On 12/10/06, Dave Crossland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
(I also am sad to see a very logical and well reasoned position being smeared as 'religious' all the time, but I'm about to go on holiday and will reply to all that in January :-)
I think I hold the dubious honour of first using the word 'religious' in this debate, so let me say that it wasn't intended as a smear, but a simple observation that a philosophy which contains absolute ethics which are subjective and not drawn from social consensus, which seek to place their invented limitations on what individuals can or can't do (e.g. the dangling carrot of FSF approval only if OpenMoko does not contain or link to or even mention closed-source drivers).. has more in common with religion than any modern philosophy I know of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_absolutism IIRC, the reason for the lack of Wifi in the Neo1973 was due to the lack of an open-source driver. How much of this was down to the core team members, and how much was because the Neo1973 would lose geek credibility in a world of black and white? I respect the decision of the core team - it's their baby (until January - evil heh heh heh), and I also respect any business analysis reasons which might have suggested that the Open Source Community would reject the Neo1973 if it had a closed-source wifi driver. What I do not respect, is attempts by others to try to restrict my liberty, because it offends the ethical code which they have adopted for themselves. Furthermore, by suggesting it is an ethical issue, it implies that by disagreeing I am unethical or just uneducated. Finally, the absolutist stance taken has in the past and continues to restrict human liberty and choice by putting non-consensus unprovable 'ethics' ahead of technology. A case in point: "If a module arguably isn't a derived work, we simply shouldn't try to say that its authors have to conform to our worldview... [snip] ...nobody should be forced to behave according to our rules just because they _use_ our system." http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/12/13/370 The 'doomsday scenario' conveniently neglects other world economies and assumes new hardware components will all be closed-source, 'as if they can get away with it'.. as if there is no possible technological or financial benefit available to companies supporting the open source movement: http://lwn.net/Articles/162686/ I did think that this subject was getting a little off-topic, but then I realised that if the decision to leave out Wifi was not a purely technical one -- then the decision was forced by those who can shout "ETHICS!" the loudest. If so, this becomes relevant to all of us potential Neo1973 owners! Richard _______________________________________________ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community