Godwin's Law [LWN.net]

Godwin's Law

Posted Sep 27, 2006 0:32 UTC (Wed) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026)
In reply to: Why Torvalds is sitting out the GPLv3 process (Linux.com) by smoogen
Parent article: Why Torvalds is sitting out the GPLv3 process (Linux.com)

You compare people who argue in favor of the GPLv3 draft to mass murderers and yet they are the zealots foaming at the mouth?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

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Godwin's Law

Posted Sep 27, 2006 1:05 UTC (Wed) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] (7 responses)

You seem to not be able to read and digest information.

1) I said SOME people act like this. I should have capitalized the words that time, but every time I have done so in the past.. someone will still post exactly what you said.

My comments about Mao and Stalin comes from comments that several people said around the AI labs when I visited in the 1990's. Some people seem to believe that their is only one way that code should be licensed and those who disagree should be at best ignored, or sent off to a long retraining about the right way to think.

2) I can't use Godwin's law because I was trying to provoke it. Sadly the corrolary means that the GPLv2 vs GPLv3 license wars will go on for a couple more months.

Hiding behind weasel words?

Posted Sep 27, 2006 13:04 UTC (Wed) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link] (5 responses)

I didn't claim that you compared ALL people who argue in favor of the GPLv3 draft to mass murderers. Since all the accused have actually done is post comments in a public discussion group, SOME is plenty. The implications of being "taken to a Gulag for some serious Reeducation in good old Stalin/Mao ways" are quite clear regardless of whatever weasel words you care to deploy by way of excusing yourself.

Hiding behind weasel words?

Posted Sep 27, 2006 16:22 UTC (Wed) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] (4 responses)

My words were mean spirited and did not help the talk. I thought they were funny at the time, but I should have realized that its humour was gallows at best, and horrible at worst. I would apologize, but it would just be more weasel words.

I used to love Free Software in its earliest sense, but I am sick and tired that EVERY time someone disagrees that the GPLv3 is what they want for their software, a large gang-press comes to re-educate them and drown out any possible dissent.

What's a gang-press?

Posted Sep 27, 2006 18:43 UTC (Wed) by robilad (guest, #27163) [Link] (2 responses)

I haven't heard that term before.

What makes you feel your dissent is being drowned out? Afaict, you've tried to label people you disagreed with as evil, so you got replies disagreeing with that.

Do you consider labelling people who disagree with you as dissent? I'm curious.

I enjoyed reading Ted Tso's mail today on LKML that goes into the linkage issues between the kernel and the glibc, for example, and came back with the idea that his dissent is based on technical issues. I also read Linus' 'fed up with the FSF' piece, and came back with the idea that his dissent is based on personal issues between him and the FSF, and philosophical considerations on what should be in the GPL.

I think that as long as he and his supporters, as well the other side, can keep their own personal issues out of it, they can manage to get to a workable compromise with each other. You'll have to find some mutual respect, though, or you all won't get that.

I don't think that's very likely for the next few weeks, though, as it's in both leaders' and their followers' nature to try to prove to the other guys that they are more clever first. So I expect to see this fun 'public debate on GPLv3' to continue for a while, while the real fixing will be done behind the scenes between OSDL, FSF and similar entities, anyway, in the usual 'undemocratic', 'intrasparent' way such things are done.

I'd guess that after the fixes are in, the undemocratic process will be just fine. :)

What's a gang-press?

Posted Sep 28, 2006 15:12 UTC (Thu) by sepreece (guest, #19270) [Link] (1 responses)

My guess is that "gang-press" was supposed to be "press gang". This was a military "recruiting" tactic of the past which allowed the Royal Navy, for instance, to round up people on the streets and "press" them into service.

What's a gang-press?

Posted Sep 28, 2006 15:47 UTC (Thu) by robilad (guest, #27163) [Link]

Ah! Thank you for the explanation.

Fair enough

Posted Sep 28, 2006 1:42 UTC (Thu) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link]

I commend your ability to admit that. There is nothing wrong with stating that you believe advocates of the GPLv3 draft are too aggressive but without knowning which particular comments you are thinking of that is hard to evaluate.

Godwin's Law

Posted Sep 28, 2006 15:16 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]

So, let's be precise here. Exactly how many people have lost their lives at the hands of the FSF's "zealots"?

Amusingly, but tragically, you're using personal derogatory terms to condemn the very people who tend to be first up against the wall when revolutions come - the people who say "non serviam", the people who don't just take everyone else's word for it, but stand up and do something to ensure the opposite point of view is represented.

Perhaps before screaming "zealots" or "Maoists" and frothing at the mouth yourself, you should consider exactly why you are so offended by people who have done precisely *nothing* to limit your freedoms - indeed who have, by standing up and pointing out why they're necessary, done a great deal to ensure you still have them.

(Your display of gratitude is, regrettably, all too common.)

Godwin's Law

Posted Sep 27, 2006 1:22 UTC (Wed) by mingo (subscriber, #31122) [Link] (5 responses)

You compare people who argue in favor of the GPLv3 draft to mass murderers [...]

That's not what he said, at all - please read his comment.

[ I'm wondering where this insta-attack mentality of some GPLv3 proponents comes from. It looks really ugly and vile, and makes our community seem childish. I've seen more mentions of "FUD" in this thread alone than in most Slashdot discussion about Microsoft ;-) ]

Godwin's Law

Posted Sep 27, 2006 2:30 UTC (Wed) by robilad (guest, #27163) [Link]

I know. My apologies for invoking the F-word.

I think that both sides lionize their 'leaders' a bit too much, and ignore how similar they (and their respective leaders) are, both in their tactics employed in the discussion, and their agendas. But then, people focusing on what separates them, and projecting the other side as vile, and evil, is not a particularly new human condition. ;)

Anyway, your arguments on the DRM clauses have made me think more deeply about my own position on the issue, and I'll add some comments to the second draft to propose some changes as a result. I'd encourage you and others interested in having a GPLv3 that does not suck to do the same, as the current draft carries less then a dozen comments even for the most controversial issues debated here.

Insta-attack Pot-Kettle-Black

Posted Sep 27, 2006 13:23 UTC (Wed) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link] (2 responses)

Why don't you try reading his comment yourself. Here, I'll make it easy: "Well from reading many of the comments that get attached to anyone who disagrees with the GPLv3 you would come to feel that person is a heretic who needs to be taken to a Gulag for some serious Reeducation in good old Stalin/Mao ways." I don't know what kind of evasive parsing you are using to see this as something other than a comparison of people who make comments you and smoogen disagree with to mass murderers but please go ahead and explain. That should be amusing.

Insta-attack Pot-Kettle-Black

Posted Sep 27, 2006 17:10 UTC (Wed) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] (1 responses)

Well for the first part.. my grammar is atrocious. It is hard to figure out what I was meaning in my rambling without the proper usage of ,;.

I will try to edit it better to as the following:

After reading many of the comments on this and other forums, anyone who disagrees with the GPLv3 seems to be labeled as someone who needs serious time at a re-education Gulag like they had in the good old Stalin/Mao days.

It was meant to be a serious attempt to quietly invoke Godwins' law. It was also a reference that used to be told quietly from older Gnu/FSF people to new Gnu people. When I posted a comment in 1994 about building a GPL for patents, I got a private email from either Tom Lord or Tom Bushnell that was a subject that got one sent to the Gulags by RMS. There also seemed to have been a whole internal joke structure about who in the FSF was Trotsky, Stalin, Lenin and Mao depending on which way the winds in the Politburo (aka MIT AI area they were in) was blowing.

http://lwn.net/Articles/59147/

About Godwin

Posted Sep 28, 2006 2:00 UTC (Thu) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link]

The reason I object to these comparisons is not that the Free Software Foundation isn't a fair target for mockery or that Richard Stallman can't be autocratic. As Godwin argues in his book, Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age, comparing mass murderers to people who are at worst obnoxious trivializes their crimes. The argument you are making is not fundamentally unreasonable but it would be stronger without exaggeration.

Godwin's Law

Posted Sep 28, 2006 15:42 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]

I have no strong view on the matter - but from here, the rabid-looking ones are the antis. It's apparently not enough to say that the GPL is not what I want for my software, the comments I've read here have (bypassing the question of whether it's a worthwhile licence in its own right, or legally even an option for Linux) gone straight to attacking the FSF and RMS personally (and you've done that yourself, Ingo - come on, regurgitating Ulrich Drepper's second-hand bile... how the hell is *that* relevant to, or useful in deciding, the question of the GPLv3's merits?)

Meanwhile, about the most malicious statement I've seen from the pro side is that the kernel developers don't appreciate freedom (which, in the RMS sense of freedom being the foundation upon which all progress is based and the most essential value in any ethical system, they don't - Linus has always taken pragmatism over freedom, as do well over 90% of people every day). No personal attacks, certainly nothing saying "well, Linus is a control freak who can't be trusted and backstabs" from key FSF personnel; just advocacy, and a weary acknowledgement that not everyone shares their values or understands why they deem them so necessary.

Yet it's the antis who call the pros "rabid", or accuse them of an "insta-attack mentality". Why is that, I wonder?