NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/gnu/misc/discuss/4126

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From: [e-mail] (Michael Zeleny)
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss,talk.philosophy.misc,alt.usage.english,alt.society.anarchy
Subject: Re: Fund raising at the FSF
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 2 Jan 93 09:39:01 GMT
References: <9212300217.AA07925@raisin-scone> <[e-mail]>
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal
Lines: 138
Nntp-Posting-Host: husc9.harvard.edu

In article <[e-mail]>
[e-mail] (Richard Stallman) writes:

>There seem to be many people who use GNU software but have never read
>what the purpose of it is.  Misunderstandings are widespread.

Well, I hope that you wouldn't lump me with the unwashed multitudes,
Richard, -- as you will recall, I had read, and agreed with your
manifesto, long before there was a Free Software Foundation to stand
behind it.

>The word "free" in our name pertains to freedom, not price.  The
>purpose of the GNU project is to give users two specific freedoms:
>first, the freedom to copy the program and distribute it; and second,
>the freedom to change the program as you wish, by having full access
>to source code.

You are neglecting to note that the purpose of the GNU project has
also come to include denying the users the freedom to make their
changes in a fashion as proprietary as the original material.  As for
the rest of your points, most commercial software is available with
source code licenses at an additional cost.  The only salient
difference of your approach, consists in an all-inclusive definition
of "site", as per your own "General Public License".

(I notice that your emblematic cover art by Etienne Suvasa represents
you in a funny hat, astride a hairy antelope, boldly charging a
fleeing software capitalist, who is grasping dollar bills and floppy
disks, while brandishing a rolled-up license agreement.  I am puzzled
by the latter figure, -- is it also yourself, only clean shaven?  Has
St George finally turned into the dragon?)

Now for the question of freedom and its travesty.  If I express my
happiness with the munificence of my creator in having given me a big
nose, thereby allowing me to maximize my enjoyment of _free_ air, no
one will question the meaning of my terms.  If I donate to someone
certain goods or services, _free_, gratis, and without any obligation,
no one will question the meaning of my terms.  But when you persist in
maintaining that distributing "free" software in a fashion which
implies the imposition of a reciprocal obligatioon on every benefactor
of your generosity, you have no right to demand that no one question
the meaning of your terms.  To be sure, in sticking to the letter of
your "General Public License", you grant your clientele a well-defined
freedom to do certain things; nevertheless, you are explicitly
withholding their freedom from the harassment of your legal eagles,
who are vested with the freedom and the power to persecute the
recalcitrant "software hoarders".

Make no mistake, -- I do not begrudge you the freedom to conduct your
affairs as you see fit.  What I find obnoxious is the linguistic games
in which you feel compelled to indulge, whilst justifying your claim
to the high moral ground of the humanity's benefactors.  The first and
most fundamental meaning of the adjective "free", listed in the Oxford
English Dictionary, is "Not in bondage to another."  This is most
assuredly not a meaning you confer on your product, for its use places
one in bondage to your foundation, in accordance with the letter of
its license.  If you wish to continue promulgating your peculiar brand
of Newspeak, I advise you to get in touch with the lexicographers, who
neglected to include your idiosyncratic meaning of "free software"
among the phrases cited in the same dictionary article.

>Low price distribution is not part of this purpose.  You may get a
>copy of GNU software at a high price, or a low price (even
>zero)--either way is ok.  The freedom to redistribute will tend to
>discourage extremely high prices, which is nice, but secondary.
>
>It's understandable that if people think the purpose of GNU is to have
>a low price, they might be disturbed to learn that we don't have low
>prices.  But that was never our aim.

What is disturbing to me, is that for a self-professed anarchist, you
make a damn good capitalist.

    If I had to answer the following question: _What is slavery?_
    and if in a single word I were to reply: it is murder, my
    thought would have been understood right from the start.  I
    would not need to speak for long, to demonstrate that the
    power to deprive a man of thought, will, and personality, is
    a power of life and death, and that to enslave a man is to
    murder him.  Why then to that other question: _What is
    property?_ could I not answer likewise: _it is theft_,
    without the certainty of being misunderstood, though this
    second proposition be but the first, transformed?
    Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, _What Is Property?_ (my translation)

How do you justify the intellectual property of your foundation?

>The FSF distributes CD-ROMS, like tapes, primarily for the purpose of
>raising funds to pay programmers and tech writers to develop more of
>the GNU system.  Naturally we charge enough to bring in a considerable
>amount of margin.  Our mission is to increase the amount of free
>software available to a user, and we can do more if we take advantage
>of the opportunity to raise money when we distribute.  Most of the
>FSF's funds come from distribution; they always have.

Your mission would be unexceptionable, and indeed laudable, were it
not ineluctably involved with an attempt at a reprehensible semantic
reform.  As it stands, your true mission is to self-servingly gloss
the "Freedom is slavery" slogan of the Ministry of Truth.

>However, it is inaccurate to describe this as "profit".  If you look
>at just the FSF's distribution activity, it produces a surplus.  The
>FSF spends this surplus paying people to write software for you to
>use.  If you look at the FSF as a whole, it does not make a profit.
>
>We may have contributed to the misunderstanding by using the phrase
>"distribution fee" in the CD announcement, because that does imply
>something about the size of the fee, and that is not what we meant to
>say.  We should have said, "a fee for distribution."  What this means
>is that people pay for the distribution--not, as usual, for the right
>to use the program.  (In the case of GNU software, everyone has the
>right to use it, and nobody ever has to pay for that.)

No one would have the right to begrudge you your personal profit, if
its conjunction with your legalistic practices did not give lie to the
name of your enterprise.

>If you'd like us to develop more software, I hope you will order some
>CDs or tapes and thus help us pay more programmers.  80 CDs, ordered
>at the company price, will support one programmer for a year.

Not counting the overhead costs, this amount would appear to be less
than half of the 1985 dollars you paid to your first employee.  Not
only are you a damn good capitalist, but an efficient slave-driver,
too.

Flame me as only you can, rms.  After all our past arguments, I am
ready to concede that you were right, -- one should never argue with
success.  So what if your practical acumen calls for a periodic
sacrifice of your personal integrity, now as it did eight years ago?

cordially,
mikhail [e-mail]
"Les beaulx bastisseurs nouveaulx de pierres mortes ne sont escriptz
en mon livre de vie.  Je ne bastis que pierres vives: ce sont hommes."

P.S.     "I am sorry I had to stab you in the back."
    (You to me, in November, 1985)