🚀 go-pugleaf

acmfiu@serss0.fiu.edu (albert chin) writes:
>                                            of course this is your right.
> however, you are yourself breaking the freedom that you stand behind, that
> of freedom of speech (which i equate to freedom of information...one kind
> anyway...spoken kind). you are withholding the freedom of information,

Freedom of speech is the freedom to say what you like, not the freedom to
obtain information.

Freedom of information is the freedom to obtain a piece of information, not
the freedom to demand it from a specific person.

Neither freedom of information nor freedom of speech is threatened by a
person's refusing to forward a particular newsgroup.

> let's take another example. we all know that the FSF does not support
> the Macintosh as a computer platform for GNU software. now, let's say i
> want to port GNUsed to my Mac IIci. i also am aware that the FSF doesn't
> care about my port (i.e. they will not support it). however, does this
> mean that they will refuse to help me if i am stuck in a certain routine?
> if this is so, then the FSF does not believe in free software. what they
> do believe in is 'free software' insofar as the goals of the FSF are
> advanced.

Absolutely correct.  The terms of the GPL should have clued you in to that. 
The FSF doesn't care about freedom in general, only about the particular
freedoms it feels to be important -- the freedom to give away copies of other
people's software, and the freedom to obtain the source code for any program
you use.  The GPL stomps on various other freedoms in order to protect the
ones the FSF is interested in.


mathew