Re: [tlug] [OT] Linux breeding out Microsoft

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Simon Cozens writes:

 > I remember you getting all offended at Marty for his views that the
 > majority of people are too stupid or apathetic to understand
 > "free". How is this different?

Then you remember wrong.[1]  I don't think that reflects Marty's view,
for one thing.

My position is precisely the opposite of your caricature; people *do*
understand "free" "well enough", and it's not what they want.  That
is, the majority of people know what they need, and drinking "free
beer" is high on the list, while listening to random hackers' "free
speech" is not.  This has always been true of "free speech": you are
allowed to set up your soapbox, but nobody need stop and listen.

So my complaint about intolerance of values was quite accurately
phrased.[2]  The problem we advocates face is not that non-hackers
don't *understand* "free".  It's that they don't *value* "free".  And
thus was the open source movement born.[3]

Also, note that my position that self-delusion (more accurately,
deliberate ignorance, cf. Esther Dyson on the economics of attention
for why that makes sense -- "self-deluded" was chosen artistically to
heighten the paradoxical contrast, not for precision) leads to a
political system that works tolerably well.


Footnotes: 
[1]  From a .sig on Mailman-Users: "Can we skip the boring intelligent
part of the debate and save time by jumping straight to the ad hominems?
            -- Simon Cozens"

[2]  To reflect my meaning.  I don't make any claim that it reflects
Marty's thinking accurately *here*.  (Obviously the fact that I made
it at all is a claim of that kind, but I'm not trying to support it at
this time.)

[3]  Which is home to more true liberals than the free software
movement, in my opinion: Russ "Angry Economist" Nelson, Eric "Guns and
Phallus" Raymond, et al.)  Which is a perfect example: I support gun
control and age of consent laws, but can respect (in a Voltairian way)
RN's and ESR's 2d Amendment arguments, as well as RMS's advocacy of
pedophile rights, as manifestations of liberalism.

"Extremism in the defense of freedom is no vice", but true virtue lies
in the successful defense.