[LAU] Some disturbing news

[David Kastrup]

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

> Hey Victor!
>
> Thank you very much for your points, really enjoy the direction of your
> questions because I think they allow me to explain my position from very
> important angles.
>
> "The postulate is not about 4 freedoms. It’s about absolute freedom as a
> starting point."
>
> I agree that this is a good starting point. I don't know if Stallman
> specifically views the world this way, but I definitely subscribe to this
> approach.
>
> In fact, I am not against Stallman's 4 freedoms at all. My position is not
> that these 4 freedoms are unimportant or not good to have. My position is
> that giving up these freedoms is completely fine in many situations.

That's why they are freedoms and not necessities.

> And making people give up these freedoms by virtue of providing a
> service is also fine. (will clarify below)

It's a one-way street and we are not operating in a vacuum but in the
economic reality of competitive markets.

One does not take a user's freedoms out of idle spitefulness but because
it is economically useful to subvert decisions that are actually the
user's to make for your own purposes.

Proprietariness is more of a necessary rather than sufficient condition
for working evil and disenfranchising users.  Teaching people to avoid
it drives up the cost of choosing proprietariness so that this choice
will increasingly be not made when it is not strictly required for
achieving your goal.

Teaching people to avoid proprietariness like the plague results in
proprietary offers being done mostly when the intent is to _be_ a
plague.

So teaching people to judge the world in these simplified categories
increasingly leads to a world that _can_ be judged in these simplified
categories, forcing people to show their colors.

Categorizing the world and changing the world are not separate feats.

-- 
David Kastrup