[ale] Open-source software license manager - OT Driving

[Thompson Freeman]

On 06/22/2007 02:30:46 PM, George Carless wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 22, 2007 at 02:02:31PM -0400, Jim Popovitch wrote:
> > On Fri, 2007-06-22 at 13:57 -0400, Jeff Lightner wrote:
> > > Bad analogy there.   The courts have decided that driving
> is a
> > > "privilege not a right".

IANAL, YMMV, etc ad nauseum. What action you may physically  
perform is an opportunity. What your neighbors are willing to  
defend your doing (for a pretty society wide "you") is a right.  
What the neighbors are willing for some people to do but not  
others, is a privilege. The lines between the classes are highly  
fractal, and considerably blurred.

Again, IANAL, YMMV (and will), etc ad nauseum. Freedom is a  
condition of choice, with a rarely considered element of the  
cost of consequences for that choice. Those consequences may be  
imposed by physics, or by the society the individual is embedded  
in.

I am neither a lawyer, nor a trained philosopher. I also realize  
that these positions should be presented more fully, which I  
don't feel is appropriate here. I also fully realize that these  
positions are violently out of tune with many people here and in  
the general society. I'm sorry for that, but I find for my  
purposes these positions/definitions appear to cause me the  
least amount of cognotive dissonance, and I'm neither bright  
enough nor well enough trained to carry things much further.

Back to a linux orientation. IMHO, and humble understanding, RMS  
formulated the GPL to maximize the permissable choices for  
everybody by restricting the choice of a user to close off other  
people's choices (via taking the source closed/propriatary). The  
modified BSD liscence, allows an individual more freedom/choice,  
in that an individual may close off access to further  
choice.Which is "more free" to more people is going to differ  
according to the conditions pertaining to a particular program  
at a particular point in time.




> >
> > Exactly.  There are those who perceive driving anywhere as a
> freedom,
> > when in fact it isn't (or it might be compared to say driving
> in Cuba).
> > Again, vantage point is what differs, not the law or legal
> constraints.
> 
> All language is subjective in this regard; what matters is the
> 
> meaning that is understood by most people, or, failing that,
> that the
> terms in question are well understood.  (This is why so much
> effort
> has rightly been put into defining "Free Software" and
> distinguishing
> it from "Open source software.")
> 
> But ultimately, of course, it all depends on what your
> definition of
> "is" is.
Yes William Jefferson...