Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 04:18:49 +0530 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: W Gerald Hicks <jhix@mindspring.com> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why are people against GNU? WAS Re: 5.0 already? Message-ID: <20000514041848.K22405@physics.iisc.ernet.in> In-Reply-To: <391DDB3E.8DFFD8D0@mindspring.com>; from jhix@mindspring.com on Sat, May 13, 2000 at 03:46:22PM -0700 References: <391D71FE.1570F551@asme.org> <Pine.BSF.4.10.10005130735370.20100-100000@hydrant.intranova.net> <391D4DAD.FD80980A@picusnet.com> <003b01bfbcdc$6059fb40$a164aad0@kickme> <391D71FE.1570F551@asme.org> <20000513205610.A22103@physics.iisc.ernet.in> <3.0.6.32.20000513143506.00895650@mail85.pair.com> <20000514010614.A16058@happy.checkpoint.com> <391DDB3E.8DFFD8D0@mindspring.com>
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> > Stallman has never argued, AFAIK, for abolishing *material* property > > (which is actually *the* Communist idea; Communism as an ideology > > is rather indifferent to intellectual property and its special status); > > he has never argued against democracy, or capitalism, or free market, > > or any other Western capitalist ideal. He has argued against > > intellectual property, in particular its restrictions in software; and > > that is a radical and doubtable idea, but to claim it's Communist is > > to make a fool of oneself, IMHO. > > In the present (US) economy intellectual property can be readily > converted to material property. Irrelevant. You can get material property from the sea (eg by fishing) but that doesn't mean you should own the sea. It's even more irrelevant than that: by fishing you decrease the number of fish in the sea, but by borrowing ideas you don't decrease the number of ideas in the world. Any scientist knows that new ideas can develop only by building on old ideas. If you stop sharing of "intellectual property", you'll kill growth of ideas, and that's not in the public interest -- though it may make a few people very rich in the short term. When the present (US) economy reaches a stage when Amazon can charge royalties for its single-click patent, you know that something is wrong somewhere. > early stages of the GNU project and maybe even because he agrees with > many of the tenets of communism. Why don't you ask him that one. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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