On Friday 04 April 2008 08:45:14 pm Chris Walters wrote: > |> There's the rub. There are practical/political impediments to the > |> exercise of genuine software freedom (the whole panoply of patents, NDAs > |> etc.) which no software license, no matter how "progressive", could ever > |> hope to effectively combat. So it follows that if there's to be real > |> software freedom, it would have to be predicated on new and transformed > |> social, political and economic arrangements. > > This would mean the end of modern economic theory (i.e. capitalism - > socialism spectrum). It would require a completely new paradigm of > economics, where everyone's basic needs are met, and they can work on other > pursuits (for what motivation, I do not know). For the record, I, as a > programmer and user of software signed the petition in opposition to > software patents. Back to my point, we would have to live in a Star Trek > like world (i.e. no money) for this to come true. I'm a little stunned that we're not even 20 years out since the end of the Cold War and already we forget Karl Marx and The Communist Manifesto. > If RMS is basing his ideals on the GNU charter, I don't think he read it > clearly enough. "Free: As in freedom". This should apply whether a person > wants to use pure open source software, closed source software, or a mix of > both. This is freedom. You can't choose for the Bill of Rights to not apply to you: You can't choose not to be free. The GNU ideal works the same way. -- Paul Johnson baloo@ursine.ca
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