David,

"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."

Not entirely sure I understand what you're saying here, but I have written a 70 page basis for disagreeing with Stallman.

I know it is an investment, especially if you feel strongly about the issue. But at the very least you can appreciate that I tried to offer a convincing basis.

You also say that the principles have either to be agreed with or not and that they cannot be proven. I completely disagree with that. I don't view ethics as dogma. I am a proponent of ethics derived from reason. This could be the biggest disagreement, and, in fact, a key disagreement we might have.

As for the rest of the things that you've written, like that I don't want to improve the world and so on, you have made it very clear throughout this discussion that you don't want to treat me in a charitable way and instead just strawman most if not all I write. So, excuse me if I will not reply to your comments from now on. I am not offended or anything, I just don't see our conversations exploring interesting directions.



On Mon, Jun 4, 2018 at 1:50 PM, Thorsten Wilms <self@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=philosophy&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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