Re: Free software, proprietary software and Stalin

[Raj Mathur <raju@xxxxxxx>]

Hi advocacy-type D00dz,

Ah well, once again having to explain the difference between goods and 
software... this time I'll try to use words of one syllable :-)

Goods: a thing you can touch.
Software: a thing you can not touch.

Goods: if I give you mine, I have less.
Software: if I give you mine, we both have.

Communism: share wealth so that each has equal.
Free software (RMS style): share wealth to increase it without
reducing anyone else's share.

Ah well, I'm sure Arun will insist on failing to see the essential
difference between an ice cream and a piece of code, and I shall be
treading this ground again pretty soon :-)

<rambling> It really depends on your view of life: do you consider
yourself to live in abundance, or do you consider yourself stricken by
poverty?  If the latter, then it makes sense to grab every penny out
of every ++ that you can put into a file and name it ``.c''.  If the
former you can think beyond yourself and try to see the big picture.
</rambling>

Taking a leaf out of many books, I'm out of this discussion now.
Thank you for listening ;-)

Regards,

-- Raju

>>>>> "Arun" == Arun Sharma <adsharma@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

    Arun> On Mon, Feb 28, 2000 at 09:58:10PM +0530, Raj Mathur wrote:
    >> An interesting one for those who equate Free Software (a la
    >> RMS) with Communism.  The author states (and quite
    >> convincingly) that the proprietary software model is closer to
    >> the Russian state under Stalin.

    Arun> I'm far from convinced. The problem with this article (and
    Arun> many others) is that they treat communism as a bad
    Arun> word. That's just a tribute to the capabilities of American
    Arun> media propaganda.

    Arun> Secondly, at no stage does the author define communism or
    Arun> its central ideas. He just compares some attributes of
    Arun> communism - centralized planning - in this case, to compare
    Arun> with proprietary software. Even a democracy like India has
    Arun> centralized planning.

    Arun> The paragraph about intellectual property is
    Arun> ridiculous. There can be no IP in a communist country - also
    Arun> the belief of the Stallman school.

    Arun> I also find "freedom" = capitalism, communism =
    Arun> authoritarianism, equation a bit naive.

    Arun> I still maintain that Stallman has abused the word
    Arun> "freedom", but in really consistent ways :-)

    Arun> Webster's defines "communism" to be:

    Arun> 1 a : a theory advocating elimination of private property b
    Arun> : a system in which goods are owned in common and are
    Arun> available to all as needed

    Arun> And Stallman's ideology - that all software should be free
    Arun> and there is should be no proprietary software - by
    Arun> definition, software that is someone's property, matches the
    Arun> above definition of communism very well.

    Arun> 	-Arun

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