Simon Bridge wrote:
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?
In all honesty I'm not sure whether discussions about freedom are going
to lead anywhere. Its like discussions of relativism; i.e. it should be
a non-issue. As far as freedom goes, there are no absolute standards by
which to assess whether something represents freedom. For example,
non-free software advocates may just as easily argue that they want to
be free to create proprietary software. Who's to say their freedom is
any more or less valid than ours? Arguments that refer to freedom
cannot answer such questions. Another example is the one about absolute
anarchism: is it OK to let political views that challenge the right of
your political right to exist, to exist? If they are hell bent on
destroying your vision, then should you let them have the freedom to
exist? Therefore, I think it is more useful, as far as the objectives
of the Free Software movement is concerned, to consider the notion of
freedom, to be no more than a rhetorical device. However, we should not
kid ourselves that our freedom is someone else's freedom. In the end
the arguments boil down to: what we believe is good, and therefore
should be promoted, AT THE EXPENSE OF (unfortunately) other ideas about
freedom.
--
"Więcej kondomów, mniej poligonów!" - Big Cyc
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