Re: [ProgSoc] GPL

[jedd <jedd@nospam.progsoc.uts.edu.au>]

On Tue,  8 May 2001 11:27, James Wan wrote:
 ] You've missed the point.  His views are indicative of Marxism.

 I guess the question is the degree with which you have
 to agree with someone in order to be labelled as a follower.
 I thought Clinton was better than Dubya, but I don't follow
 or believe in, or even consider my views to be indicative of,
 either.  From what I've read, even (name-dropping) the short
 conversation I had with him when he visited SLUG a couple
 of years ago, there's no way he's marxist.  <opinion>

 ] > But they do, they want to prevent the use of any non-MS products.
 ] > In a word, they are anti-competitve.
 ] 
 ] Yeh so does your local shopkeeper if you're using that base logic. Cos
 ] they only want you to shop from them. Social change is different from
 ] anti-competitiveness.

 I think the distinction here is that your local shopkeeper realises
 that they can't supply the entire world, and indeed wouldn't want
 to cos it would be an inordinate amount of work.  The problem with
 the analogy is that a shopkeeper (or any seller of something physical)
 can't purchase a few hundred packs of cornflakes, and then sell
 200 million copies of them - recovering their costs several dozens
 of times over.

 A better response would have been to observe that rms, Linus, esr,
 and anyone else that's seen the light, want to prevent the use of any
 MS products - they want the world to use stuff that they, or people
 like them, write (effectively).

 Of course, one group has the ethical highground, and one doesn't.  ;)

 ] Competition is available, there are laws in place for that purpose and
 ] also your civil liberties entitle you to many freedoms. Stop whining about
 ] large corporations being anti-competitive and impacting on your life as a
 ] human being. If it wasn't for the large pharmaceutical companies, you
 ] would be dead or severely incapacitated. If it wasn't for Microsoft or
 ] Cisco, alot of IT workers would not be getting paid what they are
 ] receiving now, because common society at large would not have
 ]  adopted IT in the way that they have.

 You sincerely believe that?  The pharmaceuticals are worse than MS,
 just they're bigger contributors to political parties, and there's a few
 that have a stranglehold, either way they're not targetted.

 I accept that if MS didn't exist, then 30,000 middle managers and
 programmers wouldn't have jobs -- but surely this is a good thing.
 Paying them for what they do is just encouraging them to keep
 on doing it, and that can't be good for anyone.

 Next you'll be telling me that without Al Gore, we'd have never
 had an internet.

 ] If you're a Stallman advocate and pro Marxist then just admit it instead
 ] of putting down capitalism. It's doing wonders for the US, but if Cuba is
 ] your cup of tea, then why not, I hear the weather is nice there.

 Aww, come on - fight fair.  At least compare bad with bad and good
 with good.  Would you accept socialism as a euphemism for marxism?
 P J O'Rourke did a nice book a few years ago (Eat The Rich), where
 he compared Good Capitalism (Wall St) with Bad Capitalism (Albania),
 and then Good Socialism (Sweden) with Bad Socialism (Cuba).

 One of the conclusions - it'd be better to live in Sweden than Albania.

 Not sure if you can get a Swedish version of W2K, though . . .

 Jedd.

-- 
 jedd == jedd at progsoc dot org
 "The unemployment queue is no longer just for philosophy
 majors - useful people are now being affected too."
			  -- Kent Brockman, The Simpsons.
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