From: ian@airs.com (Ian Lance Taylor)
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss,talk.philosophy.misc,alt.usage.english,alt.society.anarchy
Subject: Re: Fund raising at the FSF
Date: 6 Jan 93 06:17:01 GMT
Followup-To: gnu.misc.discuss
Organization: Infinity Development, Waltham, MA

zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:

>What I am saying is that I am not free to use GNU in any way
>I see fit; more importantly, nor am I free of legal obligation implicit
>in, and specific to its use.  Consequently, it is not free.  Is this so
>hard to understand?

In the U.S.A. I am not free to walk whereever I like nor say whatever
I like.  Therefore, the U.S.A. is not a free country.

In many parts of the U.S.A. I am not free to burn fires at will, even
on my own property, because it affects the air quality.  Therefore,
the air is not free.

I have written a version of cu, which I could make freely available.
However, you would still not be allowed to use it to call up computers
to which you did not have legal access.  So even public domain
software is not free.

I think your notion of freedom is not useful, because complete freedom
does not actually exist.  All freedom exists under a certain set of
more or less onerous restrictions.  Your argument against the GPL
seems to me to be that the GPL is sufficiently onerous that it does
not deserve to be called free.  To clinch that argument I think you
must show that the GPL restricts you from actions which you feel ought
to be permitted.  I don't think it suffices that argue that Gnu
software is not free because certain actions are not permitted.  That
would make the word ``free'' inapplicable to anything that actually
exists.

I release software under the GPL.  I am not an apostle of Stallman,
and it is not impossible that I could be talked into using some other
form of license, or no license at all.  I don't know if convincing
people to abandon the GPL is a goal of your arguments; if it is, I
think you have been consistently irrelevant.

Perhaps the goal is to make people feel sorry for you.  You have
succeeded at that.  I have no way to judge the truth of your
relationship with the FSF, but I do genuinely feel sorry for you,
whatever happened.

>The FSF forbids anyone, presumably
>including yourself, to deny you these rights, _ipso facto_ itsef
>denying you your rights.  But wait, -- does not the scope of "anyone"
>include the FSF itself?  So we have that, in denying your rights in
>order to protect them, the FSF forbids itself to deny you your rights;
>and, _mutatis mutandis_, forbids itself to ask you to surrender your
>rights, while explicitly demanding that you surrender them.  To hell
>with logic; this is more fun than Russell's paradox.

This sophistry is even worse than what I engaged in above, as I'm sure
you're well aware.  Why not stick to intellectually honest arguments?
-- 
Ian Taylor | ian@airs.com | First to identify quote wins free e-mail message:
`` `The world can grow into an ordered place where all are equal before
    the law.  And the law is just.  Honest.  Without graft.'
   `Is that so important if you are starving?' ''
Xref: sparky gnu.misc.discuss:4345 talk.philosophy.misc:3239 misc.legal:22280