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

[Simon Bridge]

On Wed, 2009-12-16 at 16:40 +1030, Κ∀miL ΛbΤ wrote:
> 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.

Which is why we make our arguments in terms of morality. These are
exactly moral questions - what sort of freedoms *should* we have?

>  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. 
Nicely put.