🚀 go-pugleaf

Maciej Stachowiak <mstachow@mit.edu> writes:

>> Science is also full of people who strive for patents and third-party
>> support.  On the other hand, open-source software is currently being created
>> for idealistic purposes only.  Or do you know of anyone producing it for
>> profit?

>Yes. Look at the list of companies at www.opensource.org.

These are companies that have integrated open-source software creation into
their overall concept.  The money-generating core part of this concept always
consists of something else than open-source software.  Some of them will
even come under the attack of Free Software purists, because they use
open-source software to boost a non-free core business (e.g. O Reilly).

>> Here you are arguing against all taxation 

>Definitely.

>> and all forms of collective power.

>No. I support state use of retaliatory force.

>>In other words: unless we advocate your brand of anarcho-capitalism, a
>>1% software tax is the way to go.  Thanks for supplying the arguments!

>I hate to use such language, but that is the most bullshit argument I
>have ever heard. I argued "if A then B" and asserted "A", you assert
>"not A" and claim that "B" is the logical conclusion. There are many
>other arguments against a software tax including from other theories
>of ethics or politics than mine.

I didn't claim any logical conclusion.  I just claim that A (i.e. denying
the legitimacy of all taxation) is not part of the basic set of assumptions
which determine the present taxation system.  Ex falso quodlibet.  You can
derive any claim from a false assumption, it is irrelevant.  If your whole
argument is based on this assumption, it is irrelevant.  For legitimizing
a 1% open-source software tax, all that is needed is to show that it is in
line with the presently valid set of assumptions, on which present tax
systems are built.

>> The basic flaw of your view is that you seem to be looking for something to
>> ascribe "magical moral properties" to. 

>No, I don't believe anything has any "magical moral properties". The
>market is morally neutral in itself. Only human actions have moral
>significance. I do not claim the results of the market are "moral",
>only that initiating force against someone who is not violating the
>rights of others is immoral, and a fully free market is the only
>situation in which it is even possible for this not to happen.

This again is a coherent view.
Again, it may force you into extreme positions.
You accept that the results of the market game are not moral.
The market game may lead to results which are in sharp contradiction to
the interests of all participants.
You have heard of game theory and the prisoner's dilemma for example.
The market may lead to a dilemma situation.
It has no moral qualities, it is not foreseeable.
A dilemma is inelcutable, you can't rely on the free will of even a benevolent
majority to overcome it, because any act of good will will immediately benefit
the malevolent prisoner and in the end hurt both prisoners.
Your value system however does not allow you to exert force on the
malevolent prisoner.  Thus you must accept the death of both prisoners.
Is that right?

>> And you find a very tyrannic deity,
>> the Market.  This God constantly forces me to pay for software I don't want.
>> He locks me into Windows, MacOS, PageMaker, QuarkExpress.  Although I hate
>> working with these programs, I have to buy them, because the condottieri of
>> vendor-lock software marketing have conquered the infosphere and collect
>> taxes there. 

>You can choose to access those portions of the infosphere that do not
>require this software. If there were a tax on hardware for free

Here we are: in case of political violence, I can always choose to emigrate.
Both the Market and Democracy are potential tyrants.

>software development, those who did not want to use free software but
>_did_ want to use a computer would not have this choice.

It is not possible not to use open-source software, as we showed before.
Source code is a public good that nourishes generations of commercial
software programmers and flows into their code, no matter what the license
conditions are.

>Besodes, you are making an excellent argument against any kind of
>democratic allocation of funds here, it is the majority that freely
>decided they wanted to use these products. It is true that the more

At least I quite unfreely decided so.  And so did most other people.
Some freely chose to be the malevolent prisoner, I chose I can't afford
to suffer any longer by being the benevolent one.  Both prisoners are
unfree victims of an inhuman mechanism.

>these products are deployed, the more utility there is to anyone else
>who acquires them; but that would be true of non-commercial software
>as well.

Why don't you say "open-source software"?
Perhaps because open-source software has the wonderful property of not
locking anybody in, not producing any prisoners' dilemma?

Also, it seems to me you still can't resist assigning The Market
magical moral properties.

>Any decision forced by one person upon another is immoral. Markets do
>not use force. Many people do not believe this, dredging out examples
>like "But if I want to do Y, the easiest way is to pay X for Z!"
>That's not force. You still have a choice of not doing Y, or of
>finding another way to acquire a substitute for Z (barring patents
>with no "independent discovery" defense which are patently evil, if
>you will pardon the pun).

So political force is not force, as long as there is no Berlin wall
keeping you from accessing the free part of the world?

--
Hartmut Pilch
http://www.a2e.de/phm/