Re: gr_lenny vs gr_socialcontract
On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 09:54:08AM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 19 2008, Anthony Towns wrote:
> >> I tend to come down hard on the side of not compromising my
> >> principles for temporary convenience or popularity (or, if you will,
> >> market share).
> >> To paraphrase: Those who give up essential freedoms for
> >> temporary convenience and popularity deserve neither.
> > And, uh, isn't that a bit needlessly argumentative? Marc's not trying to
> > get anyone to give up essential freedoms, or give them up himself.
> I did not mean this to be argumentative. A rhetorical flourish,
> yes. The quote is from a US politicial, and the analogy between the
> constitutions and bill of rights was amusing.
Uh, surely it's obvious that following any example from a political arena
is going to be much more argumentative than necessary?
Politics is the art of making people who disagree with you look stupid
and immoral. Surely we can accept that fellow developers who disagree
on these issues aren't stupid or immoral?
> But I do think that the DFSG represents the essential freedoms
> for software, as defined by the Debian project. Shipping stuff that
> violates the DFSG is indeed giving up essential freedoms, in my view.
I consider being able to easily install Debian and get it running on
whatever random hardware I buy an essential freedom, so I see most of
this as people trying to take away my freedoms. Obviously, your mileage
varies, but that doesn't make either of us popularity seeking knaves.
> Now, you might find my honestly and deeply held views to be off
> the wall enough to call mere statements of my beliefs needlessly
> argumentative, but then we have a failure in that we can't even discuss
> things rationally.
If I did find your honestly and deeply held views off the wall, maybe
we couldn't discuss things rationally. I don't however. All I did was
critique the way you expressed yourself.
Cheers,
aj
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