I think you misunderstood my mention of whipping. I didn't say that it was in
any way connected to leaving, and I didn't mean to imply that either.
Whipping is sometimes a BDSM activity that people choose to partake in.
Slaves don't have a choice in the matter; if their owner decides to whip
them, for whatever reason, they get whipped.
quantumgravity said:
> Offering choices
I'm not sure what you mean here. LibreOffice wasn't offered by Microsoft as
an alternative. Microsoft only developed Microsoft Office. The choice is only
there because someone else decided to develop OpenOffice and people continue
to develop it. That someone else worked hard to make it possible for you to
do the job without having your freedom attacked doesn't make the program that
does attack your freedom any better.
quantumgravity said:
> You describe a slave owner, telling his slave:
> "you are free to go, but then I won't give you food anymore."
> I don't think we can actually talk about slavery anymore, even though the
> "slave" will have a hard time getting his food elsewhere.
> If you disagree, almost every job in an economically bad environment would
> be considered to be slavery then.
> Do you see where I'm coming from?
You misunderstand. That would be the slave owner setting the slave free. I
was talking about a slave fleeing from his owner and becoming an outlaw. If
he's caught by the authorities, he will be sent right back to his owner.
Sometimes a slave can escape, perhaps by seeking asylum somewhere else (as
many slaves in the United States did when the fled to the north), or perhaps
by hiding from the law. But if such an option isn't available, you have to
flee from society altogether, and you're not likely to be able to survive
that.
Like I said, I think people wishing to move away from proprietary software
have more success than slaves did escaping from their masters, probably. But
I don't think the comparison is flawed at an abstract level: sometimes you
can escape from proprietary software by using a libre replacement or doing
without it, and sometimes you realistically can't.
