Ira Abramov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Quoting Nadav Har'El, from the post of Sat, 11 Jan: > > I don't know what your "basic disagreements" are (I guess I'll have to buy > > you a beer to find out :)) > > I think Oleg has put it very clearly in a post here, he's against the > basic ideals of freedom, and therefore the fact that they are > objectively important and global.
This sounds suspiciously like I am against freedom and want to send everybody to Gulag, which is just a tiny bit unfair, Ira. What I am against is taking one's ideas of freedom, or any other social or individual value for that matter, and try to present it as universal. Given this, I am in trouble of presenting a comprehensive, concise written formulation of what I think of freedom, because, contrary to Stallman, I don't start from a premise that some particular interpretation of freedom is universal, so I'll get boggled in qualifications trying to be intellectually honest with myself (please don't interpret this as sayign RMS is not intellectually honest - he is, I believe, with himself). Maybe it will suffice for now if I give a couple of examples that I was thinking of while listening to Stallman's talk on Thursday. He made a big deal of arguing that the current state of affairs somehow goes against the basic value of "sharing" (pardon the quotes, Ira, this is the only word here that is directly lifted from his speech), that society should teach its members, especially children, to share, etc. I disagree. I think that a much more basic value (and virtue) that my future kids should learn is the ability to distinguish whom to share with and whom not to share with. And I am not willing to discuss in advance any criterion that may be applied. Under particular circumstances, I can imagine asking myself, "is this person an Israeli?", or "is she Jewish?", or "does he work at IBM?", or "has she paid his membership dues to Hamakor?". I think this is more basic than the general idea of sharing as an ideal, and does explicitly involve the notion of "not sharing". Were I to adopt the idea of "sharing" as basic, essential, and universal, I would not have the freedom to consider not sharing, let alone the freedom not to share. I reserve that freedom to myself. In another example, I think DMCA and DRM and treacherous computing are evil. Why? For instance, I happen to own the latest Diana Krall CD. If you ask me to burn a copy for you, I will refuse, and I hope we can remain friends after that. I will, without any reservation, rip tracks out of the six or seven Diana Krall CDs that I own and burn a CD of favourites to listen to in my car, as a matter of fair use. The reason for my refusal to do the same for you is that I recognize the freedom of Diana Krall and the recording studio to impose restrictions on distribution of the CD and to earn profit from such distribution. What I object to in the legislation in question is what is tantamount to outlawing CD burners because they will let me to make a copy for you. That *is* evil. However, I suspect that Stallman ideologically goes futher than me in his objections. Maybe he doesn't. I suspect he does though, because he comes from the culture or totally unrestricted sharing of information (I am reading "Hackers" now, and Levy describes that well), and he applies that ethics as widely as he can. Levy describes the Incompatible Time-Sharing System developed and deployed at MIT's AI Lab, that had no passwords. During his previous visit to Israel RMS said that even when there had been passwords everybody at MIT had known his username was rms and his password was rms. He had since been forced to use a real password, and he was still bitter about it. At Stanford's SAIL the time-sharing system provided the users with the ability to have private files (at John McCarthy's insistence), and the hackers around tended to think that whoever uses private files must be doing something, eh, interesting, and one should have a peek. I value my privacy enough to consider this notion of sharing unacceptable. I insist on my freedom to keep some of the stuff I do private. I also insist on my freedom to keep some of the stuff that I produce restricted, without being branded a traitor to the basic ideals of freedom. Besides, the context of computer usage has changed since then, and however strictly you may adhere to the hackers' ethics, I suspect you will have a mostly closed firewall and insist on your users to have good passwords nowadays. On the technology versus ideology level, I have always thought that by simply doing my job as well as I can I am making the society I live in better in some intangible way. What I would like to avoid is doing my job differently because of some preconception I might have regarding what is good for society. For me, it is a matter of intellectual honesty in a technical field. I am used to the idea that the society, or some of its members, might disagree with me. I grew up with this idea. I was fortunate enough to find a society that agrees with me to a much greater extent than the one I was born into, and I moved to it. The society I was born into still disagrees with me by and large. It is a different society, it has different ideals, and different ideas, and that includes freedom and just about everything else, and I don't think one should try and impose one's ideals on it. This does not mean I have no beliefs or positions. I'll let you on to a secret: I even have political views, and I freely share them with people who I think are worth sharing them with (and not with others). I won't go to a demostration to express them, ever, let alone join a political party. Why? because it will take away my freedom. "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" has this wonderful passage about a Czech emigrant who flees in 1968 and a year later finds herself in Paris at a demonstration for freedom in Czechoslovakia. She leaves the demostration to the astonishment of her friends, and later has trouble to explain to them that there was no freedom in that demostration. I hope, Ira, that both you and RMS will recognize my freedom to disagree with you about freedom. > me, because the issue is already on the table, and I don't want to > wait till we get to a pub. I don't see any reason you should hide > your opinions, unless you are ashamed of them for some reason. we > are intrigued to know what they are) As you point out in the next passage cited below, I have learned early in my life that there may be other reasons to hide one's opinions. I am really happy the importance of those reasons for me has diminished. Note though that this positive change in my life was not brought about by fighting for freedom, just by moving to another country that suits me better. As far as I can judge, the majority of the population of my country of birth was quite satisfied by the freedoms they had. > I have no idea how to even reply to such a statement from a guy that > had actually experianced since birth what the lack of freedom begets > in the eastern bloc. Part of my experience is that most of the people who fought courageously against the oppression of the Soviet regime (and earned our gratitude and admiration for their courage) were no more for freedom than the authorities. That oppressive regime was created by people whose stated purpose was freedom, don't forget that. Another part of my experience taught me the importance of sharing information. When my friends and I started discussing emigration it was quite clear to all of us that talking freely about it could cause all sorts of trouble. On the other hand, in a society that restricted communications and information the way USSR did, it was very difficult to get information on issues that interested us. So we consciously came to the conclusion that people would not give us any information that we needed if we did not share our information, even at some not so insignificant risk. So we did. We still were very careful and picky about whom we talked to. No, information sharing is not universal. Not in my book. > > I believe that two other values should be stressed as well when > > discussing the moral advantages of free software: Equality and > > Fraternity. > > and my guess is, Oleg will not agree on these either. (again, I'm > trying to provoke an answer from him about this :) I don't know what Fraternity is. I believe that Equality is in fundamental contradiction to Liberty. A society where everybody is equal cannot be free, thus I don't see any inherent moral advantage in Equality. I insist on the liberty to be unequal. This is too laconic to be articulate. Let's leave *something* to beer, OK? > so you see, Oleg, it is VERY important to me that you explain your views > and objection to the use of the word "freedom", as my compatriat in the > founders team, I'd REALLY like to know, since I do find this a core > issue. I tried as well as I could. I feel that introducing any sort of ideology would take away a part of my freedom, since, being a member of an organization that promotes a certain ideology, I would be obliged to subscribe to that ideology. Assuming the ideology is something I agree with, I keep in mind that someone else might disagree, and thus would not be able to be a member (unless he hides his views). This is why I would like to keep the amuta non-ideological. This does not mean, of course, that I would object to it supporting an event featuring RMS, I hope you don't suspect me of that. I hope that the point is that ESR or Linus or even Sam Palmisano, if he ever agrees, will be just as welcome, even though for RMS all of them are borderline traitors. Please recognize, if the notion of freedom is important to you (that's with my tongue in my cheek, I don't suspect you of anything), that belonging to an organization *does* restrict one's freedom all by itself. I only suggest not to introduce additional restrictions. For me, belonging to an organization is already a compromise in my freedom. As long as it is non-ideological but rather professional in nature, I hope I can live with this compromise. I personally find Stallman's position quite restrictive, and not promoting freedom as I understand it. As I emphasized quite a few times already, I respect his position, and I hope I contributed a little bit to his freedom to express it, and to the freedom of all of us to hear him and form our own opinions. -- Oleg Goldshmidt | [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is a recognized necessity." [V.I.Lenin, I hope it's not a copyright violation - OG] ================================================================= 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]
