Re: [Gnu-arch-users] OT: Slavery???

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "Tom" == Tom Lord <address@hidden> writes:

    >> From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <address@hidden>

    Tom> Those of us who believe in software freedom reject the idea
    Tom> that such an offer is ever a bargain or good deal --

    >> This sounds quite circular.  You're outraged because _your_
    >> right to software freedom is somehow abridged when some third
    >> party offers _me_ proprietary software, but the only evidence I
    >> can see for your right that _overrides my rights_ to privacy
    >> and contract is your outrage.

    >> Is "obviously, Steve, you are an infidel, and your mind
    >> incapable of perceiving higher Truth" the best you can come up
    >> with?  :-(

    Tom> Let's start with your rights to privacy and contract, and
    Tom> then move on to "outrage".

yada yada yada :-(  By the time you got to "outrage," you were once
again so emotional as to forget to explain why.  I still don't get it.

When the strongest direct argument you can come up with for your right
to copy is "Nyaah, nyaah, nyaah, you can't stop me",

when no "right" may stand by itself but all are subject to your,
Tom's, judgement of "social harm" or "social responsibility",

and when you bemoan the divisions in the community

but yourself exclude from "we who believe in software freedom" any who
view Linus's adoption of Bitkeeper as a "a temporary patch for a gross
weakness in the infrastructure that it's our responsibility to fix
properly as soon as we can" rather than a "moral outrage,"

not to mention denouncing Linus, the one person who can reverse the
situation, as a "poster child for socially irresponsible engineering,"

then it's time to abandon hopes for reasonable discussion.

Thank you for this opportunity to clarify my own thoughts.  They will
probably appear at http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/Tools/Attitude/ in
due course, but the drafts I have now need to be purged of thread-
specific "banter".


-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.