Re: [libreplanet-discuss] SaaSS

[Aaron Wolf]

On 10/24/2015 09:05 PM, Mike Gerwitz wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 24, 2015 at 20:52:58 -0700, Aaron Wolf wrote:
>> In a fantasy world where everyone were ethical enough to never engage in
>> malicious abuses of power, the concerns about software freedom would
>> still exist, they would just be much less important. Similarly the
>> concerns about SaaSS.
> 
> You said yourself:
> 
>> Software freedom as a value is about autonomy and independence and
>> creative freedoms and other values that still *exist* as concerns even
>> in cases without maliciousness.
> 
> The four freedoms could be applied equally to a world of only good
> neighbors.  I don't think they'd be any less important at all.  Even
> good people have different needs and opinions. :)
> 
> Same for SaaSS.
> 

Given two worlds, one where proprietary software has no maliciousness
and one where it has egregious maliciousness, I can't imagine anyone
saying that the importance of software freedom is equal in both cases.
Are you really saying that? Software freedom can be valuable regardless,
but it's *obviously* far more important to fight for software freedom
when proprietary software is *also* malicious than when it isn't.

Racism is bad in all cases, but the importance of the fight against
racism is plainly more important in a world with rampant lynchings and
brutality than in a context where the worst results of racism are
unconscious, unintended subtle stereotyping. Note: I think today's
issues with racism are still serious enough to be really important to
fight, but if we actually ended both institutional and outright bold
racism and were left with only subtle unintended stereotyping, it would
simply be a less important concern than it is today.

The scope and extent of a problem is absolutely related to how important
it is.

-- 
Aaron Wolf
co-founder, Snowdrift.coop
music teacher, wolftune.com

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