Em 24-02-2010 10:16, Dave Neary escreveu: > Richard Stallman wrote: >> Software freedom is a means to furthering our vision of providing >> technology to all, regardless of means, physical and technical >> capability or culture. >> >> Freedom can lead to more available technology, but it is vital in its >> own right. It is little benefit to have technology available >> if the price of using it is your freedom. That is why we write >> free replacements for existing proprietary software. > > To draw a parallel with slavery (hyperbole, I know, but humour me): Is > it enough to say "you're free now" for a society to be just? Is the goal > of freedom for all a sufficient vision, especially when that goal is > (more or less) accomplished today? Freedom from slavery is a means to an > end, the "end" being a just society with no racial discrimination and > equal opportunity for all.
Freedom is "a mean" means that it could be replaced by "another mean", which means that you'd have a society that "is" just if you consider freedom an injustice. Since freedom is quite the opposite of an injustice, then said society simply can't be considered just. As a consequence, a society needs to include Freedom in order to be called just. Corolary: freedom is a cornerstone mean for a "just society" > If a computer user can be free, but will end up with an inferior > computing environment because of it, he may welcome returning to a > proprietary environment, as many Mac OS X users & free software > developers have. Every day I look at a Nokia N900 I feel exactly like that, tempted to return to a proprietary environment because it has a way superior computing environment than my OpenMoko Neo Freerunner. I have been strong, fortunately. Even though this phone is not 100% free, it's the next best thing for a free phone (or tracking device). > I'm just saying, that while user freedom is vital, it is insufficient as > a vision for the GNOME project. Assuming (which I doubt) that it is insufficient, "open access" is way more undefined and subject to conclusions which frequently lead to "no freedom", so I don't view it as an interesting definition. Perhaps this can be a middle ground: "a superior computing environment that gives you full freedom". Rui _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list