On Mon, Mar 01, 2004 at 12:27:06PM +0100, Mathieu Roy scribbled: > Marek Habersack <grendel@debian.org> wrote: > >> > >> It's scarier than that. Politics is mostly about people trying to do > >> the right thing and fucking it up. That is a far, far scarier thought > >> to digest then the fact that malevolence is involved. > > I'm not sure I agree - errare humanum est - to err is human. Everybody has > > the right to make mistakes, to fuck something/anything up. But the key lies > > in admitting to the mistake and LEARNING from it. Politicians, in my eye, > > don't ever do that. That's scary. And it's even scarier that people allow > > them to do it over and over again. > > I think you misunderstood my point. When I talked about politics, I > use the word in the original ancient greek sense, not in the policians > sense. I see. > As a matter of fact, most politicians are just being politicians, not > doing politics. When you work for your party instead of your country, > or are indeed not doing politics. I can only agree with it . > That probably why it is not obvious to you that doing Free Software is > a political stand. You argue that Free Software is not about being > polician (being politician) and that Software is not in itself about > politics, while I'm just saying that Free Software is about politics. Put that way, everything is about politics. But I, as a person, refuse to have anything to do with politics and politicians - in my humble personal opinion the code I write doesn't serve any political purpose, it merely serves the purpose of giving other people a tool to do their work. For me (even if the view is limited) free software is about software only. I'm not even sure whether I can tell about myself that I'm involved in the free software or open source "movements". I just write software which happens to be open source (and let me stress that - open source, given the fsf definition) but that doesn't mean I politically (in the greek sense you mentioned) support any person or party trying to make a political statement using this or other free software. In fact, I refuse being identified with any political notion attached by somebody to software without my explicit consent - i.e. never by implication because of the fact that I write free software (especially that I don't agree with many things advocated and promoted by FSF/GNU - but please, let's not involve in discussion about that issue. My views are mine and I doubt anybody cares to hear them). For all those reasons I see that the only fair thing is to let people have their own stance and opinions and not put anybody in confines of any definition without their consent - as far as our subject of interest goes, that is software coding. > > marek > > > > p.s. let's move the topic out of this list, if you want to answer me, do it > > in private, please. > > Well, the title changed, so there's no risk of confusion. We are at > least 3 persons on that list interested in the subject, I see no > reason to go private and to exclude someone else from the discussion. <provocation> Just wait a while :). You'll probably see for yourself (not that the signal to noise ratio is low in the other threads, but there is always someone waiting to bitch). </provocation> :> marek
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature