Re: [ox-en] Germ of a new form of society or germ of a new form of business?
- From: Rich Walker <rw shadow.org.uk>
- Date: Tue, 03 Feb 2004 20:43:47 +0000
"Benj. Mako Hill" <mako debian.org> writes:
Most of things you replied to in this message were Niall, not me.
Whoops. I blame late-night posting, and playing with
SuperCite. (Apologies to anyone else I misquoted).
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.
I recollect this. But when the language being used ("interests of
software") generates the same fallacy, and when errors of logical type
get debated in the thread as well, ...
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 agree it seems to read better, but I think it confuses people reading
the text (sure confused me!) in the same way that "Open Source"
substituted for "Free Software" confuses the reader.
I think the phrase for the FSF might be "they have the best interest of
software users and developers in mind" which puts the right set of
people in the frame (And carefully excludes publishers.)
I know software doesn't want anything.
Except, possibly, more disk space.
There's a long-standing tradition in advanced technology of having the
practice lead the theory to such an extent that the practice becomes
"magic" - read up on wafer fab process tuning or high-speed circuit
design for examples of this. Ascribing needs to software is a useful way
of remembering and reasoning about the behaviour ("The computer wants more
ram. That's what the little red light on the front is telling you".) And
in that framework, it works well.
But when discussing the aims of organisations like the FSF, where we
already have to deal with the fact that the aims of an organisation
are different from the aims of the membership (and possibly the stated
aim) it really confuses me.
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.
I've found it very hard to follow Niall's criticism of the GPL. Partly,
this is because I thought the GPL to be the most effective hack of
copyright law to achieve "non-corporate" goals I could imagine; partly,
I think, because of exactly this sort of terminological problem.
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. :)
Although often you'd be amazed at the amount of mental effort people are willing
to put into just that sort of thing...
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.
Alright; I'll stick there.
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?
It doesn't show the cartoon when you go to google! And it's slower :->
cheers, Rich.
--
rich walker | Shadow Robot Company | rw shadow.org.uk
technical director 251 Liverpool Road |
need a Hand? London N1 1LX | +UK 20 7700 2487
www.shadow.org.uk/products/newhand.shtml
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