Subj : Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again)
To   : comp.programming
From : Scott Moore
Date : Tue Aug 23 2005 07:20 pm

Arthur J. O'Dwyer wrote:

> 
>    Huh.  Well, Stallman disagrees.  (Similarly, some people don't see 
> anything inherently immoral about pot-smoking, or abortion, or murder,
> or promoting democracy.  Some people do.  It's all relative, the 
> post-modernists would say.  Certainly it's /subjective/.)

Most normal people do not go around equating programming with murder.
If that is subjective, then your version of subjective is straight off loony toons.

>    Oh, Stallman isn't against /working/. He's against /non-free software/. 
> In the same way, most people aren't against /entrepreneurism/. They're 
> only against /kidnapping/. If someone says, "But I'm a kidnapping 
> entrepreneur! It's what I do for a living! You can't deny me my right to 
> work!", we'd find it rightly ridiculous and offensive. How is the 
> situation any different with paid programmers, *once you accept* (or 
> agree to take as given) that non-free programs are morally wrong?

Who exactly accepts this who does not need medication to keep from hurting
themselves ?

> 
> 
>>>And if you really can't make an honest living in /free/
>>>software design, you should go do something else for a few years. Build
>>>houses, or become a policeman, or do something else that's not
>>>intrinsically immoral.)

And you don't, of course, see "making a living in free software" as an
oxymoron. Which is of course, why you are taking the medication.

.