Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
LinuxFR : What is your opinion about Android ? Are you mostly happy they made cellphones very usable or sad because it's really a kernel fork ? Linus Torvalds : I think forks are good things, they don't make me sad. A lot of Linux development has come out of forks, and it's the only way to keep developers honest - the threat that somebody else can do a better job and satisfy the market better by being different. The whole point of open source to me is really the very real ability to fork (but also the ability for all sides to then merge the forked content back, if it turns out that the fork was doing the right things!)"
Posted May 3, 2011 21:32 UTC (Tue)
by daglwn (guest, #65432)
[Link] (38 responses)
Now, I wouldn't say the GPL is more or less ethical than any other license, but it certainly does promote a certain model of ethics. It has a particular value set around it. So does every license, copyright, NDA and so on.
Posted May 3, 2011 23:44 UTC (Tue)
by neilbrown (subscriber, #359)
[Link] (37 responses)
I would say that the GPL is a legal encoding of the ethics which are described by the 5 freedoms, which in turn is an out-working of RMS's personal morality.
The morality is personal, the ethics are public, the license is legal. Each is an imperfect rendering of that on which it is based.
Linus seems to be saying that while he is happy to impose a license on others, he does not want to impose ethics or morality on others.
Posted May 4, 2011 8:13 UTC (Wed)
by renox (guest, #23785)
[Link]
Happy to impose a license?
Posted May 4, 2011 8:45 UTC (Wed)
by AndreE (guest, #60148)
[Link] (29 responses)
Posted May 4, 2011 21:30 UTC (Wed)
by RogerOdle (subscriber, #60791)
[Link] (27 responses)
The problem with saying that something is unethical is that you assume the listener agrees with your set of rules. Morality comes from one source and only that source is authoritative. Men can argue about what is moral and what is not. However, the authority to decide that something is moral or not is not given to man. We may have to put some people in jail because they are a clear and present danger to others, but that doesn't mean we have the right to judge them morally.
You are free to say that someone's behaviour is unethical because almost all human behaviour is unethical because it violates someone's rules somewhere. I, for instance, regard voting as unethical because it means the voter is treating his neighbors and his neighbors' property like they belong to him. If you have no right to rob your neighbor then how do you have the right to take his property by voting? Some says it's ethical, others say it isn't.
Posted May 4, 2011 22:25 UTC (Wed)
by viro (subscriber, #7872)
[Link] (7 responses)
When and where? There had been a lot of twits claiming that their laws had been handed down by God. Most of them claimed that the rest of such twits were hell-bound, and they might very well all be correct in that... Name your poison.
Posted May 4, 2011 23:38 UTC (Wed)
by RogerOdle (subscriber, #60791)
[Link] (6 responses)
I am not a twit because I believe in God. Why are you calling me names?
Posted May 4, 2011 23:50 UTC (Wed)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link]
Posted May 5, 2011 0:16 UTC (Thu)
by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106)
[Link] (2 responses)
http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Amorality
You can't meaningfully say that something is "true by definition" on the basis of your own *private* definition, which is apparently not shared by anyone else, and certainly not by your audience. It only works if your audience shares your definition.
Posted May 6, 2011 18:30 UTC (Fri)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link] (1 responses)
I'm not religious -- I don't follow any scriptures and am guided very little by faith. I especially don't take instruction from people who are motivated by their faith (e.g. attend church services).
But I have no problem with the statement that morals are handed down by God, and I refer to God all the time. I use the term the way Stephen Hawking does in one of his books, answering the question, "Do you believe in God?" Short answer: "What's not to believe?" Even among religious people, there is a wide spectrum of beliefs about what God does, commands, or wants. So there's no reason not just to define God as the source of all those realities that don't have a more logical derivation. And you can't get away from those -- at the bottom of any logical derivation is some postulate that can't be derived.
I have morals, and I can't defend them by logical reasoning. I don't know where they came from. I say they're from God.
Posted May 6, 2011 19:05 UTC (Fri)
by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
[Link]
Posted May 5, 2011 13:49 UTC (Thu)
by michel (subscriber, #10186)
[Link]
Posted May 5, 2011 21:27 UTC (Thu)
by viro (subscriber, #7872)
[Link]
Face it, when somebody claims that some *particular* law has the authority of God behind it, more often than not the source is extremely nasty. And before you bring the Scripture into that, tell me which parts of Leviticus and Deuteronomy are not mandatory anymore. *And* where had the Lord explicitly given the list of such parts.
Posted May 4, 2011 22:30 UTC (Wed)
by loevborg (guest, #51779)
[Link]
But philosophers (and non-philosophers) love to make distinctions, and they have done so. One such definition is that ethics is concerned with what agents should do generally while morality is concerned with a specific subset of that, viz. questions concerning other-regarding obligations or duties. One way to express this would be to say that morality is inherently public, while the domain of ethics also includes actions that individual or private (Neil has it the other way round). Thus in his Ethics Aristotle deals with the virtue of moderation (don't eat too much candy), which has little to do with other people's interests and is thus not a moral question. But I don't think Linus has this distinction in mind. He merely wants to say that people should care more about how they themselves satisfy the demands of morality and less about how others do.
The view that morality (but not ethics) depends on the idea of a divine lawgiver is also not uncommon, though far from universally held. I don't agree that all human behavior is unethical in some way or other; that seems to be the expression of a rather extreme (cultural or subjective) relativism.
Posted May 4, 2011 23:00 UTC (Wed)
by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106)
[Link]
The same objection that you raise against a universal system of ethics applies even moreso to the concept of a universal system of morality. Ethical rules may vary between different groups, but moral codes vary per *individual*. You see morality as universal only because you limit your consideration to your own particular set of moral rules, as defined by your religion. Others follow different philosophies, religious or otherwise, and adhere to different moral standards. Even within the same nominal philosophy/religion there is typically more variation and debate on the subject of right and wrong than there is on matters of ethical behavior. In calling something "immoral" you assume your listener shares your definition of right and wrong; it is far more likely that they share your *ethics*, which (as you said) is still far from certain.
P.S. I agree with you 100% on the (un)ethics of voting on the use of non-aggressors' property (in regards to the group which recognizes natural property rights, of which I am a member). Moreover, I hold that doing so is also immoral. Of course, someone from outside that group, for example who does not believe in property rights, or who holds that all property rights are granted at the whim of "society", might reasonably disagree--in which case a different set of rules apply.
Posted May 5, 2011 19:26 UTC (Thu)
by chad.netzer (subscriber, #4257)
[Link] (3 responses)
Total rubbish.
If a king is hoarding all the grain, and I rob his silos to feed the people, it is *moral* but unethical. See, not so simple is it?
The Golden Rule is an ethic. It is *the* ethic. And in general, it precludes bank robberies.
Posted May 5, 2011 19:58 UTC (Thu)
by RogerOdle (subscriber, #60791)
[Link] (2 responses)
* Is a whistle blower ethical or unethical? He violates his non-disclosure agreement (unethical) but he points out wrong doing (ethical). Maybe.
* Is your hypothetical king wrong for hording? Why haven't your hypothetical people provided for their own needs? Why have they become a burden to the king? These kinds of examples are oversimplified and intended to generate an emotional response, not a reasoned one. Is that ethical?
Posted May 5, 2011 20:22 UTC (Thu)
by chad.netzer (subscriber, #4257)
[Link]
I think what I've done is to point out how pointless *your* absolutist definitions of ethics (and morals) are.
Posted May 6, 2011 0:13 UTC (Fri)
by h2 (guest, #27965)
[Link]
As someone who has studied a large amount of serious philosophy, I view the question of morality/ethics as almost the exact opposite of what you do.
To me, morality is a relative, almost meaningless term, defined by the time and place it occurs in. What is immoral today was not so yesterday, and might not be tomorrow. Every religious system that contains dogmas will almost inevitably then contain its own relative morality. For example, we have a Christian morality, which does not agree with an Islamic morality, which does not agree with a Jewish morality, though they may intersect, but not by necessity.
Ethics, on the other hand, is a far more demanding concept, and goes far deeper than does mere relative morality. Spinoza, for example, in his book titled 'The Ethics', which oddly never really mentions the word at all, for very good reason once you understand the question, is a good place to start. Ethics, that is, flows out of substance, the fundamental fabric of existence, what I assume you are referring to when you use the term 'God'.
Because ethics is a deeper concept, it's harder to explain, though one should know it when it is violated. This is also known as 'The Way', or 'Following the Way'.
What's up with that website anyway, it wants me to confirm an incompetently configured https: security exception just to read Linus's ramblings on things he doesn't understand? I'll pass, thanks.
This would be comical if it weren't so bizarre, and sad.
Posted May 6, 2011 19:04 UTC (Fri)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link] (12 responses)
Your point about voting being unethical as theft is good, but you need to work on the terminology. By definition, you can't take someone's property by voting -- you can't take it at all. Property is what a person exclusively controls. (Legal property, in particular, is what the law permits someone to control). To the extent that I can take my neighbor's money by voting for a tax (and then availing myself of services paid for by that tax), that money was never my neighbor's property.
You should say you think voting is unethical because it reduces individual property. But then I think it would be more in line with your definition of moral, because only God could say individual property is good. Our society is replete with rules saying some community property is good, so things that are inconsistent with individual property should be plenty ethical.
Posted May 6, 2011 20:19 UTC (Fri)
by RogerOdle (subscriber, #60791)
[Link] (6 responses)
They say that private property is property you hold and manage for the sake of society. This is not true. Private property is your property to use for whatever purposes suit you. That is the definition. If you use it for the sake of society then that is your business. Public property is property that is owned and controlled by the community. The concept in law "in fee simple" means that property has only one legal owner/controller. Private property means that you and only you control the property. The state only controls your private property indirectly by controlling you to the extent that it can not allow you to use your property to harm someone else or otherwise violate their rights. This is prohibitive power which differs from affirmative power where the state tells you what you must do with your own property. The state can not assert affirmative authority over your personal property if it is your personal property. In fact they do just this proving that the people who run the state do not actually believe in personal property and that they believe that your role in life is to do what they say.
Where is the line drawn? The ancient principal that good fences make good neighbors is ignored these days. Instead we have mudslinging politics and angry people. Civilization slides down hill until is crashes and crumbles. Arguments about ethics only leads to angry resentment and hurt feelings because wisdom is not more powerful or effective than emotion. We can know by wisdom what the right thing to do is but the beast of emotion will make us do the wrong thing anyway. Wisdom rules when we have little self interest. We make the most irrational decisions when we have the most self interest. It is at those times when we use rationality to sooth our consciences for the rash decisions we have made.
Posted May 6, 2011 22:33 UTC (Fri)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link] (3 responses)
You start off with "The terminology that is lacking is the definition of personal property" and then go on to make a bunch of claims about personal property without having defined it. That's confusing.
Or maybe your point was to define personal property such that those claims are all true. In that case, you're describing a kind of moral property, and I think what you describe isn't mathematically possible. I don't think we can divide up the world in a way that each person has complete control of a piece of it unimpeded by what someone else does with other pieces.
Taking land as the easiest example: If Jim and Mary nominally own tracts of land and Mary stops Jim from building a 3-story house on his land, then I suppose you would say Mary is taking Jim's property. But if Jim builds the house and as a result Mary can't see the ocean any more, wouldn't you also have to say Jim has taken Mary's property?
(For purposes of legal property, we always define one or the other of those as a property violation — and it really doesn't matter which — so that the system is self-consistent).
Posted May 7, 2011 0:28 UTC (Sat)
by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106)
[Link] (2 responses)
That's easy--they're both violations. The trick to an *enforceable* system of property rights, however, is that it's the first violation that counts. Responding in kind is not a violation. Ergo, if Mary used force against Jim to coerce him into not building the house, Mary is at fault. However, if Jim builds the house, violating Mary's property rights, then it is not a violation for Mary to seek restitution, by force if necessary, provided said force is proportional to the damage. (Note that "proportional" can be argued a number of different ways--in kind, cost to make whole, etc.--and any one of those ways would provide sufficient justification.)
The one exception where preemptive force would be justified is when both non-coercive prevention and after-the-fact restitution are unlikely to work; this condition can be summarized as "imminent threat of irreversible harm". That does not apply in this situation, since any harm would be reversible, e.g. by demolishing the new house.
Posted May 7, 2011 23:50 UTC (Sat)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link] (1 responses)
That doesn't solve the logical inconsistency. Assuming being "at fault" means Mary can't get away with it (has to pay damages or go to jail or something), then Jim is taking Mary's property. And if Mary takes restitution by force when Jim builds his house, Mary is taking Jim's property. This is using the proposed definition of "property" wrt land as being able to do anything you want with the associated tract of land. My point is that it is not possible for both Mary and Jim to be able to do whatever they want with "their" tracts of land. Such "property" cannot exist.
Incidentally, I wasn't thinking of force; I was thinking of zoning regulations. Zoning is one way that one's neighbors excercise ownership over one's nominal property. And they essentially do it by voting.
Posted May 8, 2011 4:28 UTC (Sun)
by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106)
[Link]
The original definition ("Private property is your property to use for whatever purposes suit you.") was sloppy. If this is to be taken as a universal principle, it must be subject to the condition that one respects the same right for others; otherwise, as you say, there is a contradiction. A more formal definition would be "Private property is your property to continue using as it has been used in the past, and in new ways subject to respect for existing property claims by others."
> Incidentally, I wasn't thinking of force; I was thinking of zoning regulations.
Zoning regulations are meaningless without enforcement. Or, put another way, there is no problem with zoning regulations *unless* they are enforced. You are welcome to call an area "residential" or "commercial" or "industrial"--even to encourage such partitioning via voluntary agreements. The issue is specifically with forcing others to comply involuntarily.
Posted May 6, 2011 22:59 UTC (Fri)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link] (1 responses)
Well, here you don't get to define terms. "In fee simple" has always been a legal term, defined only by law. And it originates in the English land division system of the middle ages, right? So it definitely doesn't mean that the property has only one legal owner/controller, because a lord would hold land in fee simple, and that land was incontrovertibly still under the control of the duke, baron, and king above him, under the principle of eminent domain. (I probably got the hierarchy wrong, but you get the idea).
Today, when we vote to rezone land someone owns in fee simple so he can't do what he wants (or even much of anything) with it, that's the very same eminent domain at work, albeit in democratic instead of monarchical form.
Posted May 11, 2011 21:07 UTC (Wed)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
Formally, for all other forms of title, the state (or, in some jurisdictions, the Crown) *is* the ultimate owner. That doesn't mean men in jackboots will come and take it away from you tomorrow, but it does mean they can tax you for it, pursue criminals onto your land, and so on.
Posted May 6, 2011 20:38 UTC (Fri)
by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106)
[Link] (4 responses)
That is one definition, and not a very typical one. Under that rule possession isn't just 9/10 of the law--it's 100%. Congratulations, you've just defined away any possibility of theft. What the thief controls, the thief "owns".
A better definition is that one's property is that which others have no right to prevent one from using, subject to the same rights of others regarding their property. By convention, and to minimize conflict, this right is granted to the first user (homesteading), and one valid use of one's property is to voluntarily transfer this right to another (contract).
> To the extent that I can take my neighbor's money by voting for a tax..., that money was never my neighbor's property.
You're assuming that "property" means "legal property". So far as that goes, local law may not recognize private property at all. Not everyone shares the concept of property as a natural law (i.e. one which enforces itself, albeit in a somewhat more lax manner than the physical laws), but most do ascribe a more... concrete meaning to the term "property" than whatever the law might happen to say at the moment. Consider the concept of "confiscatory taxes"--if the rates are high enough, even the average person understands that taxes represent the seizure of what someone has rightfully earned for his/her own use, even if the tax is perfectly legal.
It is true that one cannot claim a moral or ethical imperative for private property without reference to a particular system of morality or ethics. There have been attempts to define universal ethics on praxeological grounds, but I personally prefer to sidestep the issue entirely: so long as you only respond to violations of your property rights in kind, it doesn't matter whether the other party shares your morals or ethics; any *proportional* response is automatically consistent with *their* effective morality and ethics, as demonstrated by their own actions. As such, they are in no position offer a rational objection.
Posted May 6, 2011 22:51 UTC (Fri)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link] (3 responses)
OK, I wasn't precise enough, but I think this is definition everyone uses. I meant "can't" to be relative to whatever system of property you're talking about. If it's legal property, than "can't take it" means it would be illegal to take it (or the government will force you to give it back, or whatever). For moral property, it would mean that you can't take it without being evil. For de facto property, it would be as you say: 100% possession.
Those are the three kinds of property I think we've been discussing. They're all valid in my book, but you have to use it consistently. For example, if you're talking about a legal election, you have to talk about legal property. So no, you can't take someone's property by voting because anything you can "take" was your property to begin with. Likewise, if you're talking about the peasants rising up and voting to take control of the land they farm from an oppressive king, that's a moral vote to repossess moral property which was morally the peasants' to begin with, so no property is taken.
Posted May 7, 2011 0:48 UTC (Sat)
by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106)
[Link] (2 responses)
That's a perfectly reasonable analysis from the legal point-of-view, but the fact that the election is legal does not mean one can only analyze it from a legal perspective. From the perspective of natural law (or moral property rights, if you will), the election, however legal it may have been, had no effect on moral property rights. Speaking from that point-of-view, it is perfectly valid to say that people held a legal election and then, on the basis of that vote, proceeded to take others' property immorally for their own use. It is also reasonable to say that since the entire purpose of the vote was to determine whether or not to act immorally, the vote itself is immoral--by voting on this topic (or at least in favor) one is seeking permission to act immorally, or asking someone else to do so.
I understand that you may not agree with the moral code used in this example, but that isn't really the point. The legal, moral, and (though rather pointless) "de facto" aspects of property rights all apply to any situation simultaneously. You don't choose one based on the context and ignore the rest. Legal actions have moral and practical dimensions, and vise-versa.
Posted May 8, 2011 0:11 UTC (Sun)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link] (1 responses)
You appear to be reading something rather different from what I wrote, because I didn't offer any analysis at all. I'm just defining terms and parsing sentences. And "was" is what I meant. By definition, if you're talking about a legal election and legal property, whatever the public can take by voting was the public's to begin with (eminent domain); the election merely exercises that ownership. There's no theft.
But you should be clear which one you're talking about in any given sentence, and especially avoid switching off from one to another mid-sentence. I also believe "moral property" is a pretty useless concept -- as I said in the beginning I'd rather someone say he favors highly individualized legal property than say he believes moral property is highly individualized and he is against laws that let you steal people's moral property. They both say the same thing, but the former makes it a clearer what the belief is. Maybe just because legal property is by far the most commonly discussed kind of property.
Posted May 8, 2011 4:59 UTC (Sun)
by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106)
[Link]
True. However, we weren't talking about legal property or legal theft. We were speaking of moral property and moral theft in connection with a legal election. Ergo, this definition is irrelevant.
> But you should be clear which one you're talking about in any given sentence, and especially avoid switching off from one to another mid-sentence.
I agree. However, there is no "switching off" occurring here. The entire statement was a moral statement, which just happened to refer to an legal election, i.e. one which is accepted by the law. It is not an error to refer to legal concepts like elections in a moral context. By example:
De facto: Those holding the vote have a near-monopoly on the use of force (police, military, etc.) Ergo, direct resistance to enforcement of the vote is futile.
Legal: The law permits ownership/control of property to be transferred to "the public" based on the outcome of a vote. Ergo, the property now legally belongs to the public. (It is still not inaccurate to say that the property was "taken" from its former private owner; the vote does not rewrite history. It merely makes the taking legal.)
Moral/Ethical: By my moral code, and my ethics as a libertarian, a vote (however legal and/or enforceable) has no effect whatsoever on the actual, moral ownership of property unless the owner voluntarily submits their property to said vote. Ergo, removing the property from the owner's control following the vote is (morally) an instance of theft, and thus wrong, again by my moral code. As such, I choose not to participate.
Posted May 11, 2011 19:16 UTC (Wed)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
Posted May 4, 2011 8:57 UTC (Wed)
by gowen (guest, #23914)
[Link] (3 responses)
Ironically, very few of these criteria would've been met by the FSF, as recently as 2000. Personally I think its these additional "personal morality" constraints that Linus is referring, when he talks about morality being personal. If you conform to the licence, you don't have to do things the way he does them.
Posted May 4, 2011 9:34 UTC (Wed)
by AndreE (guest, #60148)
[Link] (2 responses)
"but I really want to point out that it's not that the license is somehow ethical per se. A lot of other people think that the BSD license with its even more freedoms is a better license for them. And others will prefer to use a license that leaves all the rights with the original copyright holder, and gives no rights to the sources at all to others. And for them, that is their answer. And it's fine. It's their choice."
So ultimately, he doesn't really consider there to be any ethical issues with proprietary software.
Posted May 4, 2011 11:24 UTC (Wed)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link]
But it's difficult to convince people of this since it's asking too much for people to view the world as possibly ever being different then it is now.
Posted May 4, 2011 12:22 UTC (Wed)
by gowen (guest, #23914)
[Link]
That's freedom in the sense with which economists will be familiar. Your interpretation may vary.
Posted May 4, 2011 17:31 UTC (Wed)
by klbrun (subscriber, #45083)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted May 6, 2011 3:09 UTC (Fri)
by h2 (guest, #27965)
[Link]
Being that I'm quite fond of C.S. Lewis, I looked up the nearest reference I could find at hand, conveniently right here (I am really fond of him): Points one and two are clearly relative to the culture, and would never be constants, since what would make those be would vary massively culture to culture, since what would define them would always change as the culture changes. For example, say you're a Christian engaged in a bloody war or inquisition, or a Lakota Sioux warrior. Why, then, torturing your enemy to death is considered not only a good thing to do, it's the only thing to do. Point 3 not as much, I'd have to find more on that to really get a sense of what he felt on that question. I tend to see followers of religious dogmas as seeing the dogmas they follow as absolute rules, in other words, I think they mix up ethics and morality, and try to elevate morality to the level of ethics. But CS Lewis always had a lot of problems with his Christianity, there was just too much animistic life bubbling up in his works to take his dogmas really seriously, a thing I give him great credit for, a lot of Christians never reach that point in the first place. Just take a look at the Narnia series or the Perelandra sequence of books to see that confusion and liberation at work.
Posted May 4, 2011 6:26 UTC (Wed)
by Hausvib6 (guest, #70606)
[Link] (1 responses)
Fork away and come back later to merge the good chunks.
Posted May 4, 2011 14:21 UTC (Wed)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Cheers,
Posted May 4, 2011 9:29 UTC (Wed)
by AndreE (guest, #60148)
[Link] (7 responses)
What I don't quite get is why this makes him so "mad". If he really doesn't care, then why does he care that I care? It's a very peculiar form of subjectivism if you say that everyone is entitled to their own set of values, and then get mad when people promote different values to your own.
Posted May 4, 2011 9:46 UTC (Wed)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link]
Posted May 4, 2011 10:18 UTC (Wed)
by fb (guest, #53265)
[Link] (5 responses)
I may think that everyone is free to make their own religious choices, and still get annoyed if people are constantly knocking on my door to convert me to something, or calling me immoral (in an absolute sense) if I don't abide to their moral choices.
FWIW, if there is anything I consider truly sad in the FOSS crowd is the abrasive and loud manichaeism with which some people look at software licenses.
Posted May 4, 2011 10:54 UTC (Wed)
by AndreE (guest, #60148)
[Link] (4 responses)
But none of that is actually what Linus has said in the interview.
He says he gets mad when people see software choice as an ethical choice. He doesn't say that he gets mad when people take it too far, or are too abrasive, or too inflexible.
I quote:
"Trying to push any particular license as "the ethical choice" just makes me mad. Really."
The implication of this is that he doesn't see any significant ethical issues concerning software and copyright that free software. And he's mad that people believe that it is a question of ethics, and mad that people advocate.
Well, that's just mad, really.
Posted May 4, 2011 11:50 UTC (Wed)
by Los__D (guest, #15263)
[Link]
It is clear exactly what Linus said in the interview.
Posted May 4, 2011 13:14 UTC (Wed)
by gowen (guest, #23914)
[Link]
Advocating is fine - casting those who disagree with you as bad people is not fine.
Posted May 5, 2011 18:30 UTC (Thu)
by rfunk (subscriber, #4054)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted May 5, 2011 18:59 UTC (Thu)
by dmarti (subscriber, #11625)
[Link]
Posted May 4, 2011 12:44 UTC (Wed)
by bats999 (guest, #70285)
[Link] (14 responses)
No, I don't think I have "rights" to every piece of hardware out there. I just find it sad that millions of consumer devices will see the landfill years before they should. I run a "home server" on a 1999 P3. I'm not uncommon. Could the Playstation3 find new life ten years from now...?
Posted May 4, 2011 14:59 UTC (Wed)
by mikebenden (guest, #74702)
[Link] (7 responses)
But I'd hope you think you have rights to every piece of hardware that was sold to you. You bought that Tivo, the software it came with is Free, so how do you feel about the company who sold it to you preventing you from exercising full ownership rights over what is now your property, after the sale ?
It'd be like buying a house, but one of the rooms is locked, and the seller gets mad at you (and might sue you) if you kick the door in and have a look around...
Posted May 4, 2011 17:06 UTC (Wed)
by nevets (subscriber, #11875)
[Link] (2 responses)
But, the point that I got from Linus was that it's not the software license's job to make that change. The software license is just that. A license on the software, not the hardware. I think it is sad that we want to restrict what hardware software can run on.
The fight against closed hardware should be done with open hardware, like the flight against closed software was done with open software. Unfortunately, hardware is much harder to make in your basement than software is.
Posted May 4, 2011 20:09 UTC (Wed)
by teknohog (guest, #70891)
[Link] (1 responses)
We still have the choice to buy hardware that is relatively open by itself, and plays well with open software. And for the tinkerers there are always things like FPGAs.
Posted May 5, 2011 3:31 UTC (Thu)
by Hausvib6 (guest, #70606)
[Link]
Posted May 4, 2011 17:50 UTC (Wed)
by bats999 (guest, #70285)
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Posted May 5, 2011 8:55 UTC (Thu)
by nicooo (guest, #69134)
[Link] (2 responses)
But the house has a power/gas/water meter and you will get sued for having a look inside even when it's on your property.
Posted May 5, 2011 14:00 UTC (Thu)
by mikebenden (guest, #74702)
[Link] (1 responses)
What was the point you were trying to make ?
Posted May 6, 2011 1:11 UTC (Fri)
by nicooo (guest, #69134)
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Every piece of electronics you buy has restrictions on what you can and can't do with it. Just look at the all the logos on the back of whatever it is you're using to read this.
Posted May 4, 2011 17:35 UTC (Wed)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (1 responses)
while it's true you need _some_ hardware to run your software, that is very different from needing _specific_ hardware to run your software.
for example, consider the android situation.
getting modifications to the kernel that another someone else makes may help you with your device. it doesn't matter if they lock down their hardware with TPM or not.
this doesn't mean that all modifications are useful or desirable by any means, but it does mean that the ones that are interesting will be available (and before you talk about the android userspace not being under the GPL, note that I was referring to the kernel)
personally, I want to have hardware that I can modify, but that doesn't make hardware that the manufacturer doesn't make easy to modify unethical.
now, I believe that I have the right to modify any hardware I buy, even if the manufacturer doesn't want me to (subject to the legal limitations on interfering with other equipment, for example RF licensing) so I think that the opposition to mod chips for game consoles _is_ unethical for example
Posted May 5, 2011 13:21 UTC (Thu)
by garloff (subscriber, #319)
[Link]
And it's -- according to the opinion of many legal folks -- in contradiction to article 14 of the german constitution. If you legally own something, you have the fundamental right to do with it whatever -- that can only be limited by law that has similar rank as the values protected by the constitution.
In software and even worse the "content industry", unfortunately, there's this strange construct of licenses rather than ownership and the legal minds thinking about fundamental rights and constitutions have not yet found a balance that would protect the acquirer of a license to have certain minimal rights ...
Given that modern constitutions are the learning of of several thousand years of human culture, I'm not sure how quickly we will be able to build something in the "IP" space that's balanced and thus helps human societies to be peaceful and successful.
Posted May 4, 2011 20:27 UTC (Wed)
by teknohog (guest, #70891)
[Link] (1 responses)
This is another important ethical issue, but it is mostly orthogonal to the openness. People are discarding generic x86 PCs left and right because their Windows install broke. Then there are people still playing with their 1980s/1990s consoles.
But as mikebenden already mentioned, you should have the rights to things you own, basically by the definition of ownership.
Then again, a manufacturer has no obligations to make hacking easy. In the case of early game consoles, it would take extra effort to provide hacking capabilities, and so they are purely consumer devices. However, active DRM is a pure waste of resources, in that manufacturers are working more to achieve less.
Of course, we still have the choice to not buy a PS3, and support more open hardware instead. I do feel bad about all those Cell processors that are not allowed to run scientific computations, for example, but it is ultimately up to the consumers' choices.
Posted May 4, 2011 21:03 UTC (Wed)
by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942)
[Link]
People waste time and resources all the time. But for this is very OK with me. What is very bad is when the government starts to interfere with that with copyright laws that makes a particular form of waste rather profitable.
Posted May 4, 2011 20:57 UTC (Wed)
by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
[Link] (1 responses)
Breaking news: software can be reproduced for free. Hardware cannot. That matters. So much than laws consider them very differently. Compare for instance a movie versus a DVD player.
Posted May 4, 2011 22:40 UTC (Wed)
by teknohog (guest, #70891)
[Link]
From what I've seen, copying a movie is a much bigger offense than stealing a DVD player. Therefore, hacking a device you own is not a big deal, since we all know that law is fair and logical ;)
Posted May 8, 2011 10:29 UTC (Sun)
by lab (guest, #51153)
[Link]
The way I read Linus is, that above all else is personal choice, and I tend to agree. That doesn't preclude preference or even strong conviction about the way of doing things. I happen to believe strongly in "the open source way", but I respect that other people make different choices. I will fight for "my way", and I respect that other people will fight for "their way". People who fight for "THE way" have a tendency to become ignored, irrelevant, laughable or dangerous.
Isn't the definition of democracy, by the way, that you agree to someone elses right to disagree with you?
I think what can piss Linus of, is when people loose that respect to differ, and I tend to agree. Otherwise, what is often left is mudslinging, and the actual taking away of someone elses proces of growing up and becoming wiser, including your own.
But that's just me, and I respect your right to differ ;-)
Ethics
Ethics and morals.
He seems to rile against those who act as though there own morality is somehow universal and try to impose it and all its consequences on others. Though I may be reading in more than is there.
Ethics and morals.
He *had* to select a license, otherwise noone would have contributed..
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
But examine the definition of God.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
So there's no reason not just to define God as the source of all those realities that don't have a more logical derivation. And you can't get away from those -- at the bottom of any logical derivation is some postulate that can't be derived.
»If by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then
clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying ... it does
not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.« Carl Sagan
I recommend you read The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values by Sam Harris for an alternative interpretation of how morals came to be.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
Taking land as the easiest example: If Jim and Mary nominally own tracts of land and Mary stops Jim from building a 3-story house on his land, then I suppose you would say Mary is taking Jim's property. But if Jim builds the house and as a result Mary can't see the ocean any more, wouldn't you also have to say Jim has taken Mary's property?
... if Mary used force against Jim to coerce him into not building the house, Mary is at fault. However, if Jim builds the house, violating Mary's property rights, then it is not a violation for Mary to seek restitution, by force if necessary, provided said force is proportional to the damage.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
The concept in law "in fee simple" means that property has only one legal owner/controller.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
By definition, you can't take someone's property by voting -- you can't take it at all. Property is what a person exclusively controls.
That is one definition, and not a very typical one. Under that rule possession isn't just 9/10 of the law--it's 100%.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
For example, if you're talking about a legal election, you have to talk about legal property. So no, you can't take someone's property by voting
because anything you can "take" was[n't] your property to begin with.
That's a perfectly reasonable analysis from the legal point-of-view,
The legal, moral, and (though rather pointless) "de facto" aspects of property rights all apply to any situation simultaneously. You don't choose one based on the context and ignore the rest. Legal actions have moral and practical dimensions, and vise-versa.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
Ethics and morals.
Morality, then, seems to be concerned with three things. Firstly, with fair play and harmony between individuals. Secondly, with what might be called tidying up or harmonizing the things inside each individual. Thirdly, with the general purpose of human life as a whole, what man was made for: what course the whole fleet out to be on: what tune the conductor of the band wants it to play. (mere Christianity, pp69-70, in The Joyful Christian)
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
Wol
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
You can't have human behavior without some ethics that are relevant to it, but just because you have ethical beliefs about software licensing doesn't mean that you have the same ethical beliefs as Richard Stallman. That's like saying that if you don't believe in eating veal, you have to eat vegan, or if you don't believe in eating endangered species you have to refuse to eat GMO foods. (more)
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
The fight against closed hardware should be done with open hardware, like the flight against closed software was done with open software. Unfortunately, hardware is much harder to make in your basement than software is.
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
> if the manufacturer doesn't want me to (subject to the legal limitations
> on interfering with other equipment, for example RF licensing) so I think
> that the opposition to mod chips for game consoles _is_ unethical for
> example
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)
Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)