On Sun, 4 Mar 2012 02:37:28 -0600 Paul Elliott wrote: [...] > I do not think the authors of the DFSG intended to endorse the use of software > for evil. I think that it's not a matter of endorsing evil uses. It's a matter of forbidding discrimination. Free Software cannot discriminate against any given field of endeavor, whatever some people may think about that field of endeavor. > And I don't think Evil is a "Field of endeavor". If you discriminate against "evil" uses, you are discriminating against some possible uses: as a consequence, you are discriminating against some fields of endeavor. Even worse: you are discriminating against some ill-defined fields of endeavor, since what is evil and what is good is a matter of points of view. > Most people know, > or think they know, when they are doing evil. I also do not think the the > distinction between Good and Evil is any more ambiguous than the term "field of > endeavor". I disagree: I think that "Good" and "Evil" often depends on the opinions and/or political views of the person who evaluates things. Is running a nuclear reactor a "good" use or an "evil" use? I think that this strongly depends on what you think about nuclear power plants... Is carrying out research on embryonic stem cells "good" or "evil"? Once again, this strongly depends on your point of view... Countless other examples could be made, but they would not probably add much to this discussion. The point I am trying to make is: who gets to decide what's "good" and what's "evil"? If it's the copyright holder of the work, we don't know exactly what his/her opinions are, and they are not described in the license text. As a consequence, we have a license text that discriminates against unpredictable use cases. That's very bad, I think, and definitely non-free, IMO. -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt New GnuPG key, see the transition document! ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE
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