21 Feb
2006
21 Feb
'06
11:53 a.m.
On Tue, 2006-02-21 at 16:30 +0100, David Kastrup wrote:
Chris Cannam <cannam(a)all-day-breakfast.com>
writes:
No, this is a bunch of BS. You're equating software producers with
weapon producers, who you're equating with evil (and, implicitly, weapon
users, a fact which I find personally insulting). That's all wrong, but
the salient point is that Chris stipulated that proprietary software
producers *aren't* evil! The only way they can be evil is if you
stipulate a moral code which dictates as much.
They're not torturing babies, for chrissakes.
An irony of both open source and free software is
that they make it
easy to forget that all software is almost always written by decent
humans -- for example, by implying that proprietary software
developers are less moral and so less significant. If my free
software work puts a company or its developers out of work, then
that's a problem for my conscience. It's not a victory for free
software. And it's not "just business", because it's not business.
I will have damaged people's livelihoods, for fun.
That particular argument does not hold water at all, sorry. Following
your kind of logic, people caring for peace on Earth are damaging the
livelihoods of weapon producers, decent people mostly, and that merely
for their selfish desire of a world worth living in. If their livelihoods get tougher because of a world
where work is
shared and exchanged between consenting and cooperating humans, so
much the better. It is a byproduct one can live with.
Yeah, ever heard of capitalism? Or do you have a bone to pick with
that, too?
Seriously, there are better things to do than demonize proprietary
software producers. Go kill a terrorist if you need somebody to beat up
on, at least you'll be making the world a better place in the process.
Last I checked, Microsoft wasn't bombing any subways.
--
Pete Bessman
http://gazuga.net
"So this baby seal walks into a club."