Shachar Shemesh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > It seems to me that you are bringing ideoligy into the discussion, > even as you are claiming to reject the notion.
I don't see how. > Why is it bad that you cannot rip your bought CD and pick and choose > tracks for your car? You are not, as you claim, working without an > ideoligy. You are just drawing the line somewhere else. I wholeheartedly agree with that - it's a line-drawing game, and it only emphasizes the idea that right and wrong are not universal. I choose to draw the line beyond fair use because fair use is an established legal principle that would be a real pity to abolish. Abolishing the technology that allows me to do that because it may be used (by someone else) to copy CDs illegally is evil. This is a far cry however from saying CDs should be freely shared, which is something I would object to as well. > Hamakor was founded to give all of these opinions a voice. I can see > myself assiging money from the society's resources to sponsoring a > talk by Ira about why the four freedoms Stallman defined are important > and everyone should be getting them, just as I can see myself assiging > those same funds to a talk by you as to why Linux is a great and > inviting platform for commercial companies to base their proprietary > products on. I don't see any contradition here, as I am only doing > what I was elected to do as a board member of Hamakor - giving a stage > for the opinions and forces that pushed and are pushing free/open > source software forward. Please don't distort what I said. I said I would be glad if Hamakor would provide an opportunity for everybody to express their views. I would object, and I wouldn't want to be a part of organization that would adopt a particular viewpoint as its official one. This is tantamount to taking freedom away, which is exactly what Stallman does. Let me repeat it again: Stallman is against freedom. Stallman says, this is what I think the world should look like. This is called "freedom". Whoever disagrees with that point of view is against freedom. Well, I think that the world should look differently. I insist on my freedom to disagree, and I consider it gross verbal abuse to appeal to a generic, noble, universal notion of freedom, after defining it as the same as one's particular point of view, to brand me (or Linus, or whoever) this or that. Yes, there are different points of view, even on freedom. If you (not you, Shachar, and not you, Ira, an abstract "you") need a mathematical proof of that, here it goes: I have a different point of view from Stallman's, therefore his ideas on freedom are not universal. If you don't accept that, you are working against freedom. This may not be your intention, in fact I have no doubts that you have the best intentions, but a well-paved hell is the result of it. By not accepting that, by stating or implying that I am somehow inherently evil or morally inferior because I disagree with Stallman on what freedom is, you are taking my freedom away. According to my definition of freedom, that is. This is what bothers me so much in Stallman's view of the world. I am sorry, this should have gone into my response to Ira, but I hope that whoever bothers to read one of the postings will read both. > Now, if you, as you claimed, "do not want to be a part of any > organization that pushes forward ideoligy, even if I agree with it", > then I am very sorry to say that you will probably not want to be a > member of "Hamakor". As saddening as it is to me, on a personal level, > I cannot change the society's goals because of that. It would be sad to me too, and if it comes to that I pledge here and now to be as supportive of Hamakor as I can from the outside. I don't need to be a member to do that. > That last statement gets more emphesis by the fact that there is no > organization, and defenitely no society, that are not powered by > ideoligy. I am a member of at least one organization that, to my knowledge, has no ideological creed except that people should do their work as well as they can, ethically, and professionally. If one chooses to call this ideology, it is. It's a line-drawing game. > Even when you say you want Hamakor to promote open source > software based on technical merits - that's ideoligy. Maybe. It's an ideology of trying to make things work better. It is, IMHO, a very broad and inclusive ideology, as opposed to Stallman's. > The thing that makes it so is the fact that you don't stop believing > it just because people prove you wrong. Linux does not have SMP > support as good as SCO, hspell is no competition to Word's Hebrew > speller. And promoting free and open source software, in my mind, is working towards making Linux better, not arguing that one should use it even though it's worse because it will liberate you in some way, while taking away your freedom to use a 16-way SMP machine that you may really need to do the job. > The problem is even more acute when products such as OpenOffice are > discussed. These products are developed purely according to the > commercial development model. OpenOffice can offer just two advantages > over StarOffice: > > 1. 1. It is cheaper. > 2. If Sun goes down, change license, want to charge more or > discontinue the product altogether, you are not left out in the rain. > > I think we all agree 1 is a technicality, and noone is honestly trying > to use that as the major selling point. 2 is a 100% Stallmanistic > argument. There is nothing technological about it. I can claim > practical reasons for going for 2 as a choosing factors (cheaper > support, no threat of extortion, etc.), these are all just the reasons > ANY free software is preferable over non-free software. This is, in fact, a purely technical argument, and has *nothing* at all with free software if free is used in Stallman's sense. This would work perfectly even if you didn't have the freedom to redistribute the software or derivative products, which would make it non-free software according to Stallman. It is quite enough that you have the source and can modify it for your own needs. -- Oleg Goldshmidt | [EMAIL PROTECTED] "There is nothing more practical than idealism." [Richard M. Stallman, quoted with permission] ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
