> It should be free software.
Again: should/could != is. Still you sit in that vehicle and ride, you turn
on that radio (proprietary chips inside) and listen to music (copyrighted
non-copyleft material). You trust that airplane with all its complex systems
to take you from here to there and it does it - safely, securely,
comfortably. How can this be 'maybe malware'? You basically deny the whole
technological progress of humankind and claim it as malicious just because
person X says "if something does not conform to these rules, it is bad".
Please - I am not defending proprietary closed stuff but just see for
yourself how limited such thinking is.
> We should fight for the control over the work we do with *our*
cars/processors.
Exactly: the fight is for CONTROL, not for FREEDOM. Two very different and
incompatible things. And I think it is very wrong that FSF calls that
freedom. It should be called "the right to use/inspect/change/redistribute".
Freedom is something entirely different. We already talked about how words
are abused.
> "Nonfree" and "patented" are two different things: the copyright law and
the patent law have very little in common.
For good or bad we also studied patent law at the Technical University and
touched on copyright as well. They are not essentially different. It is all
about the so called "intellectual property" and "right to use". A patent
(just like copyright) is essentially a way to establish limitations for
others. Example: I invent something new (a light bulb) with particular
properties and I patent it, then nobody else is allowed to produce that kind
of light bulb without paying me a fee (royalties) which is established
through signing a "licensing agreement" in which all terms are stated (how
many light bulbs, in which country they can be sold etc). It is quite similar
with copyright, just the works are not call inventions but "content" and the
user again receives a license (non-exclusive right) to use it within a
particular set of rules defined in a licensing agreement. It is all about
control, not about freedom.
Patents do _not_ prevent invention. They _limit_ the _usage_ of the invention
by non-inventors. Patents are basically a way to establish monopoly. Also
patents are open, they must be - because the first of the 3 criteria to get a
patent is novelty (i.e. nobody else has done anything like that before you).
If you go to the patent library you can read the text of any patent for free.
> I am not knowledgeable about patents on drugs. Don't they help us get new
useful drugs?
Patents are a way to establish monopoly. Company X makes a drug and although
it may be a very useful drug - nobody else is allowed to produce it unless
they pay royalty to X. This puts X in control and control is not freedom. The
drug itself may be useful - that's the whole point of the question: Would you
give it to the dying person or philosophize about how a particular person
defined what freedom is.
An important thing in patent law is: you cannot patent a know-how. Patents
are public, know-how is (usually) secret. That's why the recipe of Coca Cola
is not a patent.
> What axiom of arithmetic are you rejecting?
I am not. Through the questions I put I am just trying to ask you to look
beyond definitions and rules handed down by whoever because they are limited
and every limitation denies the possibility to look for something new and
better, freely in the real meaning of the word, without conforming to the old
patterns. And that is important because currently "the best we have" is not
even "good enough". Look at the terrible things going on in the world - do
you really and honestly see any reduction of mass surveillance? Or that talks
about software freedom change that? Don't you notice that the tech giants are
so cunning that they use these FSF-freedoms to make their proprietary war
tools even more malicious? Do you think that spending another $100M to
support FOSS project is a problem for them if the intellectual result they
get in return will give them them even better instrument to control the
world, to make "better" wars? You see - one can believe in a great ideal,
fight for a cause, for control over one's device forever but that is nothing.
A drop in the ocean.
You say community control but control is centralized. If tomorrow Google
decides to shift the search results so that ideas about FOSS start to sink
slowly and ideas about something else go up - the whole matter of FOSS will
gradually start to sink too. The drop in the ocean will shrink more even
though it may remain. That is the big problem - we (in the ocean drop, who
want freedom) don't have the resources and we are denied the possibility to
have them. So things cannot be fixed by polishing a limited small set of the
resources inside the drop and shouting at the oceal. The drop must explode
through some radical change.
> I doubt a perfect solution exists.
Why? Have you looked for any? Are you interested to find? What have you found
so far? I am interested, tell me:
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/freedom-security-technology-what-can-we-do
