Re: Bertrand Meyer challenges some open-source assumptions.

[kaih@khms.westfalen.de (Kai Henningsen)]

kreckel@ginac.de (Richard B. Kreckel)  wrote on 30.05.00 in <Pine.LNX.3.96.1000530124227.11545A-100000@higgs.physik.uni-mainz.de>:

> On Tue, 30 May 2000, Joseph Carter wrote:
>
> > On Tue, May 30, 2000 at 11:52:48AM +0200, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
> > > > Eric Raymond comes under fire for being a known gun owner and
> > > > activist.
> > >
> > > As I already said here, I agree with Meyer on this issue, and you should
> > > be aware that it is a very common argument in France against free
> > > software ("Free software proponents are also gun lunatics because they
> > > want freedom, every freedom, freedom to steal software and to kill
> > > people. See Raymond for an example.")
> >
> > Does that make everyone who's ever fired a handgun or owns a handgun or
> > practiced firing one at a range a "lunatic"?
>
> No.  The point is that the guy who wrote this a lunatic:
>
> : There is nothing like having your finger on the trigger of a gun to
> : reveal who you really are. Life or death in one twitch --- ultimate
> : decision, with the ultimate price for carelessness or bad choices. It
> : is a kind of acid test, an initiation, to know that there is lethal
> : force in your hand and all the complexities and ambiguities of moral
> : choice have fined down to a single action: fire or not?

Well, I'm most definitely not a gun advocate, and I don't share Eric's  
ideas about guns.

However, I completely fail to see how the above quote justifies the label  
"lunatic". In fact, from this quote alone, it seems pretty much impossible  
to determine the standpoint of the author about guns, except for the fact  
that he thinks it's an important question. (One assumes that the context  
of the quote would explain that part; this quote certainly doesn't.)

I think far too many people (on all sides of the gun argument) have a bad  
trigger reflex (pun intended), where they just see someone who's not on  
*their* side, and automatically interpret everything they see in the worst  
(from their point of view) possible way.

> And, to continue the point, above bullshit can be found on a site
> advocating free software, <http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/guns/gun-ethics.html>.
> This is a problem.

This certainly indicates a much larger problem with you than with Eric.

MfG Kai