[odf-discuss] Request for Digg help

[Ian Lynch]

On Tue, 2007-05-29 at 10:11 +0200, Thomas Zander wrote:
> On Tuesday 29 May 2007 00:29:13 Ian Lynch wrote:
> >  I recently had
> > a dialogue with RMS and had difficulty convincing him that we should
> > not be in the indoctrination business but should provide multiple
> > perspectives irrespective of our own personal beliefs.
> 
> LOL, yeah, I'm sure that its hard to convince him to ignore his lives 
> work ;)

Not necessarily ignore it, but put it in perspective that there are
other legitimate views when dealing with an educational rather than a
political setting. The context is important. Its fine to be a politician
in a political debate, I do it all the time, but in a national education
programme that expects balance, overtly pressing one perspective is
likely to be counter-productive. In fact, INGOTs do promote
understanding of Open Systems so some bias in that direction is natural
but its a fine line when it comes to extending this to eg telling
companies what they should do rather than explaining the possible
effects of doing certain things.

> His point is that software is a commodity that everyone is free to use and 
> share. And from his perspective he believes what you seem to say. He 
> believes that everyone should be free to choose to do with software as 
> they want.  From modifying to ignoring.

I know his views. But they are a political perspective rather than an
absolute since what is moral and just depends on a degree of consensus
in any democracy. You need politicians to push hardline perspectives but
you also need educators to promote understanding so that people have the
capacity to come to their own view of things. If someone tells you
something you might remember it, if you come to a view based on your own
experience and understanding of the world you are unlikely ever to
forget it.

> So, basically, AFAIK he agrees with your goals, just that his ideas to 
> accomplish that are slightly different.

Actually that is exactly what I said to him. In fact I don't think he
disagrees with the broad methods, it was more detail about framing one
question on licensing taken in isolation. Must have been a good question
because RMS thought two of the options were correct at first :-)

Here is an easy question from the L2 unit 1.

Which of these does not apply to the term Free Software?

A) The software can be installed without paying a license fee
B) The software can be freely modified to produce improvements
C) There is no cost in producing the software
D) The software can be used to produce new applications without asking
anyone's permission

and the question RMS didn't like.

If a commercial software company released its source code to public view

A. It would be impossible to stop competitors from legally copying it
B. There would be no advantages and only disadvantages to the company
C. The company would certainly go bankrupt very quickly
D. It could use a license to control how much freedom there was for
others to make use of the code.

D is correct, it might not be our moral preference but it reflects the
situation as it exists legally in most (all?) countries. 

Ian
-- 
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