I've never been as uncomfortable with Slashdot and Slashdotters as I have reading the responses to his article. Yeah, ESR's a bit self-aggrandizing - but so is Stallman, and anyone who tries to say otherwise is just going to make me laugh. Yeah, he presumed to speak up for the community - fair enough, but he rather nicely assumed that Linux supporters cared about freedom and not just a good, free, stable kernel...
I have no beef with Chinese people (aka, "people in China") using Linux and customizing it for their own uses and needs, or retaining their own cultural identity. I have every beef possible with the Chinese government (aka, "those guys who ordered student protesters run over with tanks") using it for its own purposes (including using force to "retain" the "Chinese cultural identity" it supports this week).
*sarcasm = "on"* I agree it was more than a little presumptuous for ESR to think that he could speak out and say that the ethos of the open source/Linux/et al movements were incompatible with totalitarianism. But don't be too rough on him - he just misjudged the crowd. *sarcasm = "off"*
Open source is great, but it does not exist in a vacuum, moral or otherwise.
This is getting too much similar to:
Arms are just a tool, drugs instead are BAD.
Weapons are just tools, drugs are just tools.
For the great american people (and maybe some poor european) encription and technology is good and it must be widespread, so we can defend ourselves from the government.
Chinese instead are to be considered unable to use the same tecnology for the same reasons... When I'll see (I won't: its a hoax) the chinese gov. make other osses illegal or using this os for bad things I will flame them. In the mean time they can do with linux anything as can everybody else. And I'm quite happy with it.
It's inherent within the GPL and LGPL to allow anyone, including the Chinese government, to use Linux. I would be first to oppose not allowing the PRC government to use Linux, if only because it would invalidate the meaning of the license. However, I would not be happy because it would make an oppressive government more capable of oppressing its people.
When you're talking about the Chinese people getting hold of Linux, that's completely different from the Chinese government using Linux. Yes, the Chinese people are poor and most have difficulty getting computer equipment. However, a non-trivial amount (1 million or more, supposedly) have both computers and internet access. They can only get the benefits of Linux for their own purposes through getting Linux for themselves - the Chinese administration using it wouldn't do them any good. Trying to argue that that it might is just wishful thinking.
Or do you think that backing a fascist coup as in Chile is ethical or acceptable? (but obviously you can discuss if it has been good) I guess (and hope) we have same ideas on the morality of bombing the Casa Rosada and desaparecidos.
I disapprove completely of the various interventions my government (to use a strained phrase) has carried out in South America and around the world. I have to honestly admit I'm not familiar with the Casa Rosada or the US government (I'm assuming it was them) bombing them/it, but on a moral and practical level, I've given my opinion.
What exactly is "pure" about the US government? It couldn't even hack real lassiez faire during the latter half of the 19th century and suppressed unions with police force. Ever since FDR, it's been trending inconsistently and unevenly socialist, with some disagreements of opinion between two parties that consist of merely coalitions of special interests.
You're right about the mixing and borrowing and general associating of different fringe groups with each other duing the 1800s. Even a lot of "classical liberals" (what are called libertarians today) and anarchists (no, not the bomb-throwing radicals everyone thinks they are) briefly banded with Marxists and socialists before realizing the implications of their ideas.
I'd take living in 19th century america over living in any feudal or communist society that has ever existed. Certainly, it had flaws (particularly in the far-from-completely-free market and far-from-protected legal rights), but it had a lot more opportunity and freedom.
In a feudal economy, the lower class consists of peasants. Feudal systems place all sorts of restrictions on peasants (they can't just pick up and move, for example), but the feudal lord's power over the peasants is also constrained (he can't just evict them, either).
Except that in many feudal societies, the lord had the power of life-or-death over his vassals in the very real sense of using various sharp pointy things to kill (unarmed) peasants who resisted him in any way.
In a capitalist economy, the lower class is the proletariat (a.k.a. "the working class"), who own their own labor power, but can only sell it to members of the bourgeoisie (a.k.a. "the bosses"). If you're in the proletariat and you can't find anyone to buy your labor, you're SOL.
Unless you start your own business, with or without capital. Even in an industrial economy, there are lots of niches for people to start their own businesses. That's how those big businesses started in the first place.
The bourgeoisie buys the proletariat's labor for as little as it can pay, and sells the products of the labor for as much as it can charge, to whoever is willing to pay.
True, but incomplete. The proletariat also sells its labor for as much as it can get, and the consumers of the products pay as little as they can get. That's what happens with a economic system based on free association and free choice.
The bourgeoisie can then plow the profits into exploiting the workers further: for example, skilled craftsmen, who own their own tools, get replaced by unskilled (therefore easy-to-replace, therefore low-paid) factory workers whose tools (the factory machines) belong to the bourgeoisie
This really has little to do with a free market and everything to do with the circumstances of the industrial revolution (nor is universal, since unionization - another great free-market activity, mostly - resists the replaceability). Now, in the information age, the situation is turning around, and people decry capitalism because unskilled workers have trouble keeping and getting jobs and skilled workers become more important.
1. No country that has ever set up a "communist" system has managed to meet the exacting criteria of those sympathetic to communist ideals...well, after the full story came out, at least. A lot of pro-communists in the US and other countries loudly applauded Stalin's economic and government re-organizations even as he was quietly exterminating ethnic and social groups. "I have seen the future, and it works", one wrote during this period. So, either communism is a system that can never work (since it's been tried in so many places and seems to mysteriously and instantaneously become something else, according to proponents), or it's just a fraud.
2. The Chinese government has absolutely nothing to do with the Chinese people (unless it, say, forces Linux on the people as the only permissible OS). No one, not even ESR, has objected to the growth of Linux in private hands in China. He, and I, and others, object to a totalitarian regime endorsing and adopting an OS we like. As I mentioned in another post, that's partly (for me) because it can only make the PRC government more efficient at oppressing its people.
3. Actually sorta true. As long as you keep your head down and don't challenge, criticize, or disagree with the government, there is increasing liberty, of a sort. I like to think of it as the first sign of the end for the PRC. If the PRC started using Linux as the information infrastructure for its administration, that might be stalled or reversed, though.
4. Pinochet sure as Hell ain't my friend. Nor is the current leftist regime in Haiti that our president re-established and propped up, or any of a few dozen other despicable folks/groups you and I could get together and brainstorm a list of. Just as the Chinese government != the Chinese people, the US government != US citizens. Hell, I don't even consider the US government my friend. There's "where the fuck" I find the moral standing.
ESR disapproves of a government that brutally cracks down on dissidents (by "moderating them down" with a bullet in the back of the head) and has committed numerous atrocities with total disdain towards anyone outside their country who expresses disapproval.
Again, wow. You're saying that ESR is a money-grubbing phony trying to spread Linux (and no, I don't preface it with GNU, GNU stuff can be used on any OS and isn't unique to Linux) for his own greedy purposes. But yet, instead of encouraging the adoption of Linux by a huge purchaser (like a lot of greedy folks wanting to make a buck off the PRC government), he's gratified that it isn't actually happening. Why? His own principles.
It's people like you who are acting "ideologically pragmatic" and trying to squelch principles, not ESR.
The incompatibility with voluntary cooperation would mean that Open Source software shouldn't be used by or in corporations as most definately are not about voluntary cooperation.
Wow. I must have missed the announcement that said that corporations have the power to recruit and keep employees at gunpoint! Here, I was under the bizarre impression that if one chooses to work at a corporation, they are voluntarily giving time and effort in exchange for money. Thanks for correcting me on this - whoops, looks like my employer's On-Time Police have shown up, and I gotta go...
(BTW, I rather think ESR is referring to running students over with tanks...he rather specifically mentioned Tiannamen Square.)
The PRC's government adopting Linux (thankfully not true) has nothing to do with the Chinese people adopting Linux. That is already happening, and that is very cool, because it puts power in the people's hands.
The idea of any despicable government officially adopting something I like makes me a bit queasy. The idea of such a despicable government getting a more efficient information infrastructure with which to monitor and track its people with as well as administer its control over them makes me significantly queasy. It should bother anyone who thinks about it and who has some degree of principles.
Besides, what if China decided upon this official OS (or maybe an "easy-monitoring" distro) as the only one its people were permitted to use for computing? Everyone here hates the Microsoft "monopoly" that happened through consumer preference - would y'all be willing to tolerate a real, government-enforced monopoly (just as long as it's your favorite OS)?
Try buying a PC and saying, "Oh, I don't want Windows... I'd rather have Redhat Linux. Can I get a refund for not getting Windows and get Linux installed isntead?" You won't leave with a PC unless you leave with Windows, too.
Unless, say, you order from Dell, or crack open a Linux Journal and order from any of the Linux box-selling companies there. They won't even have to remove Windows from the machine in the first place.
Ok, what is the proper "official knee-jerk slashdot response" to this remark? Half of the detractors are saying "there are no competitors!" and the other half "all the competitors sell more cheaply", so which is it?
...All controlling a bit less than 25% of the PC OS market, there would still be an "applications barrier to entry". Every new OS that isn't a workalike of another OS has to struggle to get applications, since they must be written for or ported to that OS. This is not somehow unique to the existence of Microsoft or Windows.
But what I sell to my customers is none of anyone else's business. Microsoft should just butt out and sell to me at prices based on the volume I sell. Likewise they shouldnt' come between me and some other business partner who might want to sell my software. It's just none of their damned business.
In other words, that would be your preferred way of dealing with MS. Unfortunately, it's not MS's preferred way. So you either negotionate and compromise, decide to go with it, or don't do business with MS. Why is this so hard to understand? Unless a company is defrauding you or something similar, having business practices you don't like isn't wrong.
Ridiculous. In Texas (where Compaq is), at least, that would be virtually impossible. That sort of thing really only happens in the People's Republic of California, due to some typically wacky bits of legislation and juriprudence. And no, even there you won't go to jail.
In any case, you can always very safely quit your job and get a golden parachute. Besides, with 50% of all Compaq servers now running on MS and many companies exploring it for the desktop, this doesn't seem quite as likely to be a problem, anymore. Give it a few years and it won't be at all.
Innovation implies the creation of something new or some technological advance in a product. Microsoft has simply crammed in everyone else's products and innovations and then claimed that "it's Part of the Operating System." I suppose you could claim this is an innovative method for killing off your competition. Time and again companies have created good products for Windows only to be purchased by MS or find their products duplicated and included in the OS. This is exactly what is meant by the surpressing innovation. Releasing bug fixes and calling them a new Operating System release has nothing whatsoever to do with innovation.
So, whenever a car company decided to first include such things as radios, air conditioners, and cigarette lighters in the car, instead of making consumers buy those later and add them, it "surpressed" innovation? Wrong. Even when MS bought out or imitatedd products, consumers did end up getting the benefits of those products. Annoying, but true.
It might actually be doable, since most American case law seems to be chipping away at the idea that people can choose what they want to make or sell. Hey, press it, and see if you can make it law that every application must be released for every available operating system.
I mean, so what if a small company goes out of business because their word processor won't run in BeOS, AmigaDOS, or the zippy new RTOS your cousin GPLed last month, and open-source programmers won't be able to release their code unless they can get it to documentably compile under every OS recognized by the government. You can still use any program actually still out there on whatever system you want to run.
First, the current application of antitrust laws has little to do with those original laws themselves. Originally "monopoly" genuinely meant a single company serving as the only supplier of a product. The definition has been changed to "holding a share of the market we just feel is too large" and not through any legislative process, but through case law in the last few decades. And that's not even mentioning that a democratic government can set up "open, known" laws that abuse the freedoms and rights of its citizens. I personally rate antitrust laws as less horrible than say, Jim Crow laws, asset forfeiture laws (where people can have their property confiscated for merely being accused of an offense - and don't think it's easy for them to get back), censorship laws, and gun control laws, but they are in the same basic class.
Second, Microsoft doesn't get to "force" any user to do anything. Yes, to run a certain program made for Windows, you pretty much have to buy Windows. That's your choice - no one is "making" you do anything. What if someone wrote a program for Linux, decided not to open-source it, and never made a Windows version? Would Linus, every kernel contributor, and every distro maker be guilty of "forcing" you to get Linux merely because you want to use that particular program?
No.
Further, Microsoft isn't "forcing" any techie to use their software just because the techie's employer decided to buy Microsoft? The techie chooses to work there in the first place. Do the Backstreet Boys "force" their music on me just because my employer likes to play their songs at work?
No.
Business is a LOT more accountable than government, because companies can't put you in jail for not using their products. (And, by the way, every person who starts up a company and hires people to work for him or her is a "single, self-elected despot", no matter how they run the company. It's called business.)
Slashdot Mirror
Not just "Right", but "Amen, brother!"
I've never been as uncomfortable with Slashdot and Slashdotters as I have reading the responses to his article. Yeah, ESR's a bit self-aggrandizing - but so is Stallman, and anyone who tries to say otherwise is just going to make me laugh. Yeah, he presumed to speak up for the community - fair enough, but he rather nicely assumed that Linux supporters cared about freedom and not just a good, free, stable kernel...
Aside from the hint that communism is any different from any other system, you've got it spot on.
I have no beef with Chinese people (aka, "people in China") using Linux and customizing it for their own uses and needs, or retaining their own cultural identity. I have every beef possible with the Chinese government (aka, "those guys who ordered student protesters run over with tanks") using it for its own purposes (including using force to "retain" the "Chinese cultural identity" it supports this week).
*sarcasm = "on"*
I agree it was more than a little presumptuous for ESR to think that he could speak out and say that the ethos of the open source/Linux/et al movements were incompatible with totalitarianism. But don't be too rough on him - he just misjudged the crowd.
*sarcasm = "off"*
No wait. There is just one point here.
I am stuck to open source.
Open source is great, but it does not exist in a vacuum, moral or otherwise.
This is getting too much similar to:
Arms are just a tool, drugs instead are BAD.
Weapons are just tools, drugs are just tools.
For the great american people (and maybe some poor european) encription and technology is good and it must be widespread, so we can defend ourselves from the government.
Chinese instead are to be considered unable to use the same tecnology for the same reasons... When I'll see (I won't: its a hoax) the chinese gov. make other osses illegal or using this os for bad things I will flame them. In the mean time they can do with linux anything as can everybody else. And I'm quite happy with it.
It's inherent within the GPL and LGPL to allow anyone, including the Chinese government, to use Linux. I would be first to oppose not allowing the PRC government to use Linux, if only because it would invalidate the meaning of the license. However, I would not be happy because it would make an oppressive government more capable of oppressing its people.
When you're talking about the Chinese people getting hold of Linux, that's completely different from the Chinese government using Linux. Yes, the Chinese people are poor and most have difficulty getting computer equipment. However, a non-trivial amount (1 million or more, supposedly) have both computers and internet access. They can only get the benefits of Linux for their own purposes through getting Linux for themselves - the Chinese administration using it wouldn't do them any good. Trying to argue that that it might is just wishful thinking.
Or do you think that backing a fascist coup as in Chile is ethical or acceptable? (but obviously you can discuss if it has been good) I guess (and hope) we have same ideas on the morality of bombing the Casa Rosada and desaparecidos.
I disapprove completely of the various interventions my government (to use a strained phrase) has carried out in South America and around the world. I have to honestly admit I'm not familiar with the Casa Rosada or the US government (I'm assuming it was them) bombing them/it, but on a moral and practical level, I've given my opinion.
What exactly is "pure" about the US government? It couldn't even hack real lassiez faire during the latter half of the 19th century and suppressed unions with police force. Ever since FDR, it's been trending inconsistently and unevenly socialist, with some disagreements of opinion between two parties that consist of merely coalitions of special interests.
You're right about the mixing and borrowing and general associating of different fringe groups with each other duing the 1800s. Even a lot of "classical liberals" (what are called libertarians today) and anarchists (no, not the bomb-throwing radicals everyone thinks they are) briefly banded with Marxists and socialists before realizing the implications of their ideas.
I'd take living in 19th century america over living in any feudal or communist society that has ever existed. Certainly, it had flaws (particularly in the far-from-completely-free market and far-from-protected legal rights), but it had a lot more opportunity and freedom.
Except that in many feudal societies, the lord had the power of life-or-death over his vassals in the very real sense of using various sharp pointy things to kill (unarmed) peasants who resisted him in any way.
Unless you start your own business, with or without capital. Even in an industrial economy, there are lots of niches for people to start their own businesses. That's how those big businesses started in the first place.
True, but incomplete. The proletariat also sells its labor for as much as it can get, and the consumers of the products pay as little as they can get. That's what happens with a economic system based on free association and free choice.
This really has little to do with a free market and everything to do with the circumstances of the industrial revolution (nor is universal, since unionization - another great free-market activity, mostly - resists the replaceability). Now, in the information age, the situation is turning around, and people decry capitalism because unskilled workers have trouble keeping and getting jobs and skilled workers become more important.
1. No country that has ever set up a "communist" system has managed to meet the exacting criteria of those sympathetic to communist ideals...well, after the full story came out, at least. A lot of pro-communists in the US and other countries loudly applauded Stalin's economic and government re-organizations even as he was quietly exterminating ethnic and social groups. "I have seen the future, and it works", one wrote during this period. So, either communism is a system that can never work (since it's been tried in so many places and seems to mysteriously and instantaneously become something else, according to proponents), or it's just a fraud.
2. The Chinese government has absolutely nothing to do with the Chinese people (unless it, say, forces Linux on the people as the only permissible OS). No one, not even ESR, has objected to the growth of Linux in private hands in China. He, and I, and others, object to a totalitarian regime endorsing and adopting an OS we like. As I mentioned in another post, that's partly (for me) because it can only make the PRC government more efficient at oppressing its people.
3. Actually sorta true. As long as you keep your head down and don't challenge, criticize, or disagree with the government, there is increasing liberty, of a sort. I like to think of it as the first sign of the end for the PRC. If the PRC started using Linux as the information infrastructure for its administration, that might be stalled or reversed, though.
4. Pinochet sure as Hell ain't my friend. Nor is the current leftist regime in Haiti that our president re-established and propped up, or any of a few dozen other despicable folks/groups you and I could get together and brainstorm a list of. Just as the Chinese government != the Chinese people, the US government != US citizens. Hell, I don't even consider the US government my friend. There's "where the fuck" I find the moral standing.
ESR disapproves of a government that brutally cracks down on dissidents (by "moderating them down" with a bullet in the back of the head) and has committed numerous atrocities with total disdain towards anyone outside their country who expresses disapproval.
Yeah, what a bastard.
Again, wow. You're saying that ESR is a money-grubbing phony trying to spread Linux (and no, I don't preface it with GNU, GNU stuff can be used on any OS and isn't unique to Linux) for his own greedy purposes. But yet, instead of encouraging the adoption of Linux by a huge purchaser (like a lot of greedy folks wanting to make a buck off the PRC government), he's gratified that it isn't actually happening. Why? His own principles.
It's people like you who are acting "ideologically pragmatic" and trying to squelch principles, not ESR.
Or maybe he separates the pragmatic goal of spreading linux from his personal principles that oppose what the Chinese government stands for and does?
The PRC's government adopting Linux (thankfully not true) has nothing to do with the Chinese people adopting Linux. That is already happening, and that is very cool, because it puts power in the people's hands.
The idea of any despicable government officially adopting something I like makes me a bit queasy. The idea of such a despicable government getting a more efficient information infrastructure with which to monitor and track its people with as well as administer its control over them makes me significantly queasy. It should bother anyone who thinks about it and who has some degree of principles.
Besides, what if China decided upon this official OS (or maybe an "easy-monitoring" distro) as the only one its people were permitted to use for computing? Everyone here hates the Microsoft "monopoly" that happened through consumer preference - would y'all be willing to tolerate a real, government-enforced monopoly (just as long as it's your favorite OS)?
Of course not.
The idea is bad on its own merits.
Unless, say, you order from Dell, or crack open a Linux Journal and order from any of the Linux box-selling companies there. They won't even have to remove Windows from the machine in the first place.
Ok, what is the proper "official knee-jerk slashdot response" to this remark? Half of the detractors are saying "there are no competitors!" and the other half "all the competitors sell more cheaply", so which is it?
...All controlling a bit less than 25% of the PC OS market, there would still be an "applications barrier to entry". Every new OS that isn't a workalike of another OS has to struggle to get applications, since they must be written for or ported to that OS. This is not somehow unique to the existence of Microsoft or Windows.
In other words, that would be your preferred way of dealing with MS. Unfortunately, it's not MS's preferred way. So you either negotionate and compromise, decide to go with it, or don't do business with MS. Why is this so hard to understand? Unless a company is defrauding you or something similar, having business practices you don't like isn't wrong.
Ridiculous. In Texas (where Compaq is), at least, that would be virtually impossible. That sort of thing really only happens in the People's Republic of California, due to some typically wacky bits of legislation and juriprudence. And no, even there you won't go to jail.
In any case, you can always very safely quit your job and get a golden parachute. Besides, with 50% of all Compaq servers now running on MS and many companies exploring it for the desktop, this doesn't seem quite as likely to be a problem, anymore. Give it a few years and it won't be at all.
So, whenever a car company decided to first include such things as radios, air conditioners, and cigarette lighters in the car, instead of making consumers buy those later and add them, it "surpressed" innovation?
Wrong.
Even when MS bought out or imitatedd products, consumers did end up getting the benefits of those products. Annoying, but true.
It might actually be doable, since most American case law seems to be chipping away at the idea that people can choose what they want to make or sell. Hey, press it, and see if you can make it law that every application must be released for every available operating system.
I mean, so what if a small company goes out of business because their word processor won't run in BeOS, AmigaDOS, or the zippy new RTOS your cousin GPLed last month, and open-source programmers won't be able to release their code unless they can get it to documentably compile under every OS recognized by the government. You can still use any program actually still out there on whatever system you want to run.
And watch laws or regulations pop up to restrict the distribution of "un-official" OSes. Great idea.
First, the current application of antitrust laws has little to do with those original laws themselves. Originally "monopoly" genuinely meant a single company serving as the only supplier of a product. The definition has been changed to "holding a share of the market we just feel is too large" and not through any legislative process, but through case law in the last few decades. And that's not even mentioning that a democratic government can set up "open, known" laws that abuse the freedoms and rights of its citizens. I personally rate antitrust laws as less horrible than say, Jim Crow laws, asset forfeiture laws (where people can have their property confiscated for merely being accused of an offense - and don't think it's easy for them to get back), censorship laws, and gun control laws, but they are in the same basic class.
Second, Microsoft doesn't get to "force" any user to do anything. Yes, to run a certain program made for Windows, you pretty much have to buy Windows. That's your choice - no one is "making" you do anything. What if someone wrote a program for Linux, decided not to open-source it, and never made a Windows version? Would Linus, every kernel contributor, and every distro maker be guilty of "forcing" you to get Linux merely because you want to use that particular program?
No.
Further, Microsoft isn't "forcing" any techie to use their software just because the techie's employer decided to buy Microsoft? The techie chooses to work there in the first place. Do the Backstreet Boys "force" their music on me just because my employer likes to play their songs at work?
No.
Business is a LOT more accountable than government, because companies can't put you in jail for not using their products.
(And, by the way, every person who starts up a company and hires people to work for him or her is a "single, self-elected despot", no matter how they run the company. It's called business.)