* Alex Taylor <altsamtay...@gmail.com> [2020-02-22 10:31]: > Recently we have been "invited" to approve a thing which is being called > the "social contract". If the text is read, it will be seen that it has > three parts. > > The first part is the four freedoms established by Stallman many years > ago. No problem there, we all agree with those. Or do we? Well I > personally do. But GNU has for many years received contributions from > people who do not agree with its philosophy. Many such contributors are > even employed by proprietary software companies. So if contributors are > pressured into "endorsing" these it is likely to discourage some of the > very people who have helped us.
Yet, free software freedoms are not analysed and presented well enough, so I think, majority of people would like to police it, if they would be aware of it. Let me give you example on The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0). Now imagine the freedom for North Korean leaders to run the GNU software to launch nuclear rockets towards Boston, USA. Would you be in agreement on it? If you really stand for freedom 0, then you should be in agreement for it, it is about integrity. Even if rockets would be directed to your own city, one should be in agreement with it, that is the value one should stand for. I don't think that majority of free software users is really aware what that freedom means. Jean