131–140 of 202 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I agree with you, Thaler is the origin of the word Dollar.
Not all of us use the Dollar as our primary currency, and probably fewer of us are etymologists.
But think how useful it would be in an emergency if we were.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
it would have been absurd to write that toolchain with a "kind of free" license. why would RMS bother? it's not like he didn't have access to existing software. i'm guessing you think that's just "incidental"... but that's a very strange argument to ever make if you think anything has any explanatory power at all.
> it would have been absurd to write that toolchain with a "kind of free" license. why would RMS bother? it's not like he didn't have access to existing software. BSD/MIT is not "kind of free". It's freer (more people can do more things) than the GPL.
i'm not going to argue about that though. surely you're familiar with the territory.
the point, though, is that the GNU ethos is the reason for the GNU tools, and the onus would be on you to show that that ethos was interchangeable with some other in order to get where we are today.
when you're explaining an event in history, you need to take the facts and look for "why did things happen this way after that particular event?" you can't just substitute a comparable event and say "everything would be the same." if we're talking about the legal basis of this or that for the GPL and BSD licenses, sure, you can interchange things and show that "here, in this case, you'd be regretting GPL, and in this case [etc etc etc]." but for the course of history, you actually have to be much more careful with your scope... it's unlikely that one change (one that the primary person involved, RMS, himself took to be the central point of all it) could have no effects, or no salient ones.
notice how these points are distinct. RMS wouldn't but have written the GPL. history worked out how it did. these are different than your or my opinions on the merits of varying degrees of permissiveness in licenses.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your argument would only be true if there was no alternative to government programs. Both private enterprise and charity can accomplish what is now being ineffectively done via the government. All without the highly immoral (imo) military and political spending the government prioritizes. People should be allowed to keep 100% of their earnings. To involuntarily take a percentage is by definition immoral (theft).
Your argument would hold water if that money was earned with no help from federal or state at all. So no use of public utilities, roads, etc, oh and your company can't employ people who have benefited from them either - like going to a public or state school. Good luck with that.
If you want something that doesn't have a good counter-argument, look at policing and contract enforcement (basically, a public legal system). That's something that can't be done very well by a private entity or multiple competing private entities.
Another problem without much of a counter-argument is looking at e.g. utilities and roads together (i.e. a monopolistic infrastructure with a non-monopolistic infrastructure). Roads are monopolistic because they control that land - in order to use it, you have to pay the owner what they want. This isn't too big of a problem because if you feel one route costs too much, you can simply take another route. Utilities on the other hand, can be provided by anyone, as long as they run the pipes, lines, etc. out to you. In itself, if you feel one utility costs too much, you can pick another utility. The problem comes with combining the two - typically to deliver the utility to you, they would also have to pay the road owner to run the lines along and/or make some agreement. So what happens when an exclusivity agreement comes into play?
Well, unless you don't want the utility at all, you have no choice but to either pay whatever fee they want you to, or move. When you move, it's possible an exclusivity agreement exists there too. One could argue that it's not any better the way it currently is (Comcast, etc.) however you couldn't make it better by making everything privately-owned without regulation, and you could make it better by going further towards the public side.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your argument would hold water if that money was earned with no help from federal or state at all. So no use of public utilities, roads, etc, oh and your company can't employ people who have benefited from them either - like going to a public or state school. Good luck with that.
It would be entirely possible to do that if we first remove government from the equation. Private companies and co-ops can and do operate roads, electricity production, waste collection, etc. It's just a matter of government standing in the way of it being a more direct transaction. I'm not necessarily saying one way or the other is a better solution, but to invalidate their argument on the grounds that "it's like th…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Linux. Systemd. GNU. YaST. Git. Blender. These are all programs under the GPL, and the reason they are so successful is because of the defense that copyleft provides against proprietary software. In short, no. Not dead in the water.
All software primarily used on Linux systems. You'll never ever see systemd outside Linux. Ever. BTW good luck with that mess too. Same with yast. You'll never see that outside Linux. Ever. You're creating quite the ecosystem of NIH and Linux only software. Btrfs, systemtap, etc. So "successful" is a seriously objective word as you use it. But good luck, you're going to need it methinks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's funny that you think you're buying civilization with your taxes when the vasty majority of the money you give the government is used to actively destroy civilization. Bombs aren't cheap.
Vast majority? Military spending is only 15.75% of the US federal budget. And that's just federal spending, citizens also pay taxes to states and municipalities, which rarely field combat aircraft.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spoiler: they aren't. It's an incredibly naive position that many "libertarians" hold. It ignores the direct and indirect benefits that governments provide that support an entity being able to make money that can even be taxed. It's quite a silly position. Now specific taxes could be immoral and debate about the correct amount that it should be all you like... but the concept? No.
Your argument would only be true if there was no alternative to government programs. Both private enterprise and charity can accomplish what is now being ineffectively done via the government. All without the highly immoral (imo) military and political spending the government prioritizes. People should be allowed to keep 100% of their earnings. To involuntarily take a percentage is by definition immoral (theft).
Also, private charity is only good for very public, acute problems. It sucks for non-cute things (eg mental health) and for long-term things (someone crippled for life).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, yes, because corporations exist in a vacuum and generate money from thin air, typically using up none of earth's natural resources.
And they usually pay royalties on said resources? Pay for rights to said resources? Trust me, we learned a long time ago how to extract $$$ for said resources.
I could accept a company making profit and paying no taxes if they didn't have offices, staff, use roads or electricity etc. It would be pretty hard to do anything as a company "outside" the framework of a society.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Vast majority? Military spending is only 15.75% of the US federal budget. And that's just federal spending, citizens also pay taxes to states and municipalities, which rarely field combat aircraft.
While military spending (not counting veterans' benefits) in 2015 was around 16% of the total US federal budget[1,2], it made up 53.71% of the discretionary spending budget, dwarfing the next closest category, "government", at 6.54%. From the BusinessInsider link below: " The military budget is by far the largest single cost displayed. It is almost six times larger than the 2015 education budget and it is more than 3…