4 ms·
Freedom and convenience are virtually always antagonists.
by fosap 13y ago
Freedom and convenience are virtually always antagonists.
- nilved 13y agoThat isn't true, and it's dangerous to say it is.
- fosap 13y agoSlavery always requires less thinking.
- Zuider 13y agoThe road to slavery requires less thinking. Once you get there you need all of your wits just to survive.
- eevilspock 13y agoResponses such as yours require less thinking. Slavery requires less thinking. Therefore you are a slave. /s
- Angostura 13y agoI think it's an interesting suggestion. If you believe it's false and dangerous it may be helpful to provide some reasoning.
- zanny 13y agoA lot of the free software I use is much more convenient than the commercial alternatives. See Firefox at the least for the largest most well recognized project with open contributions that is also usually much more convenient and free than commercial alternatives. Nothing about releasing source or having a collaborative contribution model suggests the software can't be convenient. A better terminology is that security and convenience conflict one another, because to be secure requires you to sacrifice your own convenience to limit foreign entities convenience in accessing your data.
- samatman 13y agoThere are at least three relevant meanings of free, not two! Free as in beer, free as in freedom, and free as in degrees of freedom. Too many degrees of freedom makes a system inconvenient to use. An application like Transmission is great: libre software but constrained in the "degrees of freedom" department, so you don't have the "chooseaphone" effect. Edit: Let me illustrate. If I gave you a bike for free, you'd have the freedom to get around on it, tinker with it, sell it to someone else, etc. If it had more degrees of freedom, it would be a unicycle, and much, much harder to use. But more flexible!
- shasta 13y agoTechnically, a unicycle has fewer degrees of freedom that a bicycle.
- AsymetricCom 13y agoThat's not technically correct. Your work is modulated by the device. A device with less parts modulates it less. Less modulation of your actions means you have more direct control.
- DrewAllyn 13y agoUnicycle: 1. Lean forward and backward 2. Lean side to side 3. Twist 4. Pedal Bicycle 1. Lean side to side 2. Twist handlebars 3. Pedal
- felipeerias 13y agoFreedom usually means being able to achieve your personal goals: of speech, of movement, of opinion, etc. We humans are often aided by tools. So, we can also talk about the freedom to study and modify said tools. What many FOSS advocates seem to miss is that the first freedom, that which comes from being able to fulfil your own goals, is the most important one for everybody. To the point where freedom of the tools is only relevant for you if understanding said tools was your personal goal in the first place.