Shachar Shemesh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Does that mean that you draw the line wherever the law goes?
That's part of it, but it also seems a reasonable place to draw a line, which I hope is why the law is what it is. After all, I have bought the CD legally, and I only want to listen to parts of it in sequence. I think it's fair. Others may think differently (and may go to jail for their principles). Just because their opinion differs from mine I don't brand them either criminals or traitors to the noble ideals of freedom. > Leaving the nitpicking comment that any defined view is a particular > one, I don't understand what you have against our current strategy, or > why did you exclaim that first statement saying "I will not be a part > of it". It seems like our current "Hamakor" strategy is the same as > you suggest. I am glad if it is. It is not so clear to me though, because, if you re-read the thread, there are voices that suggest a Stallmanist line as an official policy of Hamakor. All I did was saying that in my opinion it is narrow, divisive, and shouldn't happen. If it does, I'll have to consider what I should do. Does Hamakor have a problem with this? > Did you see anyone from this list, or from Hamakor, doing that? Yes. > And if they did, but that was under the "opinions" section? It was on this list. All of this list is opinions. However, there was an explicit opinion (that I respect) that my views were at the core of the Hamakor goals (or something like that), and that I simply had to make them widely known for that reason. > Talk to me - what bothers you about Hamakor? The possibility that it will adopt Stallman's POV and start pointing fingers at, boycotting, and whatnot those (members or others) who are deemed "traitors to freedom". > But why make Linux better if you don't believe, because of ideoligy, > that it should be better? I don't see where ideology fits in. I am happier with Linux rather than with Windows because it does work better to me, partly because of GNU and other tools that come with the system, partly because of the transparency that comes with Open Source, partly because it's cheaper, partly for other reasons. And it's still not perfect, so it should be better. And I don't use Windows because of the lack of useful tools and applications, because its protocols and formats are incompatible with anything else (a technical point, mind you), and most of all because of a really pityful interface. If it were technically good enough and worth the money, I'd use it happily. All of this is purely pragmatic, and I don't see anything remotely resembling ideology here. Of course, you can always say that trying to avoid ideology is also an ideology... > But why is it that you believe Linux *should* be better at 16-way SMP? > Why not just recommend another OS for that task and leave it at that? > The only reason I can think of is ideological. Wrong. It well may be that Linux is much better than the other OS in many respects, and were it not for the scalability it would be more suitable for the task, so by eliminating the show-stopper of a scalability problem in Linux I will get a better overall solution. It may be more practical to do that than solve all the problems of the other OS. > When does an argument stop becoming practical and starts becoming > ideological? When you start branding Linus a traitor because he chooses BitKeeper as his revision control system because BitKeeper is "not free". The argument like "we'll have a problem if BitMover folds and/or Larry McVoy gets hit by a bus" may be practical (or not, if there is a good enough answer to that; btw, often there is, there exist all sorts of schemes that solve the problem even for closed source software), but an argument like "BitKeeper cannot be redistributed freely" is not. Or when you force your system administrator to switch from qmail to an inferior MTA because "qmail takes away freedom #3". Mind you, switching from Linux to Windows because "Linux is distributed under a viral license" is not a technical argument either. Oops, got caught preaching to the choir... > Lets take qmail as an example. Sorry, I have never even tried to use qmail, and I cannot say what its deficiencies, strengths, license terms etc are, so I am out of my depth here. Although it seems significant to me that even a self-professed Stallmanist like Ira uses qmail, apparently choosing technical reasons over pure ideology. Anyway, I do think this is sort of arguing that my religion is better than yours or the other way around, which is precisely my point. I would only like to point out that there may be infinitely many situations where RMS, Ira, you, and myself will make the same choices and same decisions. In some cases we will do it for the same or similar reasons, because I do agree with a lot of what RMS (and you, and Ira) say. In other cases it will be a complete coincidence because we will do it for totally different reasons. Assuming you, like me, don't run Windows on any of your home computers, we may find out that you don't do it for the ideological reason that it is not free, and I don't do it because I think it is unacceptable from the usability point of view. My problem is that I was sitting at Stallman's lecture, thinking, "this sounds right to me... and here I think he is wrong..." and then it occurred to me that if I stand up and say that I disagree it will look like I am against some basic, universal values that everybody should share, because that's how things are presented. And then I thought that that was a much more serious and basic problem than any particular point I was in disagreement with. It didn't take me much to understand all that because it is a very well known phenomenon. And this is exactly what happened in the public dialogue Ira drew me into, which quickly took the form of "how can you be against something so basic and global?" All I said was, it's not basic, it's not global, and using this kind of argumentation will not necessarily help the openness in software, which is a practical goal that I consider important. I think something like this last idea is common to all of us, but the issue of whether one should be able to copy music and software freely for one's friends is not. If you know what I mean, Pooh. My dialogue with you, Shachar, is split between specific examples of my non-existent ideological fervor you try to think up, and the really important part of why I am concerned about Hamakor. I am concerned about Hamakor because in my opinion the official position of Hamakor towards Stallman should be, "RMS is entitled to his opinions which do not contradict our goals in any way". If you go over the "freedom thread" you will find a line that pulls towards "Hamakor's ideology is that of FSF though it'll happily use pragmatic arguments like the Open Source crowd do, traitors though those guys may be." I see a difference. If the latter line wins, I won't be able to argue, e.g., that freedom of information should not be absolute and remain a member. Sorry for yet another long post. Like Ira, I think it is important. -- 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]
