumpet the GNU/Linux name scheme more than anything else. Indeed, I think the majority of GNU code is actually not RMS's, so it's hard to describe it as his work.
I do agree that it's likely a doomed effort because it's not achieve the kind of grass roots support which is necessary for that to happen.
sigs are a waste of space
Methinks you miss the point. RMS has never been the leader of the Open Source "movement". He's not interested in that. What RMS advocates is Free Software, and that's a different animal (though they look the same on the surface)entirely. To put it simply:
Free Software is, by definition, open source. It also gives you full usage and reproduction rights, and prevents those rights from being taken away.
Open Source software is not necessarily Free. The source is available to StarOffice - it's Open Source software. But try downloading the code, changing a few text strings, then selling it as "FooOffice". Sun's lawyers would slap the taste right out of your mouth, you'd be hit so hard. And rightly so. Were StarOffice Free Software, this would not be an issue. Sun would not have the right to stop you from doing that.
Open Source is definitely a Good Thing, and useful. I'd rather see Open Source software with commercial restrictions than see closed commercial restricted software. But Free Software is the ideal that RMS has always been striving for - and Open Source is, at best, just a step in that direction. Remember, with people like RMS and his ideals out on the "fringe", it turns ESR and the rest of the Open Sourcers into the mainstream. And that's good for us all right now. Just a couple of years ago, Open Source itself was the "wacky fringe". How far we've come in just a short time!
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
There is a finite amount of resources on this planet. If we don't kill ourselves off with pollution first, we will eventually run out of space. This is a simple fact.
Also, most people would like to preserve some wilderness. Whether it be for recreation, aesthetic reasons, ethical reasons, or all of the above... It is hard to preserve natural areas on an overcrowded planet.
In addition, you say "more goods and services" are a good thing, however if this were true rich people would be the happiest people, and I don't find this to be true.
Why, I'm glad you asked that. Right here in Portland, Oregon, the ACLU has been defending conservative Christian streetcorner preachers who loudly declaim at the corner of Pioneer Courthouse Square in downtown Portland. The management of the square, a non-profit with a sort of exalted city-blessed status, shooed them away from time to time and even had a couple of them arrested. The local ACLU has been helping defend them in court. I applaud this as an ACLU member. Their speech is annoying and foolish, but it is wholly protected and the square is public space.
-------
Bill Gates Is My Evil Twin.
Troll? Someone moderated this as a troll? Ha!
Did it frighten you for someone to question your assumptions like that? Was the cognative dissonance making your head rattle?
No has yet given a satisfactory rebutal, only given reductio-ad-absurdum examples that are irrelevant to the axioms that I'm questioning.
I'll rephrase: assuming natural rights are real and not a fiction invented to justify that which is arbitrary, how is the right to share information less valid than the right to have ownership of information? Are either of these "natural rights", and can you support that arguement?
Trust me, I've read it. I read the drafts of it. I argued with a bunch of lobbyists about it. It's not as disastrous as it might have been. It's still a horrible law.
First of all, no, users do not "still have the right to crack software they have lawfully purchased". Not in general. They can do it to reverse engineer for interoperability, they can do it for certain research in cryptography. They can't do it just for their own convenience.
Secondly, even the permission to do it for interoperability is screwed up. Take DVDs. You can analyze CSS to figure out how it works, for the purpose of creating a DVD player app. You cannot actually distribute the app... the exception applies only to your own circumvention, not to the separate provisions on distributing tools. Not only that, but you can't actually use your crack to watch DVDs... you can only try to figure out interoperability.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, the anticircumvention provisions are also bad in that, once you've put in place a measure to protect your copyright, you can start using it to enforce other restrictions that break fair use. Take CSS again. It's illegal to crack it because it prevents copying. It also enforces region coding. DVD producers have no legal right to tell users where they can play the disks... but, under the DMCA, users can't bypass region coding, because that requires bypassing the CSS, which is also a copy protection scheme, and is also protected.
There are lots of other practical problems with the DMCA... like the fact that it outlaws trying to reverse the encryption on a virus to figure out how it works. These things often look "fair and reasonable" until you actually think about how they can be applied.
Umm, what? This had nothing to do with the question at hand and can be considered a blatant political plug. He wasn't asked about his political affiliation or what his views were on Bush; he was asked what he would do once, if ever, software was all open sourced and he had the opportunity to enter into another career path.
Not to be a face in the croud, but slashdot does seem to be getting more and more political. Naturally, it'll happen with a large body of people, but with politics and religion come hostilities. That's not desired.
-------
CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I have to agree with RMS about the possibility of a "War on Copying" - in fact I used that very phrase just a few days ago in another discussion. And I'd anticipate that strong anti-copying laws would be even less effective that the anti-drug laws that are violated by about thirty million Americans per year.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
> All he did was spew a cultlike agenda the way all good cult leaders do.
:)
Let's review the facts here.
From the skeptic's dictionary:
"Three ideas seem essential to the concept of a cult. One is thinking in terms of us/them with total alienation from them."
RMS has publicly admitted that ESR/OSS does some good things, thereby creating a gray area. Every member of FSF knows and regularly associates with people who are not members of the FSF.
"The second is the intense, though often subtle, indoctrination techniques used to recruit and hold members."
Text is not intense, no matter how big the font.
"And the third is the charismatic cult leader."
RMS is not very charismatic. ESR is more charismatic than RMS. And Linus is a nicer guy than either one, though I think ESR is more charismatic, and has a more dangerous agenda than RMS, though that's a different post.
What makes some people prefer GPL over OSS and proprietary is not that they like the guy that drafted it, but that it appeals to the morals and ideals that they already had even before learning about GNU.
Simply because my ideals are not a subset of your ideals, assuming perhaps prematurely that you have any at all, doesn't make me a 'lemming'. Maybe instead of calling me foolish without justification or qualification, you should raise a question on the specific way in which you think RMS is duping people.
Or maybe you should go troll somewhere else.
As usual, this has gotten out of hand.
One shared point between Free Software and Open Source software has become more commmonplace in recent years: the releasing of source code to at least certain types of applications. Yeah, Microsoft doesn't give out the source to Word or Excel, but you can get the source to Quake, Descent, an entire OS, C compilers, window managers, device drivers, etc. And that's a good thing. Other times, software is given away in a "free as in beer" way, and that's also a good thing, though some people get very down on it. A student who has to use Windows and would like to work on some projects on his own can get Borland C++ free of charge. That's better alternative than any of the "free" compilers available for Windows (gcc and lcc variants).
Then we get into the whole "We need to be saved from evil businesses" line. The Free Software guys are very extreme about this. The Open Source guys are less so, promoting the collaborative development side of things. There are two things that jump out here.
The first is that, overall, free/open software has been out-done by non-free/closed commercial efforts. I know, I know, the Linux kernel is cool. Ditto for Apache. But in general, gcc is destroyed by Metrowerks and Borland, XWindows interfaces are beaten by Microsoft and Apple, The Gimp doesn't begin to approach Corel Draw or Photoshop, and nobody's come even close to developing a compelling or innovative free/open game (unless you consider a zillion Tetris and Asteroids variants to be compelling). Some halfway decent stuff comes along occasionally and many people fool themselves into thinking they've outdone mighty corporations, but they're scattered victories from skewed perspectives.
The second is that no one has even begun a good attempt to create a business-free computing environment. Wait, that's too wishy-washy. No one *wants* to have a business-free computing environment. There's much hoo-hah about MP3s and Napster and the big bad music industry--stick it to the man--but in the fan-boy computer biz people want multi-million dollar corporations developing toys for them: Pentium III, Athlon, GeForce, Voodoo 5, Soundblaster Live, optical mice, 72GB hard drives, etc. As a result, much of the ranting about GPL and so on is pointless, because nobody wants to get rid of businesses any more than they want Hollywood to stop making movies.
I suspect most developers feel this way; not everybody is an 8-hour-a-day code monkey, just in it for the paycheck, but at the same time, you gotta eat and pay for the DSL line and the AirPort Base Station serving it to your machines. (Er, in some cases.)
RMS is content with remaining on the frontline of the free software fight, and I can't help but admire his ability to remain committed to what many consider a pointless fight (I can't even commit to what I'm going to have for lunch -- pisses off the people in line behind me daily). Other companies (Microsoft, NVIDIA, Sorenson, etc.) prefer the money-making at the expense of personal freedom and satisfaction, i.e. being able to look through the code for a neat hack and saying, "oh, so that's how it's done!" I plan to try and walk a line somewhere in between. I gave to the EFF and complained to my state's leaders about UCITA (MD passed it anyway, bastards), but I could no more get rid of my Macs and their proprietary software than I could quit my job supporting them and live off the land. Anybody else feel they're in a similar position?
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
RMS may not be the most ... diplomatic ... individual alive today, and his viewpoints are far from popular. His diatribes may indeed drive the mainstream users and corporations away from the FSF and away from Open Source as a movement, both as users and contributors.
...or at least the proletariat, as it were.
...or one of you. Pragmatism shouldn't always take a back seat to principles.
...but he does fight for what he believes in, unabashedly and boldfacedly. In doing so, he's winning a few friends and more enemies, but he's also pushing for political and social change for what he perceives as the greater good.
I don't agree with everything that Stallman says, and I don't believe that he's taking the most reasonable path to his goal (or even pushing for moderate change), but in being inflexable and combative, he's pushing for freedoms and benefits which benefit us all, ultimately.
I think that RMS is extreme and abrasive, but I'm damn glad he's there, fighting for what he believes in. If he weren't doing it, then I might have to.
No. Freedom is me getting to do whatever I want with my code, including selling it to whoever I want at whatever price I want with whatever conditions I want.
Yes, freedom means that you can do whatever you want with your code, but it doesn't meant that you can tell someone else what they can and can't do with that software. Ownership of intellectual property is an illusion, a byproduct of living in a capitalistic system. Like RMS and the US legal system say, Copyright laws protect an artificial right. The original intent of copyright law was to encourage creativity in a capitalistic system by allowing authors to profit from their work for a limited time, not to uphold some sort of fundamental ethical belif.
The problem today is that copyright law has been abused to no end. It is now a tool for those is power to try to control and own information. That is wrong. They have launched propoganda campaigns in an attempt to convince us that violation of copyright law is "theft" and "piracy" and is the equvalent of a felony. That is just untrue.
Right now I would also like to state that I consider the GPL a necessary evil. Yes, it does force restrictions upon the use of the work, but it is our only weapon against those who would try to take ownership of the work. In a perfect world without copyrights and licensing, everything would be in the public domain and we would not have to protect ourselves from those who would try to own thought.
However, I do sympathise with you in that RMS's approach is quite radical and idealistic, and unfortuntely doesn't do much to help those working in the "real world". That, I feel, is the gap that Open Source fills. While RMS is right in saying that Open Source alone is not what we should be ultimately striving for, it is a step in the right direction. Free Software is not applicable to the current economic situation like Open Source is, but one also has to realize that RMS is not trying to address economic issues. RMS is concerned primarily with ethical issues, and that is a Good Thing(TM). Whether or not we can follow his philosiphies today is not as important as recognising that his belifs are fundamentally good. Only then can we hope to see a world where there is no need for copyrights.
thePsychotron
Life is pain. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.
One could take much more radical positions. For example, Lawrence Lessig proposes that copyright law be changed to make copyrights on software expire much sooner, perhaps in five years. Now that's a radical position. In some quarters, it would be viewed as a blatant taking of private property by state action. Stallman is nowhere near that radical; he just wants to give away stuff he, and people who agree with him, create.
What scares people about Stallman is that he's effective. He's a good programmer, and people use his free software. He's figured out a way to make his world of free software slowly expand, by carefully engineering the General Public License. With the rise of Linux, multibillion dollar companies find their market share threatened by products that sell for nothing and can be worked on by anybody. Stallman has found a way to change the world for the better, and some people don't like that because it threatens their profits. Tough. Closed-source vendors can compete with free software, but their stuff has to be better and cheap. They hate that.
Stallman's answer to this question Q: Are there any good case studies of large corporations opening up proprietary in-house source code? deserves to be read carefully. If what he says is roughly right, we're watching a very interesting change right now. What's happening is that a movement based on particular principled ends (of the kind that Stallman advocates) is getting repackaged and sold to companies as a new and effective means, ie a better way to turn a profit. It's interesting that RMS is now typically criticized for being past his time, etc. There's a predictable pattern to many social movements of this sort: they begin with prophetic characters like Stallman who have a radical agenda, and then gradually become co-opted and assimilated to existing institutions like corporations and the market. A key moment in this shift is when people stop arguing for an innovation like Open Software on principle and start arguing for it in terms of self-interest. Like Gresham's law, the bad arguments drive out the good, and pretty soon what seemed like an additional benefit of a principled idea becomes the main reason for supporting it. It'll be interesting to see in 15-20 years whether anyone argues for Open Software from a principled position, as Stallman does. My money says it'll become integrated into how corporations and markets work, and justified as a more effective way to make money. I get the feeling that many Open Source advocates (like Eric Raymond) aren't aware that this is happening.
They allow copyright owners to restrict the mere running of a program--but only if some sort of hard-to-bypass license manager or access control enforces the restrictions. The freedom of free software means that even if we did put such artificial restriction into a program, the user could easily bypass them--and that's a good thing! But it means that new legal power is not available for use for copyleft.
It's all in the interpretation of the DMCA. In fact there are provisions already in place within the very sections that prohibit "circumventing a technological measure", that take into account 'fair use' when refferring to a users freedom...
For example: `Sec. 1201. Circumvention of copyright protection systems
`(a) VIOLATIONS REGARDING CIRCUMVENTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL MEASURES- (1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. The prohibition contained in the preceding sentence shall take effect at the end of the 2-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this chapter.
Lower there are provisions to allow the copying of these works for nonprofit archival, preservation, and educational purposes; etc in sections C.
In fact in section (f) which you don't really hear about that often because people are yelling about how evil the DMCA is, it says:
`(f) REVERSE ENGINEERING- (1) Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a)(1)(A), a person who has lawfully obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program may circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a particular portion of that program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, and that have not previously been readily available to the person engaging in the circumvention, to the extent any such acts of identification and analysis do not constitute infringement under this title.
The DMCA seems like a reasonable and fair document if you actually read it, it *already* takes into account most of the things people mercilessly bash it for not having. It seems like from what I've read users still have the right to crack software they have lawfully purchased and I see nothing wrong with having to pay for a product. I'm not really sure if giving someone a copy of software is fair use though, if you let someone borrow a book you no longer have the book, software can be reproduced indefinately with exact copies.
Anyway here are the offending sections.
"we can expect to see the record companies purchase new laws...". This whole thing (open source vs. sell-your-soul source) is looking to become the next revolution. Personally I can't wait, we need something to shake things up. Society needs a fundamental shift in its view of things. Only a true revolution can bring that about. It goes along with what Stallman is saying about morals as well. They are defined by the society in which they are constructed (whoa I think that was circular logic there). Our generation (Generation Net or Generation /.) sees software and digital media in a completely different light. Open source seems, IMHO, to be a positive step in the right direction. It's just gonna be scary, for some people, accepting that as the new way of looking at things. That whole fear of the unknown thing.
Well, I think you've killed that straw man dead.
Note that nowhere does Stallman advocate "mandatory disclosure and a fixed $0.00 price tag on software". He does not speak of laws to "do away with the markets". You've fabricated this out of thin air.
What he is advocating is that users of software do what is in their own best interest (which RMS believes is to use Free Software). This is in fact using the free market (by boycotting non-free software), nowhere close to trying to legislating it out of existence.
A point that he did not directly make is that companies are users of software, too. Most companies use a lot more software than they produce. And so, by his argument, it would follow that it is in the best interests of most businesses to use free software as well, so that they could have control over its use and freely modify it as necessary. So free software could be good for the economy as a whole, even while bad for software compaanies themselves.
"I believe that the cult of the particular brings only death - for it bases order on likeness." St.-Exupery
I did a quick search...
From the following case:
A DEWAYNE OLDHAM v. THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION OF TENNESSEE, INC.
No. 3-93-0472
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE MIDDLE DISTRICT OF TENNESSEE, NASHVILLE DIVISION
849 F. Supp. 611; 1994 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4974
An excerpt from the Judges ruling:
"[*613] In early May, 1993, the ACLU sent a letter to Tennessee public school officials. The letter stated, in part, that the Supreme Court's recent decision in Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. , 112 S. Ct. 2649, 120 L. Ed. 2d 467 (1992), precluded all speakers, including students, from leading prayers at graduation ceremonies. The letter further stated: "Please understand that if your school system does sponsor prayer at its graduation ceremonies and we are contacted by students and their families, we will most likely pursue litigation." Exhibit No. 1 to second amended complaint (filed October 25, 1993; Docket Entry No. 38). "
Granted, there is a lot of wiggle room here based on what "sponsors" and what "prayer" are meant to say. There were a couple of other cases in the news local to Cincinnati here where student led prayer was challenged by the ACLU.
I am not trying to slam the ACLU in general. I think they do for the first ammendment what the NRA does for the second ammendment, and I think both organizations are extremely important to our nation. I _want_ them to be a little nutty on defending the extremes, just to protect the middle.
I just wish they would treat conservative Christians with the same extreme views with which they treat everyone else.
I would be happy to listen to any counterexamples. Surely there is a case somewhere where the ACLU defended the rights of a conservative Christian to share their personal belief system in a highly public forum...
Bill
Mathematically impossible requirements are technically not against policy.
Calling the whole system "Linux" leads people to think that the system's development was started in 1991 by Linus Torvalds.
and later on
I ask you to call the system GNU/Linux so you can help inform the system's users that it exists because of the GNU Project's idealism.
IIRC the GNU's website has an entire page (actually it is several screenfulls) arguement for Linux being called GNU/Linux, and these statements are sort of contradictory to that. On a side note I would call it GNU/Linux if it had spread from the community and not RMS shoving it down everyone's throat. How could anyone deny that Linux was started in 1991? The GNU project and Linus were not working together. According to your own arguement RMS, people started using the kernel Linus built and then they wanted tools so they could use it everyday, and it was not accident that they found the GNU project. Previously and until HURD is ready to be used prime time, the GNU's only obstacle was a kernel. The GNU project exists (well is so big now) because of the Linux kernel, not the other way around. If the early Linux users had not found GNU they would have hacked out their own tools. But I think everyone can agree that downloading source and compiling is a lot easier than roll your own. I think you need to stop shoving "GNU/" down the throats of everyone (BTW it should be Linux/GNU since the kernel is before the programs) let GNU stand on its own feet, I think you'll be suprised at what happens. Everyone (well the smart ones) know that the smart hackers, coders, aren't out blowing their horn all day (maybe to their friends) to the world, only the idiots do. The idiots have something to hide, their skill is not good enough to deserve praise. Well I think the GNU movement is a good one, but hell if I'm going to give it to you if your trying to force it on me.
I think this is a misreading of the DMCA. The protection measure does not need to be "hard to bypass". People think that it does because the DMCA talks about measures that "effectively protect" rights of copyright holders... but if you look at the text more closely, you'll discover that "effectively protects" is redefined to mean nothing that any rational person would recognize.
A measure "effectively protects" something if, in the course of its normal operation, the measure enforces some kind of policy. It doesn't matter how trivial it is to bypass the measure... it's still effective by this definition.
I think (IANAL) that you could very probably enforce the DMCA against anybody who tried to bypass (say) a makefile hack that e-mailed any modified source to the FSF whenever it was compiled. It's that broad.
Perhaps Stallman should come down from his throne and spend a few months actually working in law enforcement. Perhaps he should see the kind of cruelty and callousness exhibited by elements of our society. Perhaps then he wouldn't be so quick to complain about high rates of imprisonment in the U.S.
Yes, there is something wrong in America, but it is not a legislative problem as much as it is a social one. Parts of our collective culture have given up the Golden Rule. It's not a religious issue (I happen to be an atheist, too), it's a common-sense rule for a society to function.
I always find it interesting when people point out the lack of "morals" in our society, usually referring to those who are poor and or do "bad things". It's interesting because this lack extends from the top all the way to the bottom, which most people don't realize. A wealthy businessman can do nearly infinitly more damage with his pen and a contract than can any number of drug dealers with a gun. It's simply much harder to see. A contract is just a piece of paper, it's effects aren't immediatly obvious. A child laying dead in a pool of blood from a driveby shooting is a clear source of anger and disgust.
Did the poor create this world? Of course not. It was those on top, wealthy, or with political power, or both. That doesn't let anyone off the hook "morally" but one poor person doing drugs does way less damage than, say, the CEO of nike who likes to brag about how cheap they can make their products overseas in their slave labor shops.
At least RMS tries to do something positive that helps everyone. Apparently this is some sort of liberal (or, obviously communist) conspiracy. That word "community" is just too clse to the word communism! No, I think you miss the big picture of social issues. RMS's view is academic compared to yours, as people like you limit your view to whats on the street, whats on the surface. In law enforcement though this doesn't really suprise me, thats how the job works. Law enforcement has as much to do with the bad conditions in many parts of this country as the drug dealers and others do, from corruption and oppresion to a nearly fascist police state. In that respect, our problems are very much legislative related as much as they are social.
> Furthermore, the attacks on the "War on Drugs"
> and conservative politicians in general were
> completely unnecessary in this forum.
I disagree.... slashdot is a discussion forum, not
a purely technical one (not even a mostly
technical one). Discussion of politics and social
issues are definitly relavent...especially in an
interview.
> The same drug policies have continued for eight
> years under Clinton's administration -- does
> that make them ok? The high rate of imprisonment
> in this country continues under a Democratic
> administration, yet the implication is that it's
> the fault of Republicans.
Which, in my mind, goes to show that there is very
little, if any, real difference between the
Republicans and the Democrats. Lately, I have been
refering to them, collecitvly, as the
"Republicrat Party", which is split into 2
factions, which hate eachother for no real reason.
As for the war on drugs, I have to agree with the
people who have said it is a "religous war". It is
the only context in which it makes sense. Any
practical view of it shows that it is an utter
failure. It has not reduced use, or supply in
any real way. In fact, current day drug
prohibition, is a failure in ALL of the same ways
as Alcohol prohibition of the 1920's.
In fact, in an interview, the head of the DEA
advocated bringing back alcohol prohibition, and
stated that he believed it could be done within
"the next 10 years".
However, I digress. yes, there are social problems
here in america. Our legislative problems just
amplify them. You can't legislate away a social
problem, yet time and again, our society tries
to do just that. (the war on drugs is just 1 set
of examples)
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
RMS complaining that one of the evils of the world that should be fought is religious fundamentalisim? Heee Heee...
RMS is the strongest religous fundamentalist I have ever had the pleasure of hearing speak, and anyone who does not see the dogma in his open source philosophies has not thought them through(IMHO).
I have plenty of respect for RMS, though I don't agree with much of what he has to say. I have plenty of respect for C.S. Lewis also. They are both religious fundamentalists, with different belief systems.
I would love to join the ACLU, but not until they stop their bigoted prejudices against people of faith. If a validictorian senior wanted to quote Nietzce in her speech, the ACLU would be defending her to the death. If she wants to quote the New Testament, they would have her for dinner. I believe she should have the right to quote either.
Anyway, Christian Dogma, or Open Source Dogma, I don't see much difference in methods, and I think both should be afforded the same constitutional protections.
As a side note, when RMS spoke in Cincinnati, he spoke at the beginning of his speach spoke of how women are unfairly repressed both professionally and by the institution of marriage. Half way through the speach, when he was handing out M&M's to the audience, when he got to an attractive woman he made her eat them out of his hand if she wanted them, while everyone else got to grab them from the bag. The whole thing made me feel very uncomfortable, I can't imagine how she felt.
This kind of behaviour would get you fired under existing sexual harrasment guidelines in any US company. Apparently, his personal behavior is currently at a lower standard the US legislated laws. RMS is welcome to do whatever he wants in his public speaches, but I am just as allowed to call him on it in public forums.
These are just my opinions based on first hand experience. Feel free to post your own opinions based on YOUR first hand experience. I am not looking for a flame war, believe it or not.
Bill
Mathematically impossible requirements are technically not against policy.
In some post long ago, someone called RMS a 'kook' for standing up for freedom. I replied that maybe he is crazy, and maybe I am too, and that if standing up for freedom means being crazy, then that's fine.
I hope those of you who seriously detract from Stallman's ideals do so only out of some bitter need to put other people down, or for pure trolling fun - you MUST understand that if you don't stand up for yourselves, or support the people who stand up for you, you will lose. You will lose everything from the right to pick what brand of peanut butter you eat to the right to call Stallman a whacko.
If commercials on television don't revulse you, if you can't see the social conditioning inherent in modern advertising, if the idea that someone might tatoo themselves with the NIKE symbol does not make you ill and sad, then you're already lost.
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
This Stallman guys is off his rocker! What's next, a big building full of books that people can borrow for FREE?!? That would instantly make all publishers go out of business!
And what other crazy ideas does he have? I'm sure that if he had his way, scientists would actually _share_ things they discover with other scientists! Don't you know that that would lead to?!? Lifesaving medical advances and the technology to reach the stars! Do you want to live in a world like that?
Praise the Force Field! Praise the Laser Project! Slackware Loon #19830573
The last set of questions about morals was a very good one. I believe this points directly to RMS' beliefs and why so many agree/disagree with him. I think (I may be wrong) that RMS has a very strong definition in his own mind of what right and wrong are and these beliefs revolve around a "do good unto others" belief. I believe others (Eric Raymond perhaps) have their own views on this along the lines of "do no harm unto others". Mind you "harm" and "good" are definitions dependant on each individual. The points seem to be the same but lead to markedly different approaches to life. I believe these are age old philosophical points. While, in relative terms, using these arguments in software is new, the points raised are old. I don't think these arguments will ever be settled. And I think a student of philosophy would do a great deal of good to contibute to this discussion. I am not a philosopher, but I can recognize the need for one in here.
Thank you to everyone who replied to this post. There were some very valid, well-reasoned points made. I would like to clarify a few of my statements.
First, I am glad that the mention of the Second Amendment did not immediately generate into a pro-gun/anti-gun flamefest. I only intended it to be an example of the ACLU's "selective enforcement" of the Bill of Rights. My own view is that we NEED organizations like the ACLU and the NRA who are known for no-compromise, even extremist stances. When rights we DO care about are threatened, these groups become our friends.
Second, I am neither suggesting that Stallman is a Communist nor that Communism itself is evil. It is a system of government. That's all. It happens to not be the system of government which the United States has chosen. From a pure political science standpoint, the US is a representative democracy with some elements of socialism (i.e. welfare). Furthermore, I do not take the breakup of the Soviet Union as proof that Communism cannot work. One could argue that the system which the Soviet Union employed fell short of the Communist ideal. China also aspires to a Communist system and is still around.
I should point out that my degree is in political science with a minor in criminal justice. Before finding my true calling in software development, I did work in the criminal justice system.
As a result of my experiences, my view on these matters is different from the opinions Mr. Stallman expressed. From my perspective, Stallman is, frankly, a little naive.
The statement about more people being imprisoned in the United States than in communist Russia means very little by itself. We are supposed to draw the conclusion that the US system is therefore more repressive than communist Russia. There is no real evidence on which to base this conclusion, however. You are comparing two very different systems of government with very different levels of individual freedom. Communist Russia was known for "re-education" of people who disagreed with their political philosophy. At various times, people who opposed the people in power were simply executed (rather than imprisoned). Prison conditions in Russia were nowhere near as bearable as they are here.
Having worked with these "repressed" imprisoned individuals, my own conviction is that we have too many people breaking laws in the United States. This is not the fault of the laws, but rather the people. There is a subculture in this country in which going to prison is expected -- kids grow up visting their dad on Tuesdays and their uncle every other Thursday. They expect to be on the other side of that plexiglass themselves someday.
One may argue that we should change the laws to make fewer things illegal. Again, having been there, I am convinced that the majority of people imprisoned SHOULD BE.
(Or, as Richard Pryor once said after visiting a penitentiary, "Thank God we got penitentiaries!")
Regarding drug laws -- I am not in any way convinced that legalization of drugs will reduce imprisonment numbers. While alcohol is legal for many, a huge number of people end up commiting harmful acts as a result of their alcohol consumption. The same applies to currently illegal drugs.
I would happily accept drug legalization as long as people are still held responsible for their actions when they take the drugs. If you commit a murder on PCP, you get locked away for murder. Under such a system, I very much doubt that we will see a net decrease in prison population. The increase in drug use will very likely cause an increase in other punishable offenses. This will offset the decrease in possession/distribution offenses.
(Side note: FWIW, I think marijuana is a less dangerous drug than alcohol. Drunks want to fight. People who are stoned just want to eat and be your friend.)
Again, I highly respect Mr. Stallman and think he has done as much for software developers than any single individual. I just can't align myself with his social views. This is based on my own life experiences and probably doesn't mean anything to anyone else.
Sorry for the length of this post.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
In all seriousness, I had no idea that RMS was so ideologically aligned with the far-left in this country.
I agree completely that there is no shame in supporting the efforts of the ACLU to preserve the freedoms enumerated in the Bill of Rights. However, the Second Amendment is one of those freedoms and the ACLU chooses to ignore or "interpret" it in a such a way that it becomes meaningless. Therefore, painting the ACLU as the Grand Defenders of the Bill of Rights omits a pretty important detail.
Furthermore, the attacks on the "War on Drugs" and conservative politicians in general were completely unnecessary in this forum. The same drug policies have continued for eight years under Clinton's administration -- does that make them ok? The high rate of imprisonment in this country continues under a Democratic administration, yet the implication is that it's the fault of Republicans.
Perhaps Stallman should come down from his throne and spend a few months actually working in law enforcement. Perhaps he should see the kind of cruelty and callousness exhibited by elements of our society. Perhaps then he wouldn't be so quick to complain about high rates of imprisonment in the U.S.
Yes, there is something wrong in America, but it is not a legislative problem as much as it is a social one. Parts of our collective culture have given up the Golden Rule. It's not a religious issue (I happen to be an atheist, too), it's a common-sense rule for a society to function.
I respect the work of Stallman. I use and will probably continue to use the GPL. After reading this, though, I see the point of those who criticize him as a stereotypical ivory-tower liberal academic. He simply doesn't see the big picture with regard to social issues.
Thank you for the GPL, Mr. Stallman, but I can't in good conscience align myself with your view of the world.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Huh??? Maybe you would like to spend a couple of years living in a village in Bangladesh, or in a slum in Bombay? (I think not.)
I guess I'm not used to seeing blatant trolls starting at +2...
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
I also believe strongly in the underlying battle for fundamental civil freedoms and rights behind GNU, and certainly see the distinction between that and Open Source.
Unfortunately, while I rage against the machine (and donate generously to the ACLU and the Libertarian party), I also see it as an inevitably losing battle - I'm becoming more convinced by the day that humans (at least Americans) simply don't truly want freedom - they want to be bounded and "safe". Folks say they want freedom of speech until some KKK member says something they don't like - then it's all about how we need new laws limiting hate speech and whatever else they don't want to hear. Folks like property rights until their neighbor parks some trashed pickup in their front yard - then it's all about how we need new laws restricting what people can do with their property.
It's really not about big business, though I wish it was. It's really about fear people have that somebody else will get a better deal than them, and how to stop that from happening. You could blame the record companies for the rash of new lawsuits and restrictions on freedom, but frankly they can do that because most people just don't care. Freedom is just not an important issue for most people, those of us for whom it is a big issue tend to stand out on some lunatic fringe.
The Open Source movement, while emasculated from a moral/ethical/rights point of view, is at least crafting a message that is getting heard by more folks because it caters to their greed rather than a hope that they will care about freedom and what a lack of it might mean to them in the future. But, it's certainly not the same message that RMS is trying to convey - which ultimately is a far more important message.
Please Rate my comment (and help support Fre