[LAU] Some disturbing news

[David Kastrup]

Louigi Verona <louigi.verona at gmail.com> writes:

> I am not saying that the freedoms are completely arbitrary. But basing
> it on one's personal experience like his story with the printer is not
> enough.

I don't see that you have a more convincing basis for your own decry of
abstracting a moral position into the definition of software freedoms.

> I mean, based on my experience I can create a Freedom To Not Be
> Misinterpreted. I can base it completely on this conversation when
> instead of asking me questions you just assume that I personally
> attack Stallman or believe some ridiculous claims that you them easily
> overturn.

Go ahead.  Create a philosophy around that, then create a license
serving those goals without forcing its adoptees to do likewise, then
write a seminal body of software people feel enthusiastic about to seed
a movement, like Emacs and GCC.

> The difficulty of the task Stallman has put himself up for is that he
> doesn't argue that the freedoms should apply to his life, he tries to
> argue that they should apply to everybody's life. And this is a
> completely different argument, with broad consequences. I need more
> than Stallman's personal stories to validate that.

Well, so do others.  Which is why there is an FSF promoting goals and a
philosophy that can be adopted by more people than those adoring
Stallman, and a license like the GPL that does not even require you
adopting its philosophy for using it and enjoying its benefits.

You don't agree with the principles Stallman put forward: that is within
the nature of principles.  You either adopt them or not.  You cannot
prove them.

You refuse to adopt them personally.  That does not free you from
following the conditions of the GPL for software licensed under it.

What is your goal?  Apparently not improving the world as much as
proving yourself smarter than people who do.

Where's the point?  Why should people bother?  What's in it for them?

> So, how can I agree that Stallman's freedoms are important when the
> problem he tries to solve has to be painstakingly spun and misquoted
> and misinterpreted to make it sound like a real problem?

You can argue as much as you want that Stallman has not been addressing
a real problem, but it still turns out that Free Software happens to be
a real solution.

Or why would Microsoft want to acquire the largest web service focused
around the most influential Free Software version control system used
for development of maintenance of the most commonly deployed operating
system kernel (the Linux kernel is running a whole lot more than
GNU/Linux desktop systems) in the world?

-- 
David Kastrup