Edward Cherlin wrote:
My personal definition of a Libertarian is "Believer in the right to
do anything that does not harm anybody else of any importance."
http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Code_Words#Legal_technicalities-Liberty
See also Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom. Not about software
development. ^_^
On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 21:07, Simon Bridge <address@hidden> 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?
While it's a nice sounding defintion from an individual's point of
view, you get in to problems pretty quick when you start arguing over
the meaning of "importance".
--
"Więcej kondomów, mniej poligonów!" - Big Cyc
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