[BadVista Advocate] gnu/linux

[Don Hensley]

Hi pdb,
Nice to have you on board. Yes, the whole GPL and GNU project can easily be 
described as a labor of love. Or as the result of one person scratching their 
own itch, and sharing the relief with everyone.

Either way it is about community.

Which is the underling problem with Microsoft's latest evil creation==Vista. 
It is about many things, but community is not one of them.

DRM and Treacherous Computing are about the death of community. They serve 
only to isolate every one from the other. That is their entire function.

They are NOT about  protecting "rights" they are about destroying the most 
basic of human traits, that of being part of a community. It's what we humans 
do. Community is more then a 'right', it is an  inseparable part of what it 
is to be human, it's in your blood and bone, meat and brain, heart and soul.

I will share a little bit from one of my favorite people "John Locke" (you can 
read more about him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke

Among many other things, he said (I'm paraphrasing for simplicity): 

"In the beginning people could drink from the streams, eat of the fruit from 
the trees, and wake and sleep when and as they chose. Then one day a person 
came along and said 'These are MY trees, and you must pick the fruit from 
them for me. If you do so then I will pay you enough fruit back for your 
labor to feed you'. He said this even though he had no greater (or lessor) 
claim on the trees then did anyone else, for the trees belonged to all of 
human kind. Now the error was not in the person that claimed all the trees 
for himself, for to be master of all you can is also a human trait. The error 
was in those people that listened to him and started picking fruit for him, 
for they willingly became slaves."

John Locke was a really smart guy. So the error is not that Vista wishes to 
lock things up so it becomes a Vista only world, the error would be in 
believing in that approach and starting to believe that something that really 
belongs to us all --algorithms and the way in which those algorithms are 
implemented, might actually be individual property. This is nothing less then 
patenting and/or trying to control our use of numbers and the methods of 
manipulating them - from addition to calculus, and realms as yet 
undiscovered. 

Buying into Vista is buying into the notion that something we all own (as in 
John Locke's fruit trees), can somehow actually be the 'property' of any one 
man or controlling group.

It is our human heritage to explore new realms, let no man take from you the 
tools for doing so. And software patents, DRM, Treacherous Computing, and so 
on, are but ways to deny you that which makes you a free human.

So yes pdb, there is nothing wrong with getting paid for your labor --so long 
as you retain the right to also give it away, for ultimately your labor must 
belong to you alone. 

Any other way of looking at who owns your labor involves slavery. Be Free, 
Stay Free... and joining the FSF isn't a bad way to help that cause (I just 
could not resist that little plug).

Don.
 ********************************************
 On Sunday 29 April 2007 06:38 am, paolo del bene wrote:
my name is paolo del bene, for all the people known as pdb, i use
gnu/linux from
2002, i am happy to use it, i have not any restriction that not free
software has.
the free software give me many possibilities which i could not have
with not free software. for example i have no money to give to bill
gates and others, but the question is not only money, but the freedom
to use the software as any person want. the freeom to copy, make
changes, to modify, to distribute any person, organization, to sell to
create manuals, guides under the terms of gnu free documentation
license, but the more important think is to be part of a community of
hackers interested to create softwares and any other think to give
people the freedom. when we think to the software we must think to the
developers which 90% of times they work gratis or they receive few
contributes. i am not interested to create a second microsoft, but to
give anyone the right for their job. receives contributes is a way to
give to the developers the possibility to continue to mantain opened
the job, to mantain dsl, harware and to the end is right to be paid
the right for the job, but if i want to give my job for free and
gratis any have the possibility to use it and there is not any other
license that give you the freedom to do this, so possibly use the gnu
general public license gnu gpl.

happy hacking

pdb

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