Florin Iucha wrote: > On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 04:44:48PM -0500, Mike Miller wrote: > >> On Tue, 21 Oct 2008, Elvedin Trnjanin wrote: >> >> >>> I was under the impression that non-free software was immoral because >>> anything that takes away your rights is considered immoral. Doesn't >>> matter if you agree to it, it's just a matter-of-fact. >>> >>> Is that not so? >>> > > Not necessarily: we agreed to take away people's rights to punch one > another willy-nilly, but we don't find this restriction immoral. > > You could argue that you are given freedom from assault. I always assumed that freedom is defined with positive rights, otherwise treacherous tyrants might brag that their subjects have the freedom to be executed at the will of the state. >> Then copyright is immoral, right? >> > > It depends. > > Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life > of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by > being shared. > -- Buddha > > or > > For if a thing is not diminished by being shared with others, it > is not rightly owned if it is only owned and not shared. > -- St. (Aurelius) Augustinus > > benjamin gramlich wrote: > But non-free software doesn't take away your rights. It just protects > the rights of others (the same rights you have when you write software, > or a novel, or paint a picture). Software is speech, it is treated by > the law as speech, and it comes under the same protection as speech. > I've yet to read or hear any argument as to how my rights are violated > by the use of closed source software. Saying so is like saying that > listening to Pink Floyd's The Wall takes away my rights because I can't > claim it as my own or play their music on my own recording. If you do > not agree to the terms of the EULA then you have the FREEDOM to not use > the product. Freedom is a double edged sword since giving one person freedom takes it away from another, which is a circular definition concluding that freedom and propriety are both immoral.