"Bob Young" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> posted [EMAIL PROTECTED], excerpted below, on Fri, 29 Sep 2006 17:09:23 -0700:
[richard j. fish wrote] >> No, but that is *my* opinion. However Duncan has stated previously >> that, while he probably wouldn't be willing to die to defend his freedom >> regarding open source software, that he _should_ be willing to do so. > > That is a very crucial difference, and deserves not to be glossed over. > *Should* and *is* are two very different things. Men and women *have* > actually died to protect our freedom, to equate something that isn't > actually worth that ultimate price with the word, frankly, cheapens the > word. Indeed, but the fault there would be with my personal resolve. There are many folks who aren't willing to give their lives for a freedom yet realize and are grateful that others are so willing, and would still consider them freedoms, even if they aren't willing to personally give their lives for them. Many/most of these would also agree that they /should/ be willing to give their life for those freedoms, whether they /actually/ are or not. Thus, whether people are actually willing to do it vs whether they think they /should/ be willing to do it has little bearing on whether it can rightly be called a freedom or not. Certainly, I'd argue that if someone's willing to give up physical freedoms, regardless of whether they are willing to give their life, trading freedom for freedom, as it were, that's far more than is the case with much of what we already call freedom on a more ordinary scale. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman -- [email protected] mailing list
