Orlando Andico <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Of course ethically that is not acceptable to Mr Stallman or Mr Elep. > it's a choice each one has to make. but to categorically brand any > other platform as inferior because of this consideration is IMHO not > valid. because while the freedom to modify the kernel is a legitimate > technical advantage, it's not a freedom that 95% of the population > will ever exercise. So for those 95%, *ix does not give them anything > extra.
You sure of that? :-) Contrary to what light you put me in, I'm not at all totally for the ethical question of freedom, since it is just another (frail) human abstraction designed for (totalitarian) control. Ethnic, that would be probably a better description. To tell the truth, I use internet cafÃs aside from my Linuxen at work and at home. *All* those cafÃs use Windows. *Pirated* Windows. All of them, and *not* a single one officially recognizable under law. I also happen to use Internet Explorer (4 to 6!) on those machines. Since I don't have any freedom to change these to Firefox (or even Netscape) I simply have to live with that fact. Same thing with Microsoft Office (versus OO.o), Yahoo! Messenger (versus gaim), hell, even Winamp (versus MusicPD)! Notice that I *don't* even care about the kernel. The discussion was never about that anyway. Whether Linus agrees or disagrees with rms is irrelevant. While it may be true that 95 per cent may not even exercise the right to modify, that doesn't mean that only 5 per cent will modify the program in question to make it conjure a computational process that will work for them. As a matter of fact, given sufficient information dissemination, this 95 out of a 100 people might even consider rewriting the program, either from scratch, or from some other program that in turn is also granted that right. This argument is a lot like the question of women's suffrage in the 1800s. It was assumed that women, being subservient to men, would not vote, even if given the chance. Hell, they were wrong. *Very* wrong. The *very* same thing applies here too. -- ZAK B. ELEP <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- <http://zakame.spunge.org> 1024D/FA53851D 1486 7957 454D E529 E4F1 F75E 5787 B1FD FA53 851D -- Running Debian GNU+Linux testing/unstable. GnuPG signed mail preferred.
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