Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 00:47:55 -0500 From: Mason Loring Bliss <mason@acheron.middleboro.ma.us> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> Cc: FreeBSD-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: NetBSD/Linux 'distribution' Message-ID: <19990225004755.P414@acheron.middleboro.ma.us> In-Reply-To: <199902220508.WAA29696@usr07.primenet.com>; from Terry Lambert on Mon, Feb 22, 1999 at 05:08:51AM %2B0000 References: <19990220225046.M11361@acheron.middleboro.ma.us> <199902220508.WAA29696@usr07.primenet.com>
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On Mon, Feb 22, 1999 at 05:08:51AM +0000, Terry Lambert wrote: [...] > In this world, the initials F.S.F. are an acronym for "Free Stuff > Foundation". Information has value, because it's the information > about the position of atoms in an object that define that object, > and there is sufficient technology to rearrange atoms any way you > want to arrange them, and the only question is how to arrange them. [...] > If I don't like your idealogy, I can change your mind. No, not by > arguing; by literally changing your mind. [...] > When you can not only change what you (or someone else) wants, but > what you (or someone else) wants to want, that's power. That's > too much power. That's way way too much power to give to your > six year old. Too much power to give to you. Your priest. Your > Senator. Your President. Anyone who thinks they know what's best > for you, and that you aren't acting in those best interests. [...] > Don't tell anyone how to do it. Build active and passive defensive > systems. Build them very well. And then give them away to everyone; > an artificial immune system to an artificially created threat. > > Only a moron would give away the source code to his immune system. > > But don't worry right now. It's not an immediate threat. It's a > long way off. This stuff is all theoretical. What we write today > and give away under the GPL will never have an impact on trillions > of tiny robots wandering around in our bodies some time in the > future. After all, what does software research have to do with > massively parallel distributed systems like those? [...] > Oh yeah. There's at least a good 30 years before someone forces > someone else to build something like that. There are a few problems with this. First, you're assuming that there's originality in the world, and that if you design your ideal immune system, no one else will be able to figure it out. That ignores both reverse engineering and guesswork/testing by a tenacious opponent. Next, you're discounting cultural evolution. Keeping secrets leads to escalation. "I don't know what you've got, so I'll build something big enough to destroy what I think you've got." It's been said that our science and technology has arrested our physical evolution, and that our future growth as a species will involve mental and cultural change. I think of the GPL as a "civilizing" influence. If we as a species survive past our this stage of mad pollution and overpopulation, we'll likely learn to share, making the basic idea behind the GPL the accepted, unconscious norm, rather than something which must be actively exercised in the face of covetous greet. But, anyway, to get back to the point... Proprietary information lacks lots of things. The obvious problem is wasted effort... If information becomes proprietary, then any improvements are lost to the world. A more interesting problem with proprietary information is the lack of peer review. Would you trust me implicitly if I said I had an encryption mechanism that was far better than anything now available? What if I made a ssh workalike with my mechanism, and released the binaries. Would you use it? Or would you be more comfortable with something that is open to peer review? Is encryption the only endeavor that can benefit from peer review? How about medical equipment? Given the chance, wouldn't you much rather have something installed in your body (a pacemaker, say) that comes with source, so you can at your leasure check out the source code for potential errors? What about air traffic control software? Would peer review be useful there? My point (which I've both made obvious *and* beaten into the ground, at least from my perspective) is that the value of sharing things outweighs the value of being able to keep something to yourself. A world of proprietary software is little better than a world where we beat each other with clubs to keep our fresh-killed meat away from the next guy. I'm not saying that the BSD license is bad. It's as free as the GPL, and in some ways more free, since it imposes fewer restrictions. But, the BSD license doesn't go out of its way to make the world a better place. I don't know... I won't win this argument, in here, but I *would* like to pound home the fact that the GPL is *not* a *bad* thing, as it's painted so often by BSD people. (Of which I'm one, in a fairly die-hard way, lest you feel you're being invaded by vociferous penguins...) -- Mason Loring Bliss (( "In the drowsy dark cave of the mind dreams mason@acheron.middleboro.ma.us )) build their nest with fragments dropped http://acheron.ne.mediaone.net (( from day's caravan." - Rabindranath Tagore To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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