Re: [ox-en] Germ of a new form of society or germ of a new form of business?
- From: "Benj. Mako Hill" <mako debian.org>
- Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 12:12:23 -0800
Most of things you replied to in this message were Niall, not me.
If the FSF and GNU really had the best interests of software in mind,
they would not act like they do.
Software doesn't have interests. Software runs on computers for the use
of humans. Humans have interests. The FSF wants software to be as
effective in the pursuit of those interests as possible. "information
wants to be free" is not an FSF slogan, is it?
That is not fair. The fact that the FSF doesn't agree with you about
the ideal license in all cases doesn't mean that they don't have the
best interests of software in mind.
SOFTWARE IS NOT A PERSON.
I've spoken out against the information wants to be free rhetoric
("information wants to be anthropomorphized") multiple times on this
list.
Read into those bits you quoted. It seems pretty clear that Niall and
I are both referring to "Free Software" as in "the Free Software
movement." In my case, "they have the best interest of software in
mind," was shorthand for, "they are committed to promoting the use of
software in such a way that it promotes the best situation with the
most freedom for the users of software." Since the stated goal of the
Free Software movement is to do this, it seemed appropriate. I still
prefer the first version.
I know software doesn't want anything. I know information is a tool
and be used and serves the interests of the its authors. I deal with
this every day and have written essays on the nature of this phenomena
in my own projects.
Criticize the substance and try not to take the figures of speech too
literally. Sorry if this particular figure of speech was too
confusing. I'll do my part to try to avoid it in the future.
All of these are based on the idea of selling software licenses and
restricting access to software as the only way to make money from
software and to make development profitable enough to support. I think
this is just uncreative.
No, it's exploitative. It's the "money-lending" model - one that can be
backed up by thuggery if required.
Who said that uncreative and exploitative behavior are not mutually
exclusive. :)
I think that's subjective and unsupportable. Are there things that
FreeBSD does better than Linux? Yes.
Are there?
Sure. In certain situations and certain configuration it has a
reputation for being more optimizeable and for its ability to run
more stably.
Is this new Mozilla better than Opera? No.
IMHO, unquestionably yes.
Who cares? w3m will always be a better browser!
You're not really suggesting that w3m is better than elinks are you?
--
Benjamin Mako Hill
mako debian.org
http://mako.yukidoke.org/