4 ms·

What about the fundamental freedom to do what you please with your own creation? Stallman never talks about that freedom.

coliveira 17y ago
You touched on the biggest weakness of RMS point of view. If you write software, you have to fundamental right to make it free or not. If you are on the receiving end, you only have to agree with the terms. RMS turns the roles around, and wants to make the user the owner of everything.
- andreyf 17y ago
  you have to fundamental right to make it free or not False. You do NOT have the right to restrict what I do with "your" ideas, once you've shared them with me - be it software, sonnet, or poem. The government may limit my fundamental freedom by enforcing a limited-time monopoly, but only in order to encourage you to work on your ideas. It is NOT your fundamental right to have such monopoly indefinitely.
  - dtf 17y ago
    Yet the maker of a software product can aid or hinder your ability to modify it by choosing to distribute as source or binary. That particular "right" requires no law. I often wonder what RMS would do if he had the power to enact a law mandating that all software be free software - as a form of "positive liberty". Judging by his writings, I get the feeling he'd do it.
  - cschwarm 17y ago
    Wrong. Copyright is about "works", not "ideas". My copyright of a work doesn't restrict your ability to copy the idea. In fact, this is what many Open Source projects do: they copy the idea or a proprietary software, but not the software (ie. the work) itself.
  - coliveira 17y ago
    The issue is not the sharing of ideas, but sharing of how the software was made. It is more like saying: "if I buy your food, you have to give me the recipe or I will sue you." There is a huge difference between using gcc and knowing how it was created, for example. Nobody is restricting you from creating a similar food or software (unless there is a patent, which is an entirely different issue). You have the right to create your version, and I have my right to sell only the product, not the process that made it.
- iambvk 17y ago
  """If you are on the receiving end, you only have to agree with the terms.""" This is where I see a problem. Can somebody suppress my rights (to share, to sing, etc.), in the form of terms? Is a right is something that I can trade? I don't understand these issues much, just doubts :-(
  - moron4hire 17y ago
    What does the movie theater do to you when you enter BUT suppress your rights to sing/talk/shout/etc, on the terms that they will let you watch the movie? What does the military do to you BUT suppress your right to freely determine your life, on the terms that they will provide food, shelter, and training to you?
    - joe_the_user 17y ago
      Ah, but that's within a pretty limited domain. If the movie theater also restricted your right to write a negative review afterwards, say, it would be a bit dicey. Some contracts that suppress rights might be defensible BUT the point is that such contract are not apriori valid. Indeed, your the military example shows the need for limits; there's a reason that only the state can operate with the contract you describe. If a private organization could do such a thing, there would serious trouble on many fronts (private armies = bad things).
      - moron4hire 17y ago
        If a movie theater would want to restrict your rights to write a negative review, why would you attend that movie theater? If a contract is bad, you don't enter into it
  - cschwarm 17y ago
    > Can somebody suppress my rights (to share, to sing, etc.), in the form of terms? You're making some fundamental logical errors here. Your first premise is that you have these rights. But where's your rationale for that? The simple truth is that you only have these rights if the objects under consideration are yours. But you have no right to share my books. You have no right to share my house. You have no right to share my property. And you have no right to sing my song. Unless I give you my permission to do so, of course. So, your first premise is wrong. Your second premise is that it's suppression if you were not given all possible permissions. But you agreed to the terms with a free will. No one forced you to do that. No one pointed a gun to your head telling you what to do. In fact, you are free to do the same work I have done to author the work, in the first place. So, your second premise is also wrong. I don't know what your conclusion is but it's probably wrong, too, because your premises are.
andreyf 17y ago
That freedom stops as soon as you share it with someone else. While you can do whatever you want with your creations, those you share it with can also do whatever they want with your creations. These fundamental freedoms can impede progress, and so the US constitution allows congress to enforce limited-time monopolies for authors on their intellectual creations. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause
- davidw 17y ago
  It's a compromise intended to stimulate the provisioning of public goods, to borrow some terms from economics, by creating artificial scarcity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#Possible_solutions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#Possible_solutions
joe_the_user 17y ago
Uh, I don't think Stalman or anyone else wants to keep people from writing programs on they own computer and then running them however they want to. What you're talking about is 'copyright', the right to give your creation to someone and restrict their ability to use said creation once they have it in their possession. That's more a little more complicated than ' to do what you please with your own creation'.

coliveira 17y ago

You touched on the biggest weakness of RMS point of view. If you write software, you have to fundamental right to make it free or not. If you are on the receiving end, you only have to agree with the terms. RMS turns the roles around, and wants to make the user the owner of everything.

andreyf 17y ago
you have to fundamental right to make it free or not False. You do NOT have the right to restrict what I do with "your" ideas, once you've shared them with me - be it software, sonnet, or poem. The government may limit my fundamental freedom by enforcing a limited-time monopoly, but only in order to encourage you to work on your ideas. It is NOT your fundamental right to have such monopoly indefinitely.
- dtf 17y ago
  Yet the maker of a software product can aid or hinder your ability to modify it by choosing to distribute as source or binary. That particular "right" requires no law. I often wonder what RMS would do if he had the power to enact a law mandating that all software be free software - as a form of "positive liberty". Judging by his writings, I get the feeling he'd do it.
- cschwarm 17y ago
  Wrong. Copyright is about "works", not "ideas". My copyright of a work doesn't restrict your ability to copy the idea. In fact, this is what many Open Source projects do: they copy the idea or a proprietary software, but not the software (ie. the work) itself.
- coliveira 17y ago
  The issue is not the sharing of ideas, but sharing of how the software was made. It is more like saying: "if I buy your food, you have to give me the recipe or I will sue you." There is a huge difference between using gcc and knowing how it was created, for example. Nobody is restricting you from creating a similar food or software (unless there is a patent, which is an entirely different issue). You have the right to create your version, and I have my right to sell only the product, not the process that made it.
iambvk 17y ago
"""If you are on the receiving end, you only have to agree with the terms.""" This is where I see a problem. Can somebody suppress my rights (to share, to sing, etc.), in the form of terms? Is a right is something that I can trade? I don't understand these issues much, just doubts :-(
- moron4hire 17y ago
  What does the movie theater do to you when you enter BUT suppress your rights to sing/talk/shout/etc, on the terms that they will let you watch the movie? What does the military do to you BUT suppress your right to freely determine your life, on the terms that they will provide food, shelter, and training to you?
  - joe_the_user 17y ago
    Ah, but that's within a pretty limited domain. If the movie theater also restricted your right to write a negative review afterwards, say, it would be a bit dicey. Some contracts that suppress rights might be defensible BUT the point is that such contract are not apriori valid. Indeed, your the military example shows the need for limits; there's a reason that only the state can operate with the contract you describe. If a private organization could do such a thing, there would serious trouble on many fronts (private armies = bad things).
    - moron4hire 17y ago
      If a movie theater would want to restrict your rights to write a negative review, why would you attend that movie theater? If a contract is bad, you don't enter into it
- cschwarm 17y ago
  > Can somebody suppress my rights (to share, to sing, etc.), in the form of terms? You're making some fundamental logical errors here. Your first premise is that you have these rights. But where's your rationale for that? The simple truth is that you only have these rights if the objects under consideration are yours. But you have no right to share my books. You have no right to share my house. You have no right to share my property. And you have no right to sing my song. Unless I give you my permission to do so, of course. So, your first premise is wrong. Your second premise is that it's suppression if you were not given all possible permissions. But you agreed to the terms with a free will. No one forced you to do that. No one pointed a gun to your head telling you what to do. In fact, you are free to do the same work I have done to author the work, in the first place. So, your second premise is also wrong. I don't know what your conclusion is but it's probably wrong, too, because your premises are.

andreyf 17y ago

That freedom stops as soon as you share it with someone else. While you can do whatever you want with your creations, those you share it with can also do whatever they want with your creations. These fundamental freedoms can impede progress, and so the US constitution allows congress to enforce limited-time monopolies for authors on their intellectual creations. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause

davidw 17y ago
It's a compromise intended to stimulate the provisioning of public goods, to borrow some terms from economics, by creating artificial scarcity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#Possible_solutions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#Possible_solutions

joe_the_user 17y ago

Uh, I don't think Stalman or anyone else wants to keep people from writing programs on they own computer and then running them however they want to. What you're talking about is 'copyright', the right to give your creation to someone and restrict their ability to use said creation once they have it in their possession. That's more a little more complicated than ' to do what you please with your own creation'.