Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
- From: Kent M Pitman <pitman@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 14:26:01 GMT
"Paul F. Dietz" <dietz@xxxxxxx> writes:
> Rajappa Iyer wrote:
>
> > I am curious as to why Kent believes that he is entitled to make a
> > living in a particular way.
>
> I don't think he said that. I think his position was that not being
> able to make a living that way was a negative effect, a somewhat weaker
> claim.
In fact, it's the GPL people who are all about me, me, me and what I
as an individual have a right to. If you talk to Stallman, and I have
many times (though happily not terribly recently), he will probably
tell you pretty directly, as he has me, that he's not in this as some
form of altruism. People assume he's some sort of generous soul
that's out to do mankind a great favor. He is, as he's expressed it to
me, and alas I'm just paraphrasing so I might err, but I think this
catches the sense, just protecting his concept of his own way of life.
Which is no different than what I'm doing.
He called me up at my house one time and harangued me about my not
having made the CLHS a GPL'd document. I told him it was still very
useful to people in its current form, and was paying for the expense
of its production by providing much needed advertising. He said he
didn't care about any of that, including that it was helping people.
All he seemed focused on, and he was pretty direct about this, was
that HE wasn't able to use it for what HE wanted. Stallman seems to
me to want a world in which users have more rights than creators.
Sure, he wants to create something. That's fine. Let him. He's
no worse off with something that is restricted (for a time, I wish,
if copyright would sunset instead of keeping getting longer--that's
another problem I do worry about) than if I didn't make it at all.
But he doesn't see it that way. IMO, he's just mad that he doesn't
have it his way. And it's bad enough that the presence of GPL in the
community drives down prices (something that affects me) without having
him complain that the remaining things I do FREELY (which don't affect
him one iota, other than to deprive him of toys he wishes he could
afford, and that he might be able to afford if he just charged money
for things like the way the economy is designed to do) are not to his
liking.
All I'm saying is that the pendulum used to be swung the wrong way.
He didn't like it, he (to his credit) took personal political action,
moving it a lot in the direction whose initial signpost said "better".
And now, I think, things are not "all better". I think he overshot.
Or maybe it wasn't a good solution in the first place. I think it's
gone too far and needs to back up. Or, at least, we need to
reconsider what we're trying to achieve and whether the existing
mechanisms are capable of getting there at all. But he and others
just continue to push this one thing, as if it leads to All Good. It's
that single-mindedness of Rightness, not the fact that there may be
Some Good out there along with the Some Bad, that disturbs me.
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
- From: Robert Marlow
- Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
- References:
- Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
- From: Paul F. Dietz
- Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
- Prev by Date: Re: Clisp FFI + ASDF example?
- Next by Date: Re: Clisp FFI + ASDF example?
- Previous by thread: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
- Next by thread: Re: Comparing Lisp conditions to Java Exceptions
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
