Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reasons not to buy from Amazon

stallman.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 152 posts

Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon

#111

Post by SquidMagnet »

secstate wrote: post #84
dman wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all seriousness - do you see an equivalence between the Patriot act and the GPL?

Playing devil's advocate here, as I whole-heartedly support OSS and the myriad license under which it is distributed, including the GPL. But ... That's a really interesting argument. One could argue that the GPL is like the snake eating it's tail on the far side of liberalness. I'm sure this is not a new argument, but I'd never considered that the "polluting" of code with the GPL actually decreases individual liberty…

The GPL is not ouroboros. Restricting the freedom to restrict is not at all comparable to the PATRIOT Act. It is more akin to the Bill of Rights, or other such laws preventing certain types of laws from being made.

Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon

#112

Post by Guvante »

baddox wrote: post #94
amyjess wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is why there's a distinction between "tax avoidance" and "tax evasion". Tax avoidance refers to using legal means to reduce your tax bill. Tax evasion means illegally not paying your taxes.

Yeah, and "dodging taxes" doesn't clearly distinguish between the too. Also note that a lot of people oppose perfectly legal tax avoidance techniques that they consider to be loopholes.

Not charging sales tax is technically legal but certainly a grey area.

Since almost every state that has a sales tax has a use tax you are just shifting the burden of reporting onto your consumer.

The reality is most people don't report (or under-report) their required use tax so you are really assisting them in committing tax evasion.

So while not directly illegal, certainly not fully legal.

Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon

#113

Post by picks_at_nits »

baddox wrote: post #24
picks_at_nits wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, are you saying that Stallman makes points 1, 2, 3, ... n , and many are interesting, but point 37 is irrational? Or are you saying that although many of the points are interesting, point 37 is irrational, therefore the entire thing--points 1 though n --is tainted?

I'm not basseq, but I'm saying that making childish pun insults is not a prudent way to pose arguments, including valid arguments.

Interesting that calling the Kindle a “Swindle” is vilified, yet an entire generation of techies called the TRS-80 the “Trash-80.”

My conjecture is that if you are inclined to agree with someone’s negative point of view, rhetorical tricks like insulting nicknames will be well-received and will help frame the idea emotionally. But if you already disagree with someone, you’ll be even more annoyed by arguments that aren’t really arguments at all.

My guess is that his nicknames won’t pay well to this audience, and also that they do better in some places than others. For example, blog post titles are usually so bad that people have very low expectations.

“The Great Kindle Swindle” would probably fly as a post title, while calling the device an Amazon Swindle repeatedly might not.

Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon

#114

Post by sp332 »

Guvante wrote: post #105
sp332 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't lose the rights to your code. The original copyright owner still owns the copyright on their code. That's why you have to follow the rules of the license they gave you. You can still distribute your code under whatever license you want.

> You can still distribute your code under whatever license you want. That actually isn't true. > You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy. You are required to distribute it under GPL v3. I don't know enough legalese to determine if distributing the modifications alone as a parallel license is allowed.

This is only true if "your" code is a derivative of someone else's code. Putting code that's actually original into a project that also has GPL code in it doesn't mean you have to GPL your code.

Distributing binaries with mixed sources is where it gets hairy.

Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon

#115

Post by baddox »

picks_at_nits wrote: post #113
baddox wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not basseq, but I'm saying that making childish pun insults is not a prudent way to pose arguments, including valid arguments.

Interesting that calling the Kindle a “Swindle” is vilified, yet an entire generation of techies called the TRS-80 the “Trash-80.” My conjecture is that if you are inclined to agree with someone’s negative point of view, rhetorical tricks like insulting nicknames will be well-received and will help frame the idea emotionally. But if you already disagree with someone, you’ll be even more annoyed by arguments that aren…

> an entire generation of techies called the TRS-80 the “Trash-80.”

There's no double standard in my view. Calling it that in a persuasive essay about why you should avoid the TRS-80 is similarly childish and imprudent.

> My conjecture is that if you are inclined to agree with someone’s negative point of view, rhetorical tricks like insulting nicknames will be well-received and will help frame the idea emotionally.

Almost certainly so. But this is clearly framed as a persuasive essay.

Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon

#116

Post by cma »

Guvante wrote: post #105
sp332 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't lose the rights to your code. The original copyright owner still owns the copyright on their code. That's why you have to follow the rules of the license they gave you. You can still distribute your code under whatever license you want.

> You can still distribute your code under whatever license you want. That actually isn't true. > You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy. You are required to distribute it under GPL v3. I don't know enough legalese to determine if distributing the modifications alone as a parallel license is allowed.

A parallel license is allowed, if you remove any third party GPL'd code.

Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon

#117

Post by jakobegger »

SquidMagnet wrote: post #104
meepmorp wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't recall arguing otherwise. But compared to the BSD license, it's definitely more restrictive about derivative works. Also, the slavery analogy is stupid.

I think it would be helpful to be clearer as to why you disagree with the analogy rather than simply calling it stupid. If I had to guess, I would suspect that your real issue is that you do not find the things being restricted to be comparable (i.e., human life/will vs. the use of software), rather than believing that the comparison is somehow invalid for other reasons.

First of all, it's not a good analogy. Software licenses are a contract that you can choose to agree to, whereas laws give you no choice.

Second of all, it is highly debated wheter the restrictions imposed by the GPL are a worthwhile tradeoff; while noone in their right mind claims anybody has a right to own slaves...

And lastly, by comparing the GPL to laws against slavery you are trying to evoke certain associations, much like stallman uses the word swindle instead of kindle -- those are just cheap tricks that distract and make fruitful discussions hard.

Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon

#118

Post by pXMzR2A »

specialk wrote: post #16

> "Amazon cut off service to Wikileaks, claiming that whistleblowing violates its terms of service. It had no need to go to court to prove this, because if you rent a server from Amazon, you have no rights." I find it highly amusing that RMS doesn't seem to agree with Amazon's restrictive ToS agreement but his GNU software license is one of the most restrictive licenses out there. If I include a GNU licensed library…

> his GNU software license is one of the most restrictive licenses out there

Seriously, enough with this shit. This argument has been refuted time and time again. Tell the little people who sign your paychecks so that you'd post these comments to find another, better argument.

Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon

#119

Post by reaktivo »

yasth wrote: post #65

Amazon in all honesty likely had zero choice but to comply with the NSA. Also it might not even be the one complying, but rather the shipping carrier. Actually a lot of what Stallman is complaining about boils down to Amazon is a company that complies with US based court orders, and sells things on publisher terms. I really don't see much that doesn't apply to say Google: * Distributes books with restrictive licenses…

I'm pretty sure he's equally againts Apple and Google, as Amazon.

Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon

#120

Post by strictnein »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #106
strictnein wrote: post #15

> "Amazon was a member of ALEC...." > "Amazon quit ALEC after public pressure in May 2012, but I am sure it still supports the same nasty policies and is waiting for a new tool to achieve them." Seriously? Come on.

That is probably one of the most reasonable disagreements that can be made. Take some random person and say they use to be a member of some bad organization. Let's pick the WBC (but you can pick many others). Now, say they quit, not because of a change of heart, but because of political pressure that was costing them money. Is this someone you would consider a decent person? I wouldn't.

I was mainly objecting to the weird conspiratorial bit about them waiting for a new tool to complete their nefarious goals.

And the WBC? Come on. ALEC is nothing like that.

Post reply on HN