On 1/27/07, Renaissance Man <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Well you managed to miss the point of my *metaphor* (not straw man), even though I spelt it out for you: "The point is real "freedom" is measured on a "whole picture" basis, not on an individual basis."
A metaphor is simply a linguistic model, a blunt attempt to predict the countless variables which interact and effect the universe at different layers, from quantum to molecular to planetary. Emergence results from simple interactions, e.g: http://www.flickr.com/photos/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/370487910/ As you point out, with Apple taking BSD software and 'competing against BSD', the market share for vanilla BSD is reduced. You can't however know whether in the medium-long term this is an 'overall good' which sped up Freedom through other interactions in the future or an overall bad. Apple geeks may migrate more easily to vanilla BSD because they are exposed to the standard terminal, and are frustrated at the limitations they find. Maybe it could have benefited Linux in the same way if Apple was granted the Freedom to make its modifications to that code-base? I don't know. Neither do you. If either of us could predict the future we'd be more likely to be down the bookies. Or somesuch. It's okay to have opinions, but unless you actually can see into the future, and have amassed evidence to that end.. then you're claiming the role of prophet, whilst wearing the cloak of the economist/philosopher. The bottom line is that thinking things in simple terms such as "all non-free software is bad" is not historically valid.. and certainly not the logical conclusion to draw simply from the belief that "free software is great!". With OpenMoko we have the chance to add another brick to the wall of evidence showing the benefits of free software.. we don't need to try to knock down the wall of evidence showing benefits from closed-software - we'll dwarf that evidence in the end - real change requires real work - words are cheap.. and none cheaper than knocking something else down rather than building something of your own. So let's build :-) Richard _______________________________________________ OpenMoko community mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
