Re:Then Why Are We Seeing the Same Negative Effect
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Debt Deal Reached
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· Score: 1
Unless the revenue amounts to less than the payments on current debt then even in the case where they refuse to take on more debt they still have the income to make those payments and avoid a default.
So it might be better to say:
the only way for the US to default on their debt is if they "choose" to do so (in this case by refusing to pay their creditors out of existing revenue)
Software patents, and in fact all patents, are one of those 'fetters' on capitalism, not part of capitalism. Intellectual property, such as it is in unfettered capitalism, is entirely enforced in contracts and keeping secrets secret.
You're right, he did build it therefore he really should know better than to make such foolish comments. But since he apparently doesn't know better I too hope he's reading Slashdot so he can read the grandparent's correction.
I think Z00L00K was saying the time for code reviews is after all the automated stuff already checks out. Obviously you shouldn't waste co-workers' time reviewing code that you already know needs more work.
Can you imagine? Your ISP decides to give you a new prefix and you'd have to program it into your switches so they can talk to the right lightbulbs again.
You shouldn't be accessing them by IP address. You should be accessing them by service instance name, and that's under your control (and has reasonable, human readable, factory set defaults). Zeroconf takes care of the details of figuring out the hostnames and IP addresses for you.
Altruism is also donating to charity, generally helping those less fortunate, doing any "good works" without expectation of recompense (monitary or otherwise), sustaining risk for the betterment, or protection of others... etc..
Not the way Rand defined it. If you're donating to a charity that you think does good work then she'd call it self interest. The recompense for the donor would be that the charity is able to do more of the work the donor thinks is good.
As I understand her definition, basically anything that promotes whatever an individual values is 'self-interest.' If you understand the definition she's using it's easy to see why she'd see being altruistic as evil, because by her definition is basically wasting resources on things that are worthless, or destroying something that's valuable for no good reason.
You know, the whole thing about what Randroids say about altruism and self-interest Randroids, is the result of them defining altrusim and self-interest differently.
They'd use the term 'altruism' to describe hurting a loved one because someone you don't know or care about wants them hurt. They call it 'self-interest' when an empathetic person gives money to a total stranger in need.
The references to God aren't really necessary to the argument. It might as easily begin "We take these truths to be self evident," but whether the source of the rights is taken to be God or something else, as long as the existance of the rights Bastiat posits is accepted then the argument should hold together.
Nor is anarchy necessary. In fact The Law points out that as long as law is restricted to its rightful purpose the form of government is immaterial. (Of course, as a practical matter the form of goverment is important because the different forms have different characteristics in terms of how likely they are to try to restrict law to its rightful purpose and to what injustices they are prone.) So it may seem like it's advocating anarchy, since it places an outer boundry on law (which has probably been far exceeded by every nation ever) and only gives passing reference to an inner boundary, but I don't think it's incompatible with other forms of governance.
In this case I don't think there's really a problematic dichotomy between laws that permit the use of force to keep some information secret and laws that mandate some information not be held secret. It's true that in some cases they are mutually exclusive and that one might identify the law taking neither side as anarchy, but I think it's an invalid equivocation to take the improbability of complete anarchy (the law remaining silent on every issue) as an argument against the law remaining silent on one particular issue. And that's what makes The Law important, it tries to identify and argue for a particular conception of when laws are okay, and on what issues the law should remain silent, leaving the advancement of those issues to institutions other than force.
On that note, I recomend reading the whole thing, because the arguments rely and build on each other. It's longer than a typical article, but it's a really tiny book. Perhaps a kindle version would make the read more comfortable. However here are some sections that I think contain particularly relevant or important conclusions and bits of the argument: "What is Law?" "How to Identify Legal Plunder" (when he talks about taking things that belong to someone, don't think in ephemeral terms like 'information,' instead think in concrete physical terms such as 'the book in which a novel mathematical proof has been written,' or 'the money of a fine levied against someone refusing to publish source'), "Law Is Force," "Law Is a Negative Concept," and "Law and Charity Are Not the Same"
That's a good point. You'll notice that we do in fact have police raids over piracy and reverse engineering cases. Why should we advocate the elimination of such injustices if we're only going to replace them with more of the same?
Just in case you haven't already read it: http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html#SECTION_G002
A lot of people accept fines and such as a more benign form of coercion, but it's really no better in principal. Especially in this case, it should be clear that this is simply trading one problem for another of the same kind; how shall the fine be collected, if the man refuses to give in to threats?
Of course in practice most people do give in to threats so the results aren't as grisly and people who support it can sleep at night, but it's really no different than when people give up their wallets in the face of muggers' threats.
While I might see a benefit for it in the realm of books, I'm not convinced the same arguments applicable there can be also applied to software. You're welcome to convince me otherwise.
Here's the thing, I don't want to convince you otherwise because I don't think copyright is relevant. In the case I described earlier, of an individual offering binaries to passersby from his porch, it is not copyright that is protecting the source from distribution.
Think about what copyright actually does for a moment. Copyright says that a person who holds a particular expression is prohibited from duplicating it without permission, with the intent of addressing the perceived incentive problem for original authors of such expressions. That is, copyright applies when the act of duplication is physically possible but perceived as harmful. Copyright is irrelevant to my story about porch distributed software for two reasons, first because the act of duplication is not physically possible and there is therefore no one to exercise this freedom that can be prohibited from doing so. Second, because the fact that the man on the porch is the copyright holder isn't really relevant to my point. Imagine that he is not the author, imagine instead that he got the source code from a friend, and then the friend forgot about it, and then died, with no heirs, 100 years ago so it wouldn't be covered by copyright anymore anyway. Despite this lack of copyright protection we still have a man distributing binaries to software of which he is in sole possession of the original source. You may argue that he is despicable and mean spirited for failing to distribute the source, but you can't argue that someone wishing to obtain the source need violate no rights but copyright.
I also believe this whole thing to be an issue of the copyright law because simply changing the form of the work doesn't make a new work. That is, compiled code is still that hidden source code even though it's in a (less)convenient form for the users.
Why even include the change in form? Imagine that we both possess copies of the same work in the same form. Does the fact that I have a copy mean you have no right to withhold your copy from me? Whether a mathematical proof we both printed out, or a book, or an art print, or a piece of software, why should I have to get your permission in order to access the copy in your possession? Why should anyone have to obtain the permission of the man on the porch in order to access the copy of the source in his possession? What I don't see is what the need to obtain such permission has to do with copyright.
Perhaps you'll agree with me that it is absurd to deny that such permission is necessary, but then we come back again to the only other remedy I can see: prohibiting the man from passing out disks.
That is, it's not by denying freedoms [...] that we should try to secure freedoms for the users. And mandating software to be free does not do that - it doesn't compromise RL freedoms.
It seems to me that such a prohibition would be a clear violation of a 'real life' freedom, indeed, of a real life right; free speech.
Ah, here we are. For some reason I wasn't seeing this post when I wanted to reply earlier. Here's the reply I wrote:
Your answers seemed pretty black and white to me. I'm glad that you at least don't advocate prohibiting people from obtaining programs for which no source is available (i.e., you don't advocate prohibiting people from obtaining 'unapproved' software). I had been hopeful of receiving a similar answer to the other question; that, while you might feel it's less than morally upright to give away software without giving the source as well, no crime is being committed so really social pressure is the only way to handle it. Instead you went full bore and said that not only does an original author have no right to withhold source from anyone to whom the binary has been provided, but that a law prohibiting such withholding would be just (Bastiat's The Law is critical reading on the subject of just laws). Clearly you don't believe in natural rights, so just what is your theory of rights? With all your talk of laws perhaps you're a legal rights purist or something?
The two actions you mentioned for dealing with the above crime were 1) viral copyleft and 2) copyright reform. I've already mentioned that I have no argument with the GPL, at least in terms of the mechanism it uses (voluntary agreements), but I don't get your second recommendation at all. As far as I can tell copyright is entirely beside the issue. For example imagine a software developer on his porch offering disks containing a software binary he's created to passersby while the source exists only as encrypted data on his private computer. He's making no use whatsoever of copyright, so how exactly is this deviant behavior to be corrected?
I only see two ways for the law to force him to behave 'correctly.' Either he's prevented from handing out disks, or stormtroopers break into his house to 'liberate' the source on his computer. You mentioned something about not stopping people from exercising their freedoms in order to guarantee other people their own, so I guess you don't want to stop him from handing out disks. So can I take it that you'd opt for the home invasion solution? This is pretty much exactly what I was thinking when I suggested earlier that your position was more akin to voting in favor of a police state than against it.
Random replies to statements I recall were made in the (deleted?) post:
Really, how you can argue that what this developer is doing is like punching someone (who? Everyone in the world I guess?) in the face is beyond me.
Whether you (mis)label it 'monopoly' or just 'respect for property rights,' I do think it's critical to a society free and prosperous for all. I think history (think French and Soviet revolutions) supports me on this.
Something about 'distributism'. It sounds pretty much like capitalism to me except that it tries to distinguish itself by hoping that property will be pretty evenly distributed. So basically the same as free-market capitalism as understood by most free market advocates. It is definitely different from socialism and crony capitalism though.
You mentioned an article that I guess you wrote, 'Pay Per Patch: A Free Software Market Model.' Seems like a fine idea to try. You should start a business providing the service.
Hmmm, I saw a reply to this earlier but I don't see it any more. I'll just have to respond to it from memory.
Your answers seemed pretty black and white to me. I'm glad that you at least don't advocate prohibiting people from obtaining programs for which no source is available (i.e., you don't advocate prohibiting people from obtaining 'unapproved' software). I had been hopeful of receiving a similar answer to the other question; that, while you might feel it's less than morally upright to give away software without giving the source as well, no crime is being committed so really social pressure is the only way to handle it. Instead you went full bore and said that not only does an original author have no right to withhold source from anyone to whom the binary has been provided, but that a law prohibiting such withholding would be just (Bastiat's The Law is critical reading on the subject of just laws). Clearly you don't believe in natural rights, so just what is your theory of rights? With all your talk of laws perhaps you're a legal rights purist or something?
The two actions you mentioned for dealing with the above crime were 1) viral copyleft and 2) copyright reform. I've already mentioned that I have no argument with the GPL, at least in terms of the mechanism it uses (voluntary agreements), but I don't get your second recommendation at all. As far as I can tell copyright is entirely beside the issue. For example imagine a software developer on his porch offering disks containing a software binary he's created to passersby while the source exists only as encrypted data on his private computer. He's making no use whatsoever of copyright, so how exactly is this deviant behavior to be corrected?
I only see two ways for the law to force him to behave 'correctly.' Either he's prevented from handing out disks, or stormtroopers break into his house to 'liberate' the source on his computer. You mentioned something about not stopping people from exercising their freedoms in order to guarantee other people their own, so I guess you don't want to stop him from handing out disks. So can I take it that you'd opt for the home invasion solution? This is pretty much exactly what I was thinking when I suggested earlier that your position was more akin to voting in favor of a police state than against it.
Random replies to statements I recall were made in the (deleted?) post:
Really, how you can argue that what this developer is doing is like punching someone (who? Everyone in the world I guess?) in the face is beyond me.
Whether you (mis)label it 'monopoly' or just 'respect for property rights,' I do think it's critical to a society free and prosperous for all. I think history (think French and Soviet revolutions) supports me on this.
Something about 'distributism'. It sounds pretty much like capitalism to me except that it tries to distinguish itself by hoping that property will be pretty evenly distributed. So basically the same as free-market capitalism as understood by most free market advocates. It is definitely different from socialism and crony capitalism though.
You mentioned an article that I guess you wrote, 'Pay Per Patch: A Free Software Market Model.' Seems like a fine idea to try. You should start a business providing the service.
Well perhaps you could at least answer a couple of the questions I asked earlier:
If someone chooses to publish a binary to their original work without publishing the source, is that okay with you? If not what should be done about it?
If someone uses a binary for which no source has been published is that okay? If not what should be done about it?
Not a quasi-freedom of denying other people their freedoms, no.
So what do you think about the freedom to prevent people from using a binary for which the source is not published? Do you think it’s okay to stop people from using those binaries?
There isn't a contradiction, it's simply a matter of priorities. People are free to withhold publishing the work if such act would compromise their privacy.
So if someone sees publishing the binary as not reducing their privacy but publishing the source as doing so I guess you’d support them publishing only the binary? Or is that yet another contradiction?
There are people who view EULA's as invalid agreements, since noone is actually signing it for the sake of receiving a software copy
That’s fine, for the sake of argument I’m only considering agreements made up front. Those other issues are beside the point.
Yes it would, as free software alternative would have less motive to be developed,
Lack of motive is not an obstruction; there is not a thing that imposing a restriction. There is simply no one who cares to do. If you care then nothing’s stopping you.
or that same piece of proprietary code could've itself been free instead.
Right, but they didn’t so you either use violence to make them open-source their project or someone has to redo the work.
Or I want all people to have equal freedoms, rather than satisfying for black boxes. Yes, you're right. To make an analogy, I would, given an opportunity, vote against some big brother law, or a police state law, while others might find it great to live under such law, having their "practical" needs met, or simply not knowing anything else / any better.
Another bad analogy. Arguing by analogy is usually not successful since often making such analogies requires the other party to take things for granted for which no argument has been presented, and also because analogies almost universally have flaws. In this case you’re talking about voting when it's not clear that voting is analogous to what you’re advocating, you’re talking about a police state forcibly imposed on everyone (regardless of their vote) when that’s not actually analogous to allowing someone somewhere to create proprietary software, and more flaws besides. Come to think of it, your analogy could be marginally improved if you switched it to say you’re voting in favor of the police state, but the analogy would still be bad.
All evidence speaks to the contrary. Eg. you refuse to recognize reciprocity as good.
false. it’s good when someone contributes to an open source work and makes their contribution open source.
And while you defend author's "right" to take away freedoms
You mean deny, not take away, and yes because the alternative is that an author can’t deny others the ‘freedom’ to get onto the author’s computer and take unpublished work, whether that’s the whole work, or just the unpublished source to a published binary. It's not 'a matter of priorities,' the two are absolutely mutually exclusive.
, you argue against of a right to take away "the freedom" to take away freedoms (no, i'm not giving up on this terminology just yet).
In fact I have explicitly acknowledged that it’s perfectly okay for an author of an original work to say that people can only make derivatives if they allow others the same access to the derivatives (and make the same demand for 'reciprocity'). I don’t think you could have gotten the idea that I think otherwise from reading anything I’ve written.
You didn't answer my comment about the contradiction between the four GPL freedoms being rights and people having a right to not publish their work. Are people free to not publish their work (or to only publish it partially, or to pick and choose who they send it to based on who voluntarily agrees to what conditions), or does that violate everyone elses' right to use the program (and to exercise the other GPL freedoms)?
which is why I, despite the current law, call it taking freedoms away
What does law have to do with it? I'm not talking about software patents or anything. I'm talking about whether it's okay or not for an author to choose not to send their work out, or to make decisions about when and to whom they do the work of distributing their program. This is purely about voluntary agreements, not laws.
My argument is that precisely because of the existence of proprietary software, you often may not have free software (alternatives) - eg. graphics drivers come to mind. The obstruction I'm talking about is the old-world model of "granting" or even selling licenses (which take away freedoms) pretending there's scarcity where there isn't.
I might accept software patents as an obstruction to free software, but your answer here isn't correct. In cases where there's no free software alternative to some proprietary software, the lack of the free alternative is caused by the proprietary software adequately filling demand. That is not an obstruction.
Lastly, why is using non-free software worse than nothing at all? Because if there wasn't proprietary software, you would either have a free software version, or nobody would.
Right, so what it all comes down to is that you don't want other people's demand for software to be met unless your demand is met as well. You prefer that everybody do without rather than allow other people to have their demand met while yours isn't. This isn't because other people want to have and prevent you from having the same, it's because other people have lesser demands and once their lesser demands are satisfied there just aren't enough people with your higher demands to actually justify the resource expenditure* of meeting your higher demands.
You might find Frederic Bastiat's The Law and Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson enlightening.
our differences stem from different views on the importance of freedoms.
It's not the case that you view freedom as important and I don't.
*assuming you don't think it's okay to break into the original proprietary developers' computers or force them to open source their work, which would not require much resource expenditure.
You simply didn't. Your argument was that since your contribution is free, you're not responsible
Given that I don't have any problem with people producing proprietary derivatives I don't acknowledge that there's any 'responsibility' to be assigned for it. Really there's only 'credit' to be handed out for any good projects, free or proprietary.;)
if others use it to create software which *denies* certain freedoms to their users (maybe that terminology better suits you than "taking away" freedoms, given that you do not see freedoms as rights, but as privileges granted by the monopolist). You are responsible, since you allowed this.
Yes, labeling that as denying freedoms is a more accurate way to put it (in that it is accurate while "taking away" is not at all accurate).
About this 'freedoms are only privileges granted by monopolists' comment; you are being disingenuous. The monopolist here is the person producing the work, and the freedoms are the four freedoms protected by the GPL (I'll focus on the first, the freedom to run the program for any purpose). Do you believe that that freedom is a right, and that the 'monopolist,' as you so charitably put it, is violating someone's rights if he does not agree to make his program available to them to use? If so then that's a contradiction with your later assertion that
privacy trumps hypothetical [ . . . ] social benefit from such code.
So, no, I don't believe that the four freedoms are rights, and I believe that someone who produces a work is within their rights to provide their work only to people that have agreed to whatever preconditions the producer cares to make, whether those are the terms of the GPL or a proprietary license or anything else.
(and I believe you know which are 4 freedoms), however, I'd like to point out that you're confusing the original with the derivative here.
I'm not confusing the original with the derivative, I'm the one making that distinction, which I will do again: When a proprietary derivative is developed not one of those four freedoms is taken away with respect to the original because the original is still free software, and not one of the four freedoms is taken away with respect to the derivative, as those freedoms didn't previously exist. Of course you've already amended the claim from 'taking away freedoms' to 'denying freedoms,' and I will readily admit that proprietary software denies freedoms (but that no rights are violated).
You assume that we would miss something by not having software that denies most of the freedoms.
Safe to say.
But not having _some_ proprietary software is better than the current situation.
Hard to say, unless you count the existence of proprietary software as bad in and of itself (in which case the whole argument becomes circular I think).
Any lacking software is sure to be replaced
Possible, but not actually a sure thing. The question isn't if a given innovation could be reproduced in free software, the question is would it be.
Free software would fill the missing holes instead of being obstructed as it is now. Fact is, we are missing free software we'd have had it not been for proprietary software schemes.
Quite possibly, but free software isn't actually being obstructed at all, people are simply choosing to do other things.
You can't say that a world where everyone acts according to this would be a worse one because it may momentarily lack some software.
One thing I appreciate is that, to the best of my knowledge RMS has never once advocated using any kind of force or aggressive violence to coerce anyone into making their software 'free' (by his definition). Instead he's done this thing with the GPL where his agenda is advanced when p
You contribute to a project that takes freedom away from its users.
Except this is the premise that I already refuted in my earlier post. That post explains that no derivative of a BSD project can possible take anyone's freedoms, and that it's not like enslavement at all. It's not like saying 'I only provided guns, I'm not responsible for the murder.' It's like saying I didn't provide any guns and the murder is only your hallucination.
You need to point out what freedoms exactly are taken away when someone creates a proprietary derivative work from and open source project. The fact is that the original code can't be close-sourced by a derivative and therefore all the same freedoms are available.
The only way to claim you are 'less free' is if you use a definition which has absolutely untenable implications. That is, you say you are less free when proprietary software exists because you are comparing your freedom in that case to a counter-factual where the only difference is that that proprietary software is open source. Besides the fact that such a counter-factual is not always valid (i.e., the software may not have been developed at all if the option to make it proprietary wasn't available), if you count such counter-factuals then you should count them all (or at least explain why only this one counts).
And counting other counter-factuals brings us to the terrible contradiction I alluded to in my earlier post. You must conclude that people choosing not to write software makes you less free, and if you think it's okay to use force to defend freedom then the terrible contradiction is that you can enslave people (literally, chain them to a computer and make them write open-source software for you) to make people more 'free.'
you BSD guys just don't see non-free software as evil
Right, because it's not. If someone creates proprietary software I'm no worse of than if they had created nothing, and in fact I may be better off. Even if I only use open source software I'm no worse off because proprietary software doesn't stop me from making or using free alternatives. On the other hand you say
It's better not to have proprietary software at all: Software will be substituted eventually
which literally means you believe that not having the choice to use a proprietary product doesn't take any choices away! And then you go on to say that having that choice actually takes choices away!
while having non-free software would just postpone that with freedoms lost in the meantime
The GPL requires that whoever you give the code to - in source or binary form - is just as free to use the code as you were.
But the original code is going to remain open no matter what happens in terms of derivative works. This is as true with BSD as with the GPL. So the GPL is not about making sure other users are just as free to use the original code as someone who's created a derivative work. It's about making sure they're as free with the new code as they are with the original.
The distinction is important because it shows that the extra freedom in the BSD license does not make anyone less free. No derivative work of a BSD licensed work can take any freedoms away from anyone because the worst case still leaves the original code as open source, as available to anyone as it was to the author of the derivative work. The BSD license in no way allows for previously available freedoms to be eliminated. Anyone that could do anything with the original work before a derivative is produced is still able to do those same things with the original afterwards.
Further, you liken the creation of a proprietary derivate work to assaulting and enslaving people, which is ridiculous, to say the least. I've already explained that creating proprietary derivate works doesn't make anyone less free in any real sense, but are you suggesting here that the rightful remedy to proprietary software is the same, at least in kind if not degree, as for assault and enslavement?
Also, the GPL only requires derivative works to be licensed under the GPL if they're distributed. But doesn't code that's not distributed at all make people 'less free' in the sense you used, in precisely the same way as propriety derivative works make us 'less free'? That is, other users have more choices if a derivative work is distributed as compared to if it isn't, even though doing the opposite doesn't actually eliminate any previously available choices. So wouldn't it be good if the GPL not only required derivative works that are distributed be licensed under the GPL, but required any derivative works whatsoever be distributed, and to be so under the GPL? That increases freedom in the same way as requiring that derivative works be GPL licensed.
One of the practical downsides that clearly result from the GPL is that licensing a work under it will mean that when someone would like to create a derivative work but can't or won't comply with the GPL for whatever reason, they must find some alternative. They can create their work from scratch (or deriving from some non-GPL work) or they can choose not to produce anything at all. We are not better off if a derivative work is not produced from a GPL work when the derivative would have been produced had the original been BSD licensed (or public domain or whatever). In that case we are worse off, and 'less free' in the sense you used.
If you believe that proprietary software really is like assault or enslavement then we can address the lack of freedom caused by people choosing not to derive GPL works by using the same remedy as for assault and enslavement; laws, fines, regulations etc. We'll make it illegal for people to choose not to write open source software. Of course we can't just make it illegal to write proprietary software, because that would create a loop hole people could wriggle through by not writing software at all, making us 'less free'. No, we have to force people to write software, and make sure it's open source, so we're all more 'free' as a result.
innovation is not always doing somthing no one has ever done anything like before its also makeing tiny but very perceptible changes or using old stuff in new ways apple does this alot and microsoft does too (sometimes)
Slashdot Mirror
Unless the revenue amounts to less than the payments on current debt then even in the case where they refuse to take on more debt they still have the income to make those payments and avoid a default.
So it might be better to say:
the only way for the US to default on their debt is if they "choose" to do so (in this case by refusing to pay their creditors out of existing revenue)
Software patents, and in fact all patents, are one of those 'fetters' on capitalism, not part of capitalism. Intellectual property, such as it is in unfettered capitalism, is entirely enforced in contracts and keeping secrets secret.
You're right, he did build it therefore he really should know better than to make such foolish comments. But since he apparently doesn't know better I too hope he's reading Slashdot so he can read the grandparent's correction.
I think Z00L00K was saying the time for code reviews is after all the automated stuff already checks out. Obviously you shouldn't waste co-workers' time reviewing code that you already know needs more work.
Or maybe NAT could be replaced by firewalls on consumer routers.
You don't need NAT to prevent that. Either use a firewall or just make sure access to your home automation uses authenticated access.
Can you imagine? Your ISP decides to give you a new prefix and you'd have to program it into your switches so they can talk to the right lightbulbs again.
You shouldn't be accessing them by IP address. You should be accessing them by service instance name, and that's under your control (and has reasonable, human readable, factory set defaults). Zeroconf takes care of the details of figuring out the hostnames and IP addresses for you.
Altruism is also donating to charity, generally helping those less fortunate, doing any "good works" without expectation of recompense (monitary or otherwise), sustaining risk for the betterment, or protection of others... etc..
Not the way Rand defined it. If you're donating to a charity that you think does good work then she'd call it self interest. The recompense for the donor would be that the charity is able to do more of the work the donor thinks is good.
As I understand her definition, basically anything that promotes whatever an individual values is 'self-interest.' If you understand the definition she's using it's easy to see why she'd see being altruistic as evil, because by her definition is basically wasting resources on things that are worthless, or destroying something that's valuable for no good reason.
You know, the whole thing about what Randroids say about altruism and self-interest Randroids, is the result of them defining altrusim and self-interest differently.
They'd use the term 'altruism' to describe hurting a loved one because someone you don't know or care about wants them hurt. They call it 'self-interest' when an empathetic person gives money to a total stranger in need.
The references to God aren't really necessary to the argument. It might as easily begin "We take these truths to be self evident," but whether the source of the rights is taken to be God or something else, as long as the existance of the rights Bastiat posits is accepted then the argument should hold together.
Nor is anarchy necessary. In fact The Law points out that as long as law is restricted to its rightful purpose the form of government is immaterial. (Of course, as a practical matter the form of goverment is important because the different forms have different characteristics in terms of how likely they are to try to restrict law to its rightful purpose and to what injustices they are prone.) So it may seem like it's advocating anarchy, since it places an outer boundry on law (which has probably been far exceeded by every nation ever) and only gives passing reference to an inner boundary, but I don't think it's incompatible with other forms of governance.
In this case I don't think there's really a problematic dichotomy between laws that permit the use of force to keep some information secret and laws that mandate some information not be held secret. It's true that in some cases they are mutually exclusive and that one might identify the law taking neither side as anarchy, but I think it's an invalid equivocation to take the improbability of complete anarchy (the law remaining silent on every issue) as an argument against the law remaining silent on one particular issue. And that's what makes The Law important, it tries to identify and argue for a particular conception of when laws are okay, and on what issues the law should remain silent, leaving the advancement of those issues to institutions other than force.
On that note, I recomend reading the whole thing, because the arguments rely and build on each other. It's longer than a typical article, but it's a really tiny book. Perhaps a kindle version would make the read more comfortable. However here are some sections that I think contain particularly relevant or important conclusions and bits of the argument: "What is Law?" "How to Identify Legal Plunder" (when he talks about taking things that belong to someone, don't think in ephemeral terms like 'information,' instead think in concrete physical terms such as 'the book in which a novel mathematical proof has been written,' or 'the money of a fine levied against someone refusing to publish source'), "Law Is Force," "Law Is a Negative Concept," and "Law and Charity Are Not the Same"
That's a good point. You'll notice that we do in fact have police raids over piracy and reverse engineering cases. Why should we advocate the elimination of such injustices if we're only going to replace them with more of the same?
Just in case you haven't already read it: http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html#SECTION_G002
A lot of people accept fines and such as a more benign form of coercion, but it's really no better in principal. Especially in this case, it should be clear that this is simply trading one problem for another of the same kind; how shall the fine be collected, if the man refuses to give in to threats?
Of course in practice most people do give in to threats so the results aren't as grisly and people who support it can sleep at night, but it's really no different than when people give up their wallets in the face of muggers' threats.
While I might see a benefit for it in the realm of books, I'm not convinced the same arguments applicable there can be also applied to software. You're welcome to convince me otherwise.
Here's the thing, I don't want to convince you otherwise because I don't think copyright is relevant. In the case I described earlier, of an individual offering binaries to passersby from his porch, it is not copyright that is protecting the source from distribution.
Think about what copyright actually does for a moment. Copyright says that a person who holds a particular expression is prohibited from duplicating it without permission, with the intent of addressing the perceived incentive problem for original authors of such expressions. That is, copyright applies when the act of duplication is physically possible but perceived as harmful. Copyright is irrelevant to my story about porch distributed software for two reasons, first because the act of duplication is not physically possible and there is therefore no one to exercise this freedom that can be prohibited from doing so. Second, because the fact that the man on the porch is the copyright holder isn't really relevant to my point. Imagine that he is not the author, imagine instead that he got the source code from a friend, and then the friend forgot about it, and then died, with no heirs, 100 years ago so it wouldn't be covered by copyright anymore anyway. Despite this lack of copyright protection we still have a man distributing binaries to software of which he is in sole possession of the original source. You may argue that he is despicable and mean spirited for failing to distribute the source, but you can't argue that someone wishing to obtain the source need violate no rights but copyright.
I also believe this whole thing to be an issue of the copyright law because simply changing the form of the work doesn't make a new work. That is, compiled code is still that hidden source code even though it's in a (less)convenient form for the users.
Why even include the change in form? Imagine that we both possess copies of the same work in the same form. Does the fact that I have a copy mean you have no right to withhold your copy from me? Whether a mathematical proof we both printed out, or a book, or an art print, or a piece of software, why should I have to get your permission in order to access the copy in your possession? Why should anyone have to obtain the permission of the man on the porch in order to access the copy of the source in his possession? What I don't see is what the need to obtain such permission has to do with copyright.
Perhaps you'll agree with me that it is absurd to deny that such permission is necessary, but then we come back again to the only other remedy I can see: prohibiting the man from passing out disks.
That is, it's not by denying freedoms [...] that we should try to secure freedoms for the users. And mandating software to be free does not do that - it doesn't compromise RL freedoms.
It seems to me that such a prohibition would be a clear violation of a 'real life' freedom, indeed, of a real life right; free speech.
Ah, here we are. For some reason I wasn't seeing this post when I wanted to reply earlier. Here's the reply I wrote:
Your answers seemed pretty black and white to me. I'm glad that you at least don't advocate prohibiting people from obtaining programs for which no source is available (i.e., you don't advocate prohibiting people from obtaining 'unapproved' software). I had been hopeful of receiving a similar answer to the other question; that, while you might feel it's less than morally upright to give away software without giving the source as well, no crime is being committed so really social pressure is the only way to handle it. Instead you went full bore and said that not only does an original author have no right to withhold source from anyone to whom the binary has been provided, but that a law prohibiting such withholding would be just (Bastiat's The Law is critical reading on the subject of just laws). Clearly you don't believe in natural rights, so just what is your theory of rights? With all your talk of laws perhaps you're a legal rights purist or something?
The two actions you mentioned for dealing with the above crime were 1) viral copyleft and 2) copyright reform. I've already mentioned that I have no argument with the GPL, at least in terms of the mechanism it uses (voluntary agreements), but I don't get your second recommendation at all. As far as I can tell copyright is entirely beside the issue. For example imagine a software developer on his porch offering disks containing a software binary he's created to passersby while the source exists only as encrypted data on his private computer. He's making no use whatsoever of copyright, so how exactly is this deviant behavior to be corrected?
I only see two ways for the law to force him to behave 'correctly.' Either he's prevented from handing out disks, or stormtroopers break into his house to 'liberate' the source on his computer. You mentioned something about not stopping people from exercising their freedoms in order to guarantee other people their own, so I guess you don't want to stop him from handing out disks. So can I take it that you'd opt for the home invasion solution? This is pretty much exactly what I was thinking when I suggested earlier that your position was more akin to voting in favor of a police state than against it.
Random replies to statements I recall were made in the (deleted?) post:
Really, how you can argue that what this developer is doing is like punching someone (who? Everyone in the world I guess?) in the face is beyond me.
Whether you (mis)label it 'monopoly' or just 'respect for property rights,' I do think it's critical to a society free and prosperous for all. I think history (think French and Soviet revolutions) supports me on this.
Something about 'distributism'. It sounds pretty much like capitalism to me except that it tries to distinguish itself by hoping that property will be pretty evenly distributed. So basically the same as free-market capitalism as understood by most free market advocates. It is definitely different from socialism and crony capitalism though.
You mentioned an article that I guess you wrote, 'Pay Per Patch: A Free Software Market Model.' Seems like a fine idea to try. You should start a business providing the service.
Hmmm, I saw a reply to this earlier but I don't see it any more. I'll just have to respond to it from memory.
Your answers seemed pretty black and white to me. I'm glad that you at least don't advocate prohibiting people from obtaining programs for which no source is available (i.e., you don't advocate prohibiting people from obtaining 'unapproved' software). I had been hopeful of receiving a similar answer to the other question; that, while you might feel it's less than morally upright to give away software without giving the source as well, no crime is being committed so really social pressure is the only way to handle it. Instead you went full bore and said that not only does an original author have no right to withhold source from anyone to whom the binary has been provided, but that a law prohibiting such withholding would be just (Bastiat's The Law is critical reading on the subject of just laws). Clearly you don't believe in natural rights, so just what is your theory of rights? With all your talk of laws perhaps you're a legal rights purist or something?
The two actions you mentioned for dealing with the above crime were 1) viral copyleft and 2) copyright reform. I've already mentioned that I have no argument with the GPL, at least in terms of the mechanism it uses (voluntary agreements), but I don't get your second recommendation at all. As far as I can tell copyright is entirely beside the issue. For example imagine a software developer on his porch offering disks containing a software binary he's created to passersby while the source exists only as encrypted data on his private computer. He's making no use whatsoever of copyright, so how exactly is this deviant behavior to be corrected?
I only see two ways for the law to force him to behave 'correctly.' Either he's prevented from handing out disks, or stormtroopers break into his house to 'liberate' the source on his computer. You mentioned something about not stopping people from exercising their freedoms in order to guarantee other people their own, so I guess you don't want to stop him from handing out disks. So can I take it that you'd opt for the home invasion solution? This is pretty much exactly what I was thinking when I suggested earlier that your position was more akin to voting in favor of a police state than against it.
Random replies to statements I recall were made in the (deleted?) post:
Really, how you can argue that what this developer is doing is like punching someone (who? Everyone in the world I guess?) in the face is beyond me.
Whether you (mis)label it 'monopoly' or just 'respect for property rights,' I do think it's critical to a society free and prosperous for all. I think history (think French and Soviet revolutions) supports me on this.
Something about 'distributism'. It sounds pretty much like capitalism to me except that it tries to distinguish itself by hoping that property will be pretty evenly distributed. So basically the same as free-market capitalism as understood by most free market advocates. It is definitely different from socialism and crony capitalism though.
You mentioned an article that I guess you wrote, 'Pay Per Patch: A Free Software Market Model.' Seems like a fine idea to try. You should start a business providing the service.
Well perhaps you could at least answer a couple of the questions I asked earlier:
If someone chooses to publish a binary to their original work without publishing the source, is that okay with you? If not what should be done about it?
If someone uses a binary for which no source has been published is that okay? If not what should be done about it?
Not a quasi-freedom of denying other people their freedoms, no.
So what do you think about the freedom to prevent people from using a binary for which the source is not published? Do you think it’s okay to stop people from using those binaries?
There isn't a contradiction, it's simply a matter of priorities. People are free to withhold publishing the work if such act would compromise their privacy.
So if someone sees publishing the binary as not reducing their privacy but publishing the source as doing so I guess you’d support them publishing only the binary? Or is that yet another contradiction?
There are people who view EULA's as invalid agreements, since noone is actually signing it for the sake of receiving a software copy
That’s fine, for the sake of argument I’m only considering agreements made up front. Those other issues are beside the point.
Yes it would, as free software alternative would have less motive to be developed,
Lack of motive is not an obstruction; there is not a thing that imposing a restriction. There is simply no one who cares to do. If you care then nothing’s stopping you.
or that same piece of proprietary code could've itself been free instead.
Right, but they didn’t so you either use violence to make them open-source their project or someone has to redo the work.
Or I want all people to have equal freedoms, rather than satisfying for black boxes. Yes, you're right. To make an analogy, I would, given an opportunity, vote against some big brother law, or a police state law, while others might find it great to live under such law, having their "practical" needs met, or simply not knowing anything else / any better.
Another bad analogy. Arguing by analogy is usually not successful since often making such analogies requires the other party to take things for granted for which no argument has been presented, and also because analogies almost universally have flaws. In this case you’re talking about voting when it's not clear that voting is analogous to what you’re advocating, you’re talking about a police state forcibly imposed on everyone (regardless of their vote) when that’s not actually analogous to allowing someone somewhere to create proprietary software, and more flaws besides. Come to think of it, your analogy could be marginally improved if you switched it to say you’re voting in favor of the police state, but the analogy would still be bad.
All evidence speaks to the contrary. Eg. you refuse to recognize reciprocity as good.
false. it’s good when someone contributes to an open source work and makes their contribution open source.
And while you defend author's "right" to take away freedoms
You mean deny, not take away, and yes because the alternative is that an author can’t deny others the ‘freedom’ to get onto the author’s computer and take unpublished work, whether that’s the whole work, or just the unpublished source to a published binary. It's not 'a matter of priorities,' the two are absolutely mutually exclusive.
, you argue against of a right to take away "the freedom" to take away freedoms (no, i'm not giving up on this terminology just yet).
In fact I have explicitly acknowledged that it’s perfectly okay for an author of an original work to say that people can only make derivatives if they allow others the same access to the derivatives (and make the same demand for 'reciprocity'). I don’t think you could have gotten the idea that I think otherwise from reading anything I’ve written.
I see freedom as a must, and you don't.
but obviously not all freedoms.
You didn't answer my comment about the contradiction between the four GPL freedoms being rights and people having a right to not publish their work. Are people free to not publish their work (or to only publish it partially, or to pick and choose who they send it to based on who voluntarily agrees to what conditions), or does that violate everyone elses' right to use the program (and to exercise the other GPL freedoms)?
which is why I, despite the current law, call it taking freedoms away
What does law have to do with it? I'm not talking about software patents or anything. I'm talking about whether it's okay or not for an author to choose not to send their work out, or to make decisions about when and to whom they do the work of distributing their program. This is purely about voluntary agreements, not laws.
My argument is that precisely because of the existence of proprietary software, you often may not have free software (alternatives) - eg. graphics drivers come to mind. The obstruction I'm talking about is the old-world model of "granting" or even selling licenses (which take away freedoms) pretending there's scarcity where there isn't.
I might accept software patents as an obstruction to free software, but your answer here isn't correct. In cases where there's no free software alternative to some proprietary software, the lack of the free alternative is caused by the proprietary software adequately filling demand. That is not an obstruction.
Lastly, why is using non-free software worse than nothing at all? Because if there wasn't proprietary software, you would either have a free software version, or nobody would.
Right, so what it all comes down to is that you don't want other people's demand for software to be met unless your demand is met as well. You prefer that everybody do without rather than allow other people to have their demand met while yours isn't. This isn't because other people want to have and prevent you from having the same, it's because other people have lesser demands and once their lesser demands are satisfied there just aren't enough people with your higher demands to actually justify the resource expenditure* of meeting your higher demands.
You might find Frederic Bastiat's The Law and Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson enlightening.
our differences stem from different views on the importance of freedoms.
It's not the case that you view freedom as important and I don't.
*assuming you don't think it's okay to break into the original proprietary developers' computers or force them to open source their work, which would not require much resource expenditure.
You simply didn't. Your argument was that since your contribution is free, you're not responsible
Given that I don't have any problem with people producing proprietary derivatives I don't acknowledge that there's any 'responsibility' to be assigned for it. Really there's only 'credit' to be handed out for any good projects, free or proprietary. ;)
if others use it to create software which *denies* certain freedoms to their users (maybe that terminology better suits you than "taking away" freedoms, given that you do not see freedoms as rights, but as privileges granted by the monopolist). You are responsible, since you allowed this.
Yes, labeling that as denying freedoms is a more accurate way to put it (in that it is accurate while "taking away" is not at all accurate).
About this 'freedoms are only privileges granted by monopolists' comment; you are being disingenuous. The monopolist here is the person producing the work, and the freedoms are the four freedoms protected by the GPL (I'll focus on the first, the freedom to run the program for any purpose). Do you believe that that freedom is a right, and that the 'monopolist,' as you so charitably put it, is violating someone's rights if he does not agree to make his program available to them to use? If so then that's a contradiction with your later assertion that
privacy trumps hypothetical [ . . . ] social benefit from such code.
So, no, I don't believe that the four freedoms are rights, and I believe that someone who produces a work is within their rights to provide their work only to people that have agreed to whatever preconditions the producer cares to make, whether those are the terms of the GPL or a proprietary license or anything else.
(and I believe you know which are 4 freedoms), however, I'd like to point out that you're confusing the original with the derivative here.
I'm not confusing the original with the derivative, I'm the one making that distinction, which I will do again: When a proprietary derivative is developed not one of those four freedoms is taken away with respect to the original because the original is still free software, and not one of the four freedoms is taken away with respect to the derivative, as those freedoms didn't previously exist. Of course you've already amended the claim from 'taking away freedoms' to 'denying freedoms,' and I will readily admit that proprietary software denies freedoms (but that no rights are violated).
You assume that we would miss something by not having software that denies most of the freedoms.
Safe to say.
But not having _some_ proprietary software is better than the current situation.
Hard to say, unless you count the existence of proprietary software as bad in and of itself (in which case the whole argument becomes circular I think).
Any lacking software is sure to be replaced
Possible, but not actually a sure thing. The question isn't if a given innovation could be reproduced in free software, the question is would it be.
Free software would fill the missing holes instead of being obstructed as it is now. Fact is, we are missing free software we'd have had it not been for proprietary software schemes.
Quite possibly, but free software isn't actually being obstructed at all, people are simply choosing to do other things.
You can't say that a world where everyone acts according to this would be a worse one because it may momentarily lack some software.
One thing I appreciate is that, to the best of my knowledge RMS has never once advocated using any kind of force or aggressive violence to coerce anyone into making their software 'free' (by his definition). Instead he's done this thing with the GPL where his agenda is advanced when p
You contribute to a project that takes freedom away from its users.
Except this is the premise that I already refuted in my earlier post. That post explains that no derivative of a BSD project can possible take anyone's freedoms, and that it's not like enslavement at all. It's not like saying 'I only provided guns, I'm not responsible for the murder.' It's like saying I didn't provide any guns and the murder is only your hallucination.
You need to point out what freedoms exactly are taken away when someone creates a proprietary derivative work from and open source project. The fact is that the original code can't be close-sourced by a derivative and therefore all the same freedoms are available.
The only way to claim you are 'less free' is if you use a definition which has absolutely untenable implications. That is, you say you are less free when proprietary software exists because you are comparing your freedom in that case to a counter-factual where the only difference is that that proprietary software is open source. Besides the fact that such a counter-factual is not always valid (i.e., the software may not have been developed at all if the option to make it proprietary wasn't available), if you count such counter-factuals then you should count them all (or at least explain why only this one counts).
And counting other counter-factuals brings us to the terrible contradiction I alluded to in my earlier post. You must conclude that people choosing not to write software makes you less free, and if you think it's okay to use force to defend freedom then the terrible contradiction is that you can enslave people (literally, chain them to a computer and make them write open-source software for you) to make people more 'free.'
you BSD guys just don't see non-free software as evil
Right, because it's not. If someone creates proprietary software I'm no worse of than if they had created nothing, and in fact I may be better off. Even if I only use open source software I'm no worse off because proprietary software doesn't stop me from making or using free alternatives. On the other hand you say
It's better not to have proprietary software at all: Software will be substituted eventually
which literally means you believe that not having the choice to use a proprietary product doesn't take any choices away! And then you go on to say that having that choice actually takes choices away!
while having non-free software would just postpone that with freedoms lost in the meantime
The contradictions are so blatant, it's amazing.
The GPL requires that whoever you give the code to - in source or binary form - is just as free to use the code as you were.
But the original code is going to remain open no matter what happens in terms of derivative works. This is as true with BSD as with the GPL. So the GPL is not about making sure other users are just as free to use the original code as someone who's created a derivative work. It's about making sure they're as free with the new code as they are with the original.
The distinction is important because it shows that the extra freedom in the BSD license does not make anyone less free. No derivative work of a BSD licensed work can take any freedoms away from anyone because the worst case still leaves the original code as open source, as available to anyone as it was to the author of the derivative work. The BSD license in no way allows for previously available freedoms to be eliminated. Anyone that could do anything with the original work before a derivative is produced is still able to do those same things with the original afterwards.
Further, you liken the creation of a proprietary derivate work to assaulting and enslaving people, which is ridiculous, to say the least. I've already explained that creating proprietary derivate works doesn't make anyone less free in any real sense, but are you suggesting here that the rightful remedy to proprietary software is the same, at least in kind if not degree, as for assault and enslavement?
Also, the GPL only requires derivative works to be licensed under the GPL if they're distributed. But doesn't code that's not distributed at all make people 'less free' in the sense you used, in precisely the same way as propriety derivative works make us 'less free'? That is, other users have more choices if a derivative work is distributed as compared to if it isn't, even though doing the opposite doesn't actually eliminate any previously available choices. So wouldn't it be good if the GPL not only required derivative works that are distributed be licensed under the GPL, but required any derivative works whatsoever be distributed, and to be so under the GPL? That increases freedom in the same way as requiring that derivative works be GPL licensed.
One of the practical downsides that clearly result from the GPL is that licensing a work under it will mean that when someone would like to create a derivative work but can't or won't comply with the GPL for whatever reason, they must find some alternative. They can create their work from scratch (or deriving from some non-GPL work) or they can choose not to produce anything at all. We are not better off if a derivative work is not produced from a GPL work when the derivative would have been produced had the original been BSD licensed (or public domain or whatever). In that case we are worse off, and 'less free' in the sense you used.
If you believe that proprietary software really is like assault or enslavement then we can address the lack of freedom caused by people choosing not to derive GPL works by using the same remedy as for assault and enslavement; laws, fines, regulations etc. We'll make it illegal for people to choose not to write open source software. Of course we can't just make it illegal to write proprietary software, because that would create a loop hole people could wriggle through by not writing software at all, making us 'less free'. No, we have to force people to write software, and make sure it's open source, so we're all more 'free' as a result.
innovation is not always doing somthing no one has ever done anything like before its also makeing tiny but very perceptible changes or using old stuff in new ways apple does this alot and microsoft does too (sometimes)