3 ms·

RMS had a pretty testy interview with Z magazine a few years back. Was very emphatic that his vision of the future included businesses, and swatted down several

by slurry 13y ago

RMS had a pretty testy interview with Z magazine a few years back. Was very emphatic that his vision of the future included businesses, and swatted down several attempts by the Z people, who wanted to abolish all businesses, to get him to reconsider. Not bringing this up to argue that RMS is correct or reasonable (here or elsewhere), but I just thought it was interesting. RMS may be an unrealistic utopian, but his unrealistic utopia is some mutant form of liberalism - with property rights and commerce etc. - not communism or even big-s socialism.

gress 13y ago
Property rights for everyone except software developers.
- kevin_bauer 13y ago
  If your freedom/rights takes the freedom/rights of others away, what may you argue about, if your freedom/rights is also taken away? Because something might be inconvenient to you, it doesn't make it automatically wrong. There's a distinct line between free as in freedom and free as in arbitrariness. The former comes with responsibilities, the later without.
  - gress 13y ago
    This is true but irrelevant because the freedom to distribute software without the source code does not take away anyone else's rights.
    - kevin_bauer 13y ago
      I beg to differ! As the NSA-debacle shows, it takes my right away to a) ensure there's no backdoor, b) the software i get does exactly what was promised and c) in a way and quality as advertised. Furthermore take a look at the "USL v. BSDi" lawsuit, where BSD was sued by AT&T for infringing copyright-laws against their own(BSD) source-code, which was incorporated into USL(AT&T's) UNIX-variants! "Freedom" comes with responsibility, if you want carefree "arbitrariness", then say so, but please don't mix them together, they are fundamentally different!
      - gress 13y ago
        The NSA debacle is irrelevant to this and source code doesn't guarantee any of the desires you state there. I recommend studying software verification if you are unsure of this. Furthermore they are not rights - they are desires. You are free to negotiate terms with people from whom you obtain software, and you are free to refuse software without source code. What the GPL seeks to do is force other people not to be free to choose their own terms. Whether you like the effects of the GPL or not, it has nothing to do with freedom.
nzp 13y ago
It's really not complicated at all. RMS is simply a social-democrat. He is the shining example of what social-democracy is really in practice. His position is not utopian at all, it's a very limited and specific, socially liberal, demand: it's unjust to have people be unable to do whatever they want with the things they own, not to mention having the things they own controlling them. Proprietary software does tend to limit and control its users, therefore we need to abolish proprietary software. It has nothing to do with hindering capitalism or anything like that. I can see people in the USA having problems to properly frame his position due to the ideological burden of equating any kind of a demand for sharing and cooperation with communism or socialism, regardless if the demand actually has anything to do with left wing political motivations.

by slurry 13y ago

gress 13y ago

Property rights for everyone except software developers.

kevin_bauer 13y ago
If your freedom/rights takes the freedom/rights of others away, what may you argue about, if your freedom/rights is also taken away? Because something might be inconvenient to you, it doesn't make it automatically wrong. There's a distinct line between free as in freedom and free as in arbitrariness. The former comes with responsibilities, the later without.
- gress 13y ago
  This is true but irrelevant because the freedom to distribute software without the source code does not take away anyone else's rights.
  - kevin_bauer 13y ago
    I beg to differ! As the NSA-debacle shows, it takes my right away to a) ensure there's no backdoor, b) the software i get does exactly what was promised and c) in a way and quality as advertised. Furthermore take a look at the "USL v. BSDi" lawsuit, where BSD was sued by AT&T for infringing copyright-laws against their own(BSD) source-code, which was incorporated into USL(AT&T's) UNIX-variants! "Freedom" comes with responsibility, if you want carefree "arbitrariness", then say so, but please don't mix them together, they are fundamentally different!
    - gress 13y ago
      The NSA debacle is irrelevant to this and source code doesn't guarantee any of the desires you state there. I recommend studying software verification if you are unsure of this. Furthermore they are not rights - they are desires. You are free to negotiate terms with people from whom you obtain software, and you are free to refuse software without source code. What the GPL seeks to do is force other people not to be free to choose their own terms. Whether you like the effects of the GPL or not, it has nothing to do with freedom.

nzp 13y ago

It's really not complicated at all. RMS is simply a social-democrat. He is the shining example of what social-democracy is really in practice. His position is not utopian at all, it's a very limited and specific, socially liberal, demand: it's unjust to have people be unable to do whatever they want with the things they own, not to mention having the things they own controlling them. Proprietary software does tend to limit and control its users, therefore we need to abolish proprietary software. It has nothing to do with hindering capitalism or anything like that. I can see people in the USA having problems to properly frame his position due to the ideological burden of equating any kind of a demand for sharing and cooperation with communism or socialism, regardless if the demand actually has anything to do with left wing political motivations.