4 Jun
2018
4 Jun
'18
5:51 p.m.
I've read all of Louigi's long piece on free software, Stallman etc. I even
gave him some editorial feedback on parts of that I felt were factually
incorrect.
It is frustrating to see people arguing with him about specific points in
this (very large) debate without apparently having read and digested his
entire writing on this. There's still room to argue with his positions, but
it seems really dumb to me do try to keep forcing him to address things
point by point when he's already done so.
So do yourself a favor and go read the whole thing. There's a lot of
interesting stuff in there, different ways to think about things. I don't
entirely agree with him on everything, but I think that it is important for
supporters/believers/proclaimers of free software philosophy to be aware of
his entire argument/presentation.
On Mon, Jun 4, 2018 at 7:50 AM, Thorsten Wilms <self(a)thorstenwilms.com>
wrote:
On 04.06.2018 11:41, Louigi Verona wrote:
Hey Thorsten!
Thank you for your comment. I have not only read Stallman, I have studied
his writings very closely and wrote a large work on his philosophy which
can be found here:
https://louigiverona.com/?page=projects&s=writings&t=philoso
phy&a=philosophy_freedoms
That whole thing seems to depend on a reversal. It's not 4 Freedoms
because non-free software is claimed to be unjust, but non-free software is
said to be unjust because it denies users the 4 Freedoms. Then you continue
to play down all of the associated issues. You should really try the "less
is more" approach, some time.
"The problem starts once you do anything that encourages another person to
use non-free software, because in doing so, they
will give up the 4
freedoms."
This is not a convincing argument, because you first need to prove that
these 4 freedoms matter. What problems are they solving?
How about the other way? What problems does _not_ having the 4 freedoms
create?
Optional:
- You may not be allowed to run the program as you wish, for any purpose,
i.e., an EULA might be in place.
Always:
- You cannot study and learn from the code.
- You cannot do even the simplest modification to adapt the program to you
needs/wishes (aside from reverse engineering methods).
- You may not just hand copies to others, or point them to freely
available sources to help them out / speed up collaboration.
- You may not join forces with the authors, e.g. by providing patches
(aside from getting hired ...)
- You cannot modify the software for others.
- You cannot fork the project.
- You cannot pick up the project after the original author went away or
perished.
- You will have a hard time working with data with no maintained,
accessible program to read it left around.
Now some may say unnecessarily burdening users with those problems is
wrong (/unjust/unethical/immoral).
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