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[fsf-community-team] Freedom to become slaves?


From: Simon Bridge
Subject: [fsf-community-team] Freedom to become slaves?
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:07:18 +1300

On Wed, 2009-12-16 at 15:03 +1100, Charlie wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:32:40 +1300 Simon Bridge
> <address@hidden> sent this information:
> 
> 
> >On Wed, 2009-12-16 at 09:23 +1100, Charlie wrote:
> >> On Tue, 15 Dec 2009 02:51:45 -0800 Mike VandeVelde
> >> <address@hidden> sent this information:
> >> 
> >> 
> >> >I use free software 
> >> >where I can, even in some places where it isn't exactly easy, but I
> >> >use proprietary software in a lot of situations where I probably
> >> >don't truly need to. So either kick me out of this club now, or
> >> >you'll regret it later! Muwahaha!!
> >> 
> >> Isn't that part of the freedom concept?
> >
> >What? Regretting it later?
> >
> >It is difficult to have a free society when members are free to become
> >enslaved. That is why we have laws against chattel slavery.
> >
> 
> Freedom is just that, allowing people to become enslaved if they so
> choose, after they have heard about the alternatives, or not. listen if
> they so choose or not. Freedom with conditions isn't freedom. :-) Yet
> anyone can have that and call it freedom.

I am going to disagree with that - it sounds good but it is just
semantics:  we have learned that a society in which anyone is enslaved
is not a free society.

The philosophy of freedom and what it means logically gets quite
esoteric. I am trying to stay within conversational language and
common-ground usage within the context of software freedom. Try not to
mistake something which makes sense semantically to work in practice. In
practice, we have seen, allowing slavery decreases the overall liberty
of society.

The ability to sell yourself into slavery can be argued to be an
increase in liberty you have only if you never actually use it, after
all, once done, your liberty is drastically decreased.

To put it another way: if we agree that slavery is undesirable, then we
*want* to be so restricted. We do *not* want absolute freedom you have
described.

In the gnu philosophy articles, the talk is of an ethical freedom.

In practice the World is a mess of varying liberties and we have to live
with that. In the free software movement we hope to increase the general
liberty in society as a whole.

We may have to agree to disagree here though the distinction is an
important one for our community. Perhaps someone else would like to
weigh in?





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