Free Software as a Social Movement (Z Magazine)

What point are you trying to make? That whenever you draw an ethical conclusion that is outside the mainstream, there is something wrong if you try to persuade people? Or that every time RMS gives an interview he should reiterate every argument behind every point of his philosophy, regardless of what the interviewer asked him? (Note that in this case it was the interviewer who first used the word "evil", so RMS is simply responding in the terms that were posed.)

By the way, you also haven't closely read what he's written if you think RMS draws ethical conclusions "cavalierly" or without reference to a broader context of ethical principles (e.g. the Kantian categorical imperative, or for that matter the rejection of "moral rights" for copyright by the authors of the US constitution); to imply that he pulled his definitions out of a hat is disingenuous.

Again, you are free to disagree with his reasoning, but it never ceases to sadden me to see the lengths to which people go to avoid addressing what he actually writes—that would require some work, because he's already responded to many common objections, and in a rational world you have to respond to the responses, etcetera. It's so much easier to pretend he hasn't explained himself and is simply "religious", to put words into his mouth, to simply reiterate arguments that he has responded to repeatedly, and so on.

That doesn't make sense to me. So in Nazi Germany it was the accepted standard to turn jewish people in so that they could be hauled away. So then was it unethical to hide jewish people from the cops?

Now I don't think that un-free software to be anywere near to same level of concentration camps, don't get that wrong! They are on 2 completely different levels of magnitude and are unrelated!

But I find it that it's perfectly possible that the accepted standard practice in law, personal lives, or business can be very unethical or immoral.

As far as non-free software being unethical.. it's a personal choice on what you beleive.

What I know is that it's very fasionable, very chic, to ignore ethical issues, or downplay them in favor of the absolutely practical considurations and say things like 'I just beleive you should use best tool for the job' and such.

It's also fasionable to paint somebody that appears to be a strong idealist as a lunatic or unstable person that can't see or understand everything that is happenning around him due to strong and irrational personal feelings.

This happens in everything, not just software. Religion, politics, bowling, fishing.. anything. It seems to be a societal thing.

The classic OSS vs Free Software thing.

So you know were I am coming from, personally I favor Free software solutions strongly.

I use it, when I build computers for other people I use Linux. If they want Windows I have no problems with that.. I fix windows problems very well and am willing to help out, but they have to buy it themselves. I am not going to pirate software for anybody. For choosing software I choose free software whenever possible..

if their is something I CAN'T do with free/open source software, I'll do it with closed source. However I find that situation to be rare and getting to be less and less of a issue everyday.

eth·i·cal   Audio pronunciation of "ethical" ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (th-kl)
adj.

   1. Of, relating to, or dealing with ethics.
   2. Being in accordance with the accepted principles of right and wrong that govern the conduct of a profession. See Synonyms at moral.
   3. Of or relating to a drug dispensed solely on the prescription of a physician.

"no-one outside of the free software movement that considers non-free software to be unethical"

I feel more strongly that people have no ethical connotation with software at all, because it is not intuitive (anymore).
If one looks at the good that Free Software has done, is doing and can do to close the digital divide, it becomes obvious that software has strong links with ethics.
Proprietary Software is harmful, it's just not as obvious and direct as with ethical problems that imagery can be made of that appeal strongly to human emotions.

Until people learn to associate software with ethics by themselves, it takes a person like RMS to explain such things in a calm, clear and analytic way.

It isn't that RMS has failed to explain his position, but rather his somewhat cavalier definition of ethics. Ethics is always related to an accepted standard, [...]

That is, you can accuse the man of many things; but using a peculiar definition of ethics is not one of them. He uses ethical concepts that everyone can understand and feel related to, probably by design.

[...] and there really is no-one outside of the free software movement that considers non-free software to be unethical.

It's a very small world were non-free software is evil, yet RMS tries to push this off on anyone who will listen (and some who won't).

Hmmm, free beer is far easier to swallow than free speech. However,
in a land where corporations spy upon their customers and a government
spies upon its citizens; in my book, the few persistent and consistent
social critics of whom Dr. Richard Stallman figures prominently
provide an invaluable service in keeping debate, dissent and reasoned
discussion alive.

This is the only sane criterion. It does not matter if there are ISO stamp of approval or not. Compare X.400 and SMTP. X.400 is OSI-approved way to send e-mail. SMTP is standard way to send e-mail. Big difference.

True: in most cases ISO approval is enormous help. But in itself it does not make anything "open standard".

I use ODF not since it's OASIS-apprioved but since it's supported by OOo, AbiWord/Gnumeric, KOffice and so on - and developers are honestly trying to improve interoperability. Office12 XML ? Don't make me laugh: you can stamp as many stamps as you want but till it's adequately supported by more then one application it's still not open standard...