Re: You rate savannah.gnu.org at A? AYFKM?

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

P.A. is no longer discussing what actually happened in the history of
the free software movement.  Perse is now discussing whether we can
prove it beyond an unreasonable doubt.

To prove anything beyond an unreasonable doubt is very difficult,
so I suggest we decline the challenge to do so.

I once asked someone to look for any previous sign that someone
campaigned, on moral grounds, to put an end to nonfree software.  The
seach found none.

It did find an organization of OS/370 customization businesses that
complained, in the early 80s, about IBM's decision not to give those
businesses the system source code any more.  However, the nature of
their complaint ws very different: (1) they did not present moral
arguments, only business arguments about IBM's interests, and (2) they
did not advocate that their customers should also get the source code.

The difference between their response and mine, on similar issues,
underscores the uniqueness of the position I took.

  > 2- Perhaps more importantly, I think calling that goal "moral" is 
  > disingenuous absent evidence that it is by accepted standards.

That is a special interpretation of the word "moral", and doesn't fit
here.  The campaign to establish a new moral standard needs must go
beyond what the accepted moral standards imply.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)