On May 12, 10:48 pm, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <l...@geek- central.gen.new_zealand> wrote: > In message <mailman.121.1273693278.32709.python-l...@python.org>, Ed Keith > wrote: > > > ... but to claim that putting more restrictions on someone give them more > > freedom is pure Orwellian double speak. > > What about the freedom to take away other people’s freedom?
The freedom to take away other people's freedom is a very serious power that should only be used sparingly. > What tuple of speak would that be? Well, if my friend has a slow internet connection, so I give him a Linux CD which lets him get out of Windows hell (me taking advantage of RMS's "freedom 2", and my friend taking advantage of RMS's "freedom 0"), and I don't give my friend all the source code (or a written offer) because, frankly, he wouldn't know what to do with the source anyway, and it doesn't fit on the CD, and I didn't even bother downloading the source, at that point I would apparently be in violation of the GPL license on hundreds of programs, because I would be violating what the FSF calls "freedom 1". Or more pedantically, I would be in violation of section 6 of the GPL v3 license for those programs on the CD licensed under v3, and in violation of section 3 of the GPL v2 for those programs on the CD licensed under v2. In the case of GPL v3, for example, Ubuntu lets me download code under 6d, so if I download it and burn it, I would have to use 6a or 6b; if I had actually received a CD from Ubuntu, I might be able to use 6c, but not if I downloaded it. Now I know none of us would ever violate the license like this, but if, hypothetically speaking, I had made such a CD for my friend, and then someone came along and explained to me that, by helping wean my friend from MS Windows in this fashion, I had taken away his freedom (specifically RMS's "freedom 1"), I would probably conclude that the person making this accusation was a moron, and that his words were so meaningless that the only tuple that could possibly represent them was the empty tuple. Regards, Pat -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
