Moglen on Social Justice and OSS 336
NewsCloud writes "What does Firefox have to do with social justice? How will the one laptop per child project discourage genocide? How soon will Microsoft collapse? Watch Eben Moglen's inspiring keynote from the 2006 Plone Conference (Archive.org: mp3 or qt; or YouTube). The video presentation is ordinary, so the mp3 is an equally good format. 'If we know that what we are trying to accomplish is the spread of justice and social equality through the universalization of access to knowledge; If we know that what we are trying to do is build an economy of sharing which will rival the economies of ownership at every point where they directly compete; If we know that we are doing this as an alternative to coercive redistribution, that we have a third way in our hands for dealing with long and deep problems of human injustice; If we are conscious of what we have and know what we are trying to accomplish, when this is the moment for the first time in lifetimes, we can get it done.'"
Great presentation (Score:3, Informative)
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I can't. That's not the best browser, that's a maybe a more technically compliant browser than some, but it's not the best.
Because everything else is a RAM hog (Score:3, Insightful)
What if I want Firefox for an architecture with a small amount of RAM? What other web browser runs on plenty of handheld devices?
When I hear the words "Social Justice" ... (Score:2)
Re:Except for the 'Social Justice' theme... (Score:5, Insightful)
Every time he said 'Social Justice' he fed the perception that Free Software is a communist plot.
Only among those who are already predisposed to do so. Social justice != communism. Moglen can't prevent you from bringing your biases to the table, but he can hope that you will judge his presentation on its merits, and not on the values you attach to words he is using.
yp.
It's gotten so bad... (Score:3, Insightful)
Here in the Great U.S. and A. we're seeing a l
Why I have an allergic reaction to 'social justice (Score:4, Insightful)
The term seems to suggest that if A has sufficiently greater wealth than B, the situation is 'socially unjust', without considering the actions that led to the situation. If the disparity of wealth is due to A having worked harder to produce his wealth, it would be the antithesis of justice to 'correct' the imbalance by coercive force.
It's good that you use scare quotes there, because politically-connected people using their connections to gain advantage in the market is not what I call "capitalism"; it's more like "mercantilism". But consider this: The nations with the poorest citizens are precisely those where coercive force dominates economic transactions; those where the lowest economic classes do the best are where force (and the threat thereof) is kept to a minimum.We did an experiment last century, where we divided a country between capitalism and socialism. In order to maintain the experiment, the subjects in the socialist part of the experiment had to be confined by a wall, manned by guards with orders to kill anyone who tried to get out. But, hey, as long as all the inmates are equally poor, it's 'Social Justice', right?
The 'poor' under the definition of 'poverty' in the US of A would be considered wealthy in any country on the planet a century ago. By embracing 'social justice', you can feel smug about spreading misery equally.I am a proponent of Free Software precisely because it's about freedom. The pursuit of 'social justice' by coercive force is incompatible with freedom.
BTW, wasn't Moglen wearing a NICE suit? I don't suppose Starvin' Marvin can afford a fancy lawyer suit like that.
Re:Why I have an allergic reaction to 'social just (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's gotten so bad... (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree. And I believe we have also hit a low point as a society when "free market" is also a dirty word. Free market has never meant a lawless market, but people like you still describe it as if it is a den of thieves. The free market is a place were people can come to exchange goods and services without the threat of coercion by force, it is a place were government will enforce equitable contracts made willingly and in good faith with the use of force. Ideally, it is also a place were the exchange of goods and services take place without regard to biases individuals might have against other individuals or perceived groups. Historically, free markets have been places were individuals have been able to come in order to better themselves through hard work and reputations for honesty. A free market is not incompatible with a concept social justice. The "free" in free market is free as in freedom.
The next time someone tells you that the top 5 percent of Americans are paying 50 percent of the taxes, remember, it's because they're making 90 percent of the money.
The rich pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than do any other so called group. What you just said is a lie, pure and simple. A lie meant to divide people. A lie meant to assuage the guilt of the poor for taking more than they are worth from others. A lie meant to enslave the middle class. A lie that is so obviously false that you should be ashamed of yourself for spreading it.
Oh you meant to say wealth, sure you did. But wealth is not income, wealth is a made up number. Wealth is me looking at your house and saying that I bet someone would pay a lot for it. Wealth is not income, wealth does not always generate income. But when wealth does generate income it is already taxed at very high rates. So, you say that 40% is too little, that taking nearly half of people's income is too little? How much is too much?
I have been keenly aware of the false numbers that you and your kind have been spreading on the Internet. People are overtaxed and overworked and you would justify their continued oppression by spreading false rumors and lies. The rich and the middle class pay more than their fair share while the poor pay nothing or very little.
Yes, there is an inequity in this country and it is this: That the political class would prey upon the weak to better themselves. That the political class would scare people into giving them more power and control over other people's lives. That the political class would conspire between the two parties and act as one single unified political machine seeking to enrich their co-conspirators at the expense of the poor, rich and middle classes alike.
Re:Except for the 'Social Justice' theme... (Score:4, Insightful)
That is only because some people are easily fed "trigger" words or phrases and easily trained to react a certain way whenever they are used. Reasonable people understand that social justice does not equal Communism. During the Cold War and even today these easily trained people are more than willing to turn on their friends, neighbors, and even family because of this fallacious sense of pseudo patriotism.
Economy of sharing to compete? (Score:4, Insightful)
The "one laptop per child" mentality is great at giving people the information that they need in order to succeed, but it will not make them succeed. It will ensure that everyone starts the race at the same point, but it will not make everyone a winner.
Re:Economy of sharing-an example (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Economy of sharing-an example (Score:5, Insightful)
Humans have spent millions of years sharing, and just a few thousand owning. Sharing is what got us, as a species, so rich that we could afford to lock up resources, whether it cost anyone anything for others to use them or not.
Owning can speed up the pace of innovation by several orders of magnitude, but it can also slow it down. You don't need DMCA, DRM, and other insane intellectual property rights to do that. The medieval guilds in Europe, for instance, also slowed down the pace of innovation by a couple of centuries, and they did it using trade secrecy rules that worked just as well (or badly, depending on your point of view).
But the important thing is that sharing and owning are NOT mutually exclusive. Buddha had it right: it's the balance that's important. Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to own the ones and the zeroes, but sharing everything absolutely equally doesn't work well outside of a monastery either. The balance point, for me, is where you have the most innovation that benefits the most people and allows compensation to flow to the creators, not everybody except the creators.
One thing that's always brought up about "sharing economies" is the tragedy of the commons. That's where resources held in common and owned by nobody get trashed because nobody takes care of them. Our current environmental problems fall into this category. But the thing to remember there is that sharing only becomes a tragedy when it's a free-for-all. In that case, sure, it's a rip-off for whoever is the biggest thug. We don't have to let that happen. If the commons is adequately regulated, it can be used by everyone AND retain all its value, like a well-run city park.
Moglen has articulated the value in the new / old way of sharing, and brought so many separate things into one vision, it's like looking into a prism and seeing glorious rainbows. Love it.
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One thing that's always brought up about "sharing economies" is the tragedy of the commons. That's where resources held in common and owned by nobody get trashed because nobody takes care of them. Our current environmental problems fall into this category.
To my mind, our current environmental problems are more down to the capitalist mentality of exploiting a resource without much thought for how long it's going to last, because when it's all gone, you just move on to making money out of something else. As you say, humanity's spent much longer sharing than owning, and societies with a relatively weak concept of o
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With the additional benefit that with FLOSS, once you have one very nice barn, everyone can get a copy of it with a push of a button.
Re:Economy of sharing-an example (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with all these analogies is that software is not analogous to physical things. Software is more analogous to the design of the barn. If I decide that it would make more sense to have a barn with two doors rather than one door, it doesn't hurt me in any way for every other barn to have two doors.
Open source relies on the following:
1. Software is near free to duplicate but comparatively expensive to design.
2. Software is individual. My current needs are different than your current needs. Thus, even with the same base, both of us need to do additional work.
3. Needs change. Thus, the needs that I have tomorrow may match the needs that you have today. Therefore, giving you my work today may save me work tomorrow.
4. Bugs happen. If you find a bug and fix it for me, that saves me work. This is especially true of security bugs.
Where open source falls down (relative to closed source) is that it lacks a good way for non-programmers to pool resources in large groups. Look at MS Windows XP (WinXP) for example. WinXP apparently costs about $25 per user to develop (using an average cost of $50 per user and a profit margin of 50%). Assuming 400,000,000 users, that's $10 billion to develop WinXP (given Win2000 and Win98SE). Using a cost per developer of $200,000 per year, that's 50,000 developer years.
Open source does well in areas where the software is used by technical people. For example, traditionally (albeit increasingly less so), web servers have been operated by professionals. As a result, it has made sense for those professionals to use a web server that they could modify (Apache). Office suites have traditionally been used by non-technical people. As such, most office suites do not allow modification, only extension (through macros and more modernly, VBScript).
Barn raisings worked because in small communities, it's possible to get everyone to work together (people who don't go to raise your barn don't get your help with their barn). However, that's a bad model for trying to convince a business. It lacks guarantees (me doing work for you today does not bind you to do work for me tomorrow). To convince a profit minded boss, you have to demonstrate that open source reduces costs.
Re:Economy of sharing to compete? (Score:4, Insightful)
The 'economy of ownership' is the one where people say 'This stuff is mine! Give me money or you can't use it, even if it costs me nothing for you to have it.
The 'economy of sharing' is where people say 'This stuff can't, or shouldn't be owned at all. If anyone wants to use it, they can and if anyone wants to help improve it, bonus!'
The commons notoriously has problems with things like overgrazing and overfishing, and the notion of sharing what you produce has problems if it costs you something to share. With digital goods shared on the internet, neither of those are a problem. Software doesn't wear out, and it doesn't cost me anything if two people share my work over a website or p2p network. The fixed costs associated with creating free software in the first place do have to be covered, but that hasn't been a problem so far.
The internet works with a different set of economic rules from the traditional economy. Stuff like Linux and Apache are economic equivalent of bumblebees. They shouldn't work under the old rules, yet they do.
And because of that, the ethical rules should change too, but they haven't, yet. In a world where Ubuntu and OpenBSD can be made without having policemen to stop them being copied, why should we employ policemen and jails to prevent Windows or OSX being copied? Jailing people is violent and evil, m'kay, and should only ever be used as a last resort. The primary justification for employing copyright protections in the first place was just to produce copyrighted works - if the works are now getting made without those protections, then there's no excuse for attacking and threatening people just to make an equivalent work that might compete with it...
Umm, I think that's Moglen's point, more or less. I'm still waiting for the *cough*quicktime*cough* movie to download...
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Because they chose not to "share" their work, and that's their right. By forcing them to "share" their work, then that's coercision. That's taking somebody's work from them by force. That's very bad.
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That theory perpetuates the strange myth that FLOSS is in some way non-commercial. Lots of people make lots of money off of the likes of Linux and the like, it's just a different b
Re:Economy of sharing to compete? (Score:4, Insightful)
As you can see: We are giving for completely uneconomic reasons all the time. Does that make us bad people?
Re:Economy of sharing to compete? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but you see, the ability to do this, i.e. to practice charity, which is the moral way of life, is in many ways dependent upon having the resources to give, which in turn is dependant upon a healthy free market economy. Obviously, you can be just as moral without any resources, but there is dramatically more that you can do for others if you do have resources. I think that Open Source is largely a result of this spirit. However, it is a result, not a cause, and I think it has exactly NOTHING to do with most the ideals mentioned, such as Justice. Justice has more to do with the free market. Charity is about rising above justice.
Re:Economy of sharing to compete? (Score:4, Insightful)
If that were true, then how come the world's major religions ( Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Judaism ) asked people to practice charity hundreds or thousands of years before the development of modern free markets?
Science is a better analogy (Score:2)
But then, everything the scientists built on was published by previous scientists.
Everybody winds up better off than they would if someone were to impose artifical scarcity on knowledge in order to make it work more like a naturally scarce resource such as land.
Not really... (Score:2)
Pure scientists often do this, but not applied scientists. Some of the best applied scientists in the world work for GE, 3M, DuPont, Toyota, IBM, etc. That scientific work is most definitely NOT given away. Pure scientists give away their information for reasons outside of economic benefit (academia is a different world, entirely), but often, there i
The operative word is "economy" (Score:2)
All the
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Information is a stra
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Until 1477, that is. After that copyright was viable because owning a printing press was a huge investion, and it had to pay off. Ok. Some very rich people might have had a printing press purely for fun, and some revolutionaries were having them for completely different reasons. But in general people owning a printing press had somehow to conduct a business with it, and thus they were vulnerable as soon as they put their products to the public
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Yes... where is the economy in giving birth to children? Where is the economy in giving a present to loved ones? Where is the economy in giving education to minors? Where is the economy in giving directions to a stranger in your town? Where is the economy in giving playing cards to someone who is sitting with you at a table? Where is the economy in giving advise or stating opinions on Slashdot?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy [wikipedia.org]
Is that what you meant? The reasons people have for doing things li
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Giving advise, pointing out direction and educate the minors? How do those religions survive? How do the pass on even the interdictum of advisory, direction giving and education without pointing out that it is actually forbidden?
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The require
Re:Economy of sharing to compete? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're wrong. You are describing a communist system, where wealth is distributed evenly, rather than according to how much each person is worth.
That's not open-source. To me, there is a huge difference with open-source: It is specifically about acknowledging how much something is worth, giving credit where it's due, and respecting the wishes of the authors. Thus, if you build something on top of what I have built, and I have shared it, all I ask is that you share it too. There is nothing in open-source that says that if you build something from scratch, you absolutely must open-source it. Only if you use parts of what other people did. Frankly, I think that's a reasonable request.
What it means is that it's more efficient than traditional innovation, because it means not having to re-invent the wheel. All we ask is that you open your code, too. You're perfectly free to not use what someone else did, but it would be re-doing a lot of work, so I don't recommend it.
You're only obligated if you are using something someone else did. Again, how is this not reasonable? If you're going to go and sell some code you wrote, but it includes a bunch of code I wrote, and I stated originally that I'd prefer you to share your code if you use it, then you're not inherently obliged to, you're obliged to according to the license agreement that you chose to comply with.
Absolutely. However, the hope is that it will, in total, create more winners. Or at least even out the distribution of winners over the globe. Right now there is a serious imbalance in the world that is making it a very unhealthy place to live. We can't just keep giving money to developing countries, hoping that they'll invest it properly and fix all their economic problems. Instead, this is an attempt to help them help themselves, a much better approach IMHO.
Anyways, notice that the OLPC project isn't exactly a charity. It is an effort to create a machine that is useful, but made in such a way that the target demographic can actually afford it. This is perfectly moral from a capitalist perspective. (Yes it is a non-profit organization, but as far as I'm concerned that doesn't change anything. They are still selling the machines, not giving them away.)
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Anyhow. They're selling machines, at an overall low cost (though th
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Kudos on having the wherewithall to participate in the Peace Corps! Based on your post, and because of that bit of info, I have a discussion that is probably going to incite quite a lot of reaction but is, I think, quite necessary:
How does 'journalism' prevent genocide? In my estimation, things like genocide (or other violent oppressive activities) are also somewhat economic, though with a different flavor: Those that would commit genocide (or other oppressive activity) generally do so as long as the perce
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I mean, there's a LOT, and I mean, more than I've been fortunate enough to see myself ever before, of techno-utopianism that goes with the OLPC (and web2.0 too), and how these things will change the world and save the children and so on. I've gotte
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I think the "economy of sharing" is more a reference to the "gift economy", in which people exchange things with each other not because they stand to gain personally from the transaction, but because they want to. There's nothing obligatory about the gift economy, quite the opposite. It's the voluntary nature of gift giving that makes it what it is. If a market economy is o
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With what? The traditional economy goes something like: I have something, which you want, and you have something which I want. We trade.
No:
I have something you want, and I won't let you have it unless you have something I want.
This non-concept of "economy of sharing" goes like: I have something, which you want, and I am morally obligated to give it to you, by virtue of the fact that I have it.
I have something you want. Here, take it.
Now, is there anything you have that I want?
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Yep. Works really great for bread and knives.
This non-concept of "economy of sharing" goes like: I have something, which you want, and I am morally obligated to give it to you, by virtue of the fact that I have it.
Nope.
I have something, which is of use to you. Giving it to you in no way deprives me of that thing. I am therefore going to give it to you, so that, when you have someth
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Not even close.
Do you think people pay for private schools just for laughs? And there are other issues involved. See this article by Paul Tough (or Google for a either a synopsis of it or a cut-and-paste version) for more of what create gaps in education and achievement.
There are also issues of infrastructure that create huge gaps, as well as social ties (often, to do well, one must leave home--and perhaps abandoning relatives who need your help.)
Interesting, but a little too high brow for me (Score:3, Insightful)
The blogger's summary said the speech evoked "memories for me of Martin Luther King's speeches". Ummm
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I think it's worth keeping in mind that the speech we all listened to was an invited keynote address at the Plone Conference in Seattle. [plone.org] His audience was a bunch of free-software experts (Plone [wikipedia.org] is a FLOSS content management system). Making his talk 'more general and accessible' would have bored the audience. The intention of the talk was to remind some free-software developers of the 'why' of free sof
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Video Format (Score:5, Insightful)
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And no, DivX/XviD aren't
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"MPEG-4/MP3" and "H.264/AAC" are still proprietary formats. What I'm upset about is that this video hasn't been made available in an Ogg container with Theora and Vorbis streams.
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Transcription (Score:5, Informative)
If you want a non-proprietary format, I have transcribed [geof.net] Moglen's speech.
Widespread internet access could cause genocide (Score:4, Funny)
Well, there's your problem: (Score:4, Funny)
Stop looking at people's MySpace pages!
Delusional (Score:4, Insightful)
re: Salvation through education (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, however, I think the more people who can get around the controlled press with these devices, and blog and create their own content, the better off the world is. It's salvation...no.
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And being the most powerful nation in the world somehow invalidates that sentiment?
Education *is* the salvation, our very history is proof of that. But there is also a strong tradition of anti-intellectualism masquerading as anti-elitism in this country, and as our wealth encourages laziness and the expectation of success, that sentiment is now the stronger force. The failure of throwing money at a problem as a subst
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1800s, and even earlier. The Massachussetts Education Act of 1647 established schools partly for fear of the results of ignorance.
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You seem to be confusing "throwing money" at schools that fail to educate and the value of education itself. Education can take many forms: it can be formal, in a school, apprenticing to a master or just gaining experience through working.
Genocide? (Score:5, Insightful)
A bunch of laptops to some starving, poor, thirsty people who live in terror of their government or paramilitary groups the government can't control are going to do a whole freaking lot.
Please.
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Oh, and the potshot "that the government of the United States chooses to ignore" is complete bullshit. The world (as am I) is already mad enough at the US for intervening where it should not have, why would the rest of the w
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The government of Sudan has been very strict about not allowing reporters into Darfur.
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Considering cases such as the US government and the native Americans, the Soviet government and the Ukrainians, the Turkish government and the Armenians, and the example that's too hackneyed to mention, it seems that effective governments are a risk factor for genocide. Even the apparently anarchic Rwandan genocide started with government-sponsored pogroms.
Eben Moglen as a lawyer (Score:2)
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One could almost call it a lawsuit?
in much simpler to understand terms... (Score:2)
With that in mind:
"Consumer choice rules"
And when the choice is not acceptable to the consumer, they put on their producer hat and make it for themselves and to share.
That's OSS!!
The essence why Richard Stallman wrote the GPL in the first place.
He was unhappy what rights his employer, at the time, was claiming of his work.
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That's OSS!!
when did the programmer become the consumer in any ordinary meaning of the word?
programming is and will remain as alien a skill as brain surgery to the overwhelming majority of users. communication between the OSS programmer and the non-technical end user remains poor.
More from Moglen (Score:2, Informative)
He gave a keynote Wednesday morning and then appeared during lunch for a debate of sorts with Matthew Small, VP and General Counsel for Blackboard, Inc. It's quite entertaining, IMHO, especially if you have strong feelings about software patents.
You can listen to the podcasts here (look at the Wednesday schedule, day 2 for download links):
Conference Sch [sakaiproject.org]
Social Justice? (Score:4, Interesting)
That is not what I see when people speak of "Social Justice". I see them attempting to have an even distribution of wealth, by using the government as the enforcer of what is socially just.
It does not seem fair. Those who sacrifice, save and work hard should be rewarded. Those who do not, should not.
On a global scale, often, when I see the struggling indigenous people of wherever, they have placed restraints on their economy or their economy is a structured (ie planned) economy that has inefficiencies in it. These types of economies look like the economies proposed by those seeking "Social Justice".
This is just a Sunday morning rant. As always, I could be wrong
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I agree - hard work should be rewarded. I have no problem with people who start a company with a great idea and become very wealthy - I'm very glad for them when it happens. What irks me is that some horde their wealth and effectively take it out of circulation. The only reason anyone would want to hold on to over $1Billion (US) is for POWER, not living well.
On a global scale, often, when I see th
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What irks me is that some horde their wealth and effectively take it out of circulation. The only reason anyone would want to hold on to over $1Billion (US) is for POWER, not living well.
Only an idiot would make $1 Billion and then stick it under their mattress. The way people with money make more money is to invest it. Even if they're putting it in one truly massive CD (heh), that's still money that's being used to give out loans, purchase capital, etc...
The fact that they're not spending it on a daily bas
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You are correct to be suspicious of the term "social justice." Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek [wikipedia.org] demolished the concept in his book Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 2: The Mirage of Social Justice [amazon.com].
This is not what Moglen's talking about (Score:5, Informative)
This (from my transcription [geof.net]) is what he means by social justice:
His vision has no government or other enforcer. It is realized due to a restructuring of economic production around products based on software which is free. Here is how he describes past efforts to achieve social justice:
An information economy based on free software, however, can be different:
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In fact, one of Moglen's main points (I listened to TFA) makes the point that FOSS can bring about social justice without having to resort to the conflict that inev
Not even a token gesture toward software freedom? (Score:3, Informative)
You can see how that plays out in this
The solution has been around for some time and works well: add Ogg Vorbis audio files and Ogg Theora+Vorbis video+audio files. These files can be played on all platforms and there are implementations which are free software for everyone.
So, all you really want is an Ogg file :-) (Score:2)
Joking aside, I'm not sure I believe in a conspiracy to snub Free Software. Whatever fork argument you use, I still think that both strands still share more ideas than they care to admit, only the way they approach the wor
No, that's not all I'm saying. (Score:3, Interesting)
I appreciate it when open source minded hackers deliver free software to people, and I am grateful when open source advocates stand with the free software community pushing for no software patents and no DRM. We need more social solidarity to make better lives for ourselves, and I'm grateful that
Ogg Vorbis, please (Score:2)
I have to agree. I'd hope the Plone group would be "with-it" enough to realize the ethical conflict they've put themselves in by only releasing a video about freedom using proprietary codecs.
While keeping in mind that 80%+ of Internet users have never heard of Ogg, a vast majority of the people listening to Moglen have & would highly prefer it. Besides, Vorbis is vastly superior quality to MP3.
Reasonable expectations (Score:2)
I'm all in favor of the OLPC project. It's a great project, but it shouldn't be seen as a world savior either. OLPC is a project that will make a few Westerners feel good and will help a few thousand (or tens of thousands) people acquire the basics of computing, provided that they are in the right conditions to start with.
But OLPC is not going to convince warring tribes that they should start loving their neighbors. It's not going to resolve hatreds and conflicts that have been raging for decades, if not l
freedom and resources (Score:3, Informative)
Notice that how even though Linux is free, that the place that it is used the most is silicon valley - more than any other place in the world. A free market Mecca. Not Africa, not China, not India. That's because it's not about costs, but about freedom. And free markets are not about markets, but about freedom too and people taking advantage of it to create wealth and prosperity where none existed before.
Contrary to what he said, the free market still has limits, but now the limit in supply and demand centers around services and not around content controls. The information age is doing for services what the industrial revolution did for production.
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more food = more people = more conflict.
more food = less time working to make food, find food = more time to think = more conflict.
Humans are wired for conflict, especially between the ages of 13 and 30.
More children = more conflict.
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As long as we respect other people's rights to raise their children by teaching them other people are not human then the problem.
Only by teaching their children different beliefs can we change their culture.
I suppose the laptops might help in t
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In 1960's China. Millions and millions of people were dying from starvation as the farms were not producing enough food. But, no amount of new farming tools was going to help it. No amount of charity was going to stop the massive death tolls. So what stopped it. Well, the farmers revolted and forced China to switch back to a private property system. The point is that people don't ne
stop the socialism (Score:3, Insightful)
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"What does Firefox have to do with social justice? (Score:2)
The self-importance is awe inspiring (Score:4, Insightful)
Open Source (or Free, or whatever the f*ck) software is fanstastic, but Jesus, can we have a little perspective please?
Software as an input to production of other goods (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you're misunderstanding what he's saying about software as the "primary underlying commodity" of the 21st century. He's not suggesting that the third world should be developing software. Rather, he's saying that software is now an input to economic development in general. If a poor country is producing textiles, for example, they will need software in order to manage orders, inventory, designs, and so on.
The parallel with steel in the 20th century is that you need steel to make cars. If you do
Here's a transcript of the talk (Score:2)
A friend in the free software community has transcribed this talk:http://plone.org/events/conferences/seattle-2 006/ [plone.org].
SORRY, here's the working LINK: (Score:2)
Heh. That'll teach me to check my URLs. ...nah.
Here is a temporary copy of the transcript: http://ciaran.compsoc.com/texts/moglen-2006-oct-pl one.html [compsoc.com]
It will have a permanent link soon, and that will be listed at: http://ciaran.compsoc.com/texts/ [compsoc.com]
Why use QuickTime ?? (Score:2)
Thanks to the editors (Score:2)
Access to what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Too much of what you find on the Internet is garbage. From the web page equivalents of open mike poetry nights at the local coffee house, to vacuumheads like 9/11 or moon landing conspiracy theorists, there's a lot of rubbish.
Will the network spread truth and liberty, or will the lies just spread faster? Is it a tool of freedom, or a global generator of intelletual smog?
Here's how you save the world:
1. Global education with a solid core of scientific method, basic logic and critical thinking skills.
2. Free access to all known forms off birth control.
3. Bust up the organized religions. Seriously, we have GOT to wean humanity off that shit. It's like every problem in the world can be traced back to some religious text or another.
Inspiring, motivating, stimulating keynote. (Score:2)
Re: The self-importance is awe inspiring (Score:2, Interesting)
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Talking to people (in the ivory towers no less) I have learned that Marx wrote many many things that to
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If you actually wish to understand the history of Marxism I suggest you read a book Joshua Muravchik titled "Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism" ISBN # 1893554457. Amazon has used copies listed at around $12 after shipping.
Listening to leftist academics talk about Marxism is like going to stormfront.org to learn about Naziism.
Bingo! (Score:2)
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The system that we have in place has been proven throughout history to be the most effective system that there is. It's not perfect, but because of human flaws, communism simply doesn't work.
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