Stallman Convinces Cuba to Switch to Open Source 582
prostoalex writes "It's a big victory for Richard Stallman in North America, as Cuba decided to adopt open source software on the national level. Both Cuba and Venezuela are currently working on switching the entire government infrastructure to GNU/Linux operating system and applications, the Associated Press reports from Havana: 'Both governments say they are trying to wean state agencies from Microsoft's proprietary Windows to the open-source Linux operating system, which is developed by a global community of programmers who freely share their code.' The AP article doesn't mention the distro used for government workers, but says that the students are working on a Gentoo-based distro."
Re:An Old Canard . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
not only the existing ones- but all the people who don't know anything about open source. i think this could be a good thing for linux globally, but for those of us in the u.s. this is going to be the source of a mountain of fud.
Communist Spectre (Score:2, Insightful)
Really a big win in North America? (Score:3, Insightful)
Communists and Stallman (Score:5, Insightful)
Free Software (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we get another spokesman? (Score:1, Insightful)
People wonder why the OSS movement struggles to attract more support....
Politically and PR tone-deaf (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey, maybe this is just the irrelevant concern of somebody who works in PR and marketing. But if you're trying to be the ambassador of a broad-based movement, you generally avoid making public appearances with anyone who's a polarizing figure on either side politically. (i.e., if you're with a charity that wants people of all parties to donate, you don't make public appearances with either Dick Cheney or Michael Moore.)
RMS is Free(TM) of course to make public appearances wherever he wishes in support of Free(TM) software etc. I'm just saying that the image of Stallman getting snuggly with Raul Castro and Hugo Chavez - other than being kind of physically gross - is not likely to assuage any US government or business fears about the ideals or politics behind the F/OSS movements. Free software seemed to be gaining some wide acceptance ... but RMS has just given the Bill O'Reillys of the world a powerful tool to shill Microsoft et. al. with once more. Again, it's his right to go ... but I think it's an exceedingly poor idea from a PR perspective. Then again, if RMS cared about PR, he wouldn't be RMS...
Re:Corrected Headline: (Score:2, Insightful)
Unlike, say, nearly fifty years of US trade embargos?
Re:Communists and Stallman (Score:5, Insightful)
Leaving aside Hitler's dubiously documented vegetarianism, it is quite well documented that Churchill was a drunk who drank a bottle of brandy before he got out of bed every day. Does this mean that being a drunk has anything to do with his political philosophy?
People with faulty philosophies do make correct decisions sometimes, and people with sound philosophies are not immune from error.
In fact, the biggest problems with any political philsophy are going to be the things it ignores or discounts. It may be the selfishness of human nature, or it may be the prevelance of preventable in the human condition. It follows that it is quite possible for a grossly faulty philosophy to recommend a worthwhile course of action that a better one would not even consider.
Re:Not surprising. (Score:4, Insightful)
MicroSoft sells copies of Windows to OEMS, see, maybe in Hong Kong, and it's the OEMs who sell them to Cuba. Stallman probably got Castro to switch to Linux by pointing out the new "feature" in Vista that lets M$ revoke driver priveleges at their pleasure. Imagine if GM had a lever in Detroit that could make all those mint-condition classic '57 Chevys in Cuba stop working.
Re:An Old Canard . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Communists and Stallman (Score:4, Insightful)
And Just How Did They Acquire MS Software? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I will pay $1000 to (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I'm sure the loss of the Cuban goverment will badly damage Microsoft's bottom line.
Cuba, communism and stupidity (Score:4, Insightful)
I just have to say that anyone who thinks that Free Software is communistic because Cuba (and Venezuela) are using it are stupid. Firstly, Cuba is not communist. The USSR never claimed to be communist. Comments about Cuba being communist show the ignorance of the person saying them.
Secondly, if you refuse to use a superior (technologically, or because it's cheaper or whatever) option because "communists" are using it. Then you are stupid. Full stop.
Free Software is not about communism, if you read the FSF definition, you will notice that the software must not be restricted for *any* usage. That includes totalitarian regimes, or real communists living in a hippy commune somewhere. Free Software is about Freedom. And that means that Cuba is free to use it.
For a definition of "communism" or to find out more about "communism", see my "homepage".
Re:Can we get another spokesman? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are many smart and patriotic people in Cuba and Venezuela, and I suspect they will mess with Linux until it really works right for the purposes that the government has in mind. This is a far more honorable course than piracy of MS, which is what most other developing countries choose.
In summary, this is incredibly good for Linux, and only people who think the USA is the entire world could think otherwise.
Re:Communist Spectre (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Communist Spectre (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:OSS is communist? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just in case it slipped your awareness, it is now nearly 2 decades that East Germany as a country vanishes from the world and became a part of what is now called Germany.
Re:Politically and PR tone-deaf (Score:5, Insightful)
I completely disagree. The world is NOT the United States. The opinions of the citizens of the world about the fortunes of Cuba do not necessarily align with the opinions of the Republicans in America.
Many in the world believe that Cuba has been hurt more by the actions of the United States than by Castro. If you travel to Europe, you will likely hear a very different opinion of Castro and the history of Cuba.
And even in this country, many are changing their minds about who has caused the Cubans to suffer most.
So please don't confuse the PR perspective of the World from the PR perspective of the G.O.P.
'almost dictatorial' ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is that like being sort of pregnant? The guy just talked his pets in the legislature to allow him to rule by fiat. He's busy nationalizing industries that other people invested in and paid for. He controls the media, beats up and jails his political opponents, and is an all around jackass. It's bad enough that people like Joe Kennedy like to portray him as some sort of saint, but using him (and Castro) as some sort of victorious case study for Stallman's crusading is not, I think, all that helpful. Unless you like the way Chavez is going. Because in his country, companies like Red Hat would shortly wind up being The Ministry Of Software, and the "evil capitalists" that took the risks to found it, paid the people who got it up and running, and made it a viable enterprise would simply be shoved out the door. It's happening right now in that country, and it's going to get worse.
Re:Can we get another spokesman? (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets reverse the situation, if RMS stood up with George Bush, or high ranking members of his administration, that would negatively impact the adoption of GNU and other OSS projects in countries where GWB or current American policy is unpopular.
In summary, people using Linux anywhere is good for Linux but having RMS stand with political leaders isn't. Do you really believe that PR machine in Cuba won't use this or that the propaganda they produce won't trickle back into the US?
Stallman shouldn't be dealing with thugs (Score:3, Insightful)
"Our goal is not revolution, or even the civil toppling of any political forces. All we seek is for the people to be allowed to choose what they want to read, and to be allowed to draw their own conclusions from that reading"
Re:Communists and Stallman (Score:2, Insightful)
Communism is
Talking about "warped ideologies", what about the millions of starving children in Africa? They are not dying because of "communism" (or even "Communism"). No, it is capitalism that is doing them in.
Talking about violence, what is happening in Iraq just now? Oh, that's right, violence to defend an ideology ("democracy" in this case). Get a fucking life you loser. Or better still, learn to read and find out something about a topic before mouthing off about it.
Re:Can we get another spokesman? (Score:4, Insightful)
Bah.
Just counter "Cuba is going OSS" with "IBM is pushing OSS". If there's one thing IBM is not associated with, it's communism.
Re:Politically and PR tone-deaf (Score:2, Insightful)
Many in the world believe that Cuba has been hurt more by the actions of the United States than by Castro. If you travel to Europe, you will likely hear a very different opinion of Castro and the history of Cuba.
See that's the thing about the US policy towards Cuba. It's not about helping the people of Cuba, it's about helping the US. Europeans get similarly protective when you're talking about countries that are closer to them on the map that may or may not pose a perceived threat. We're not screwing the Cubans economically to help them get rid of Castro. We're screwing them because *we* want to be rid of Castro. Please stop confusing self interest with misguided altruism.
What victory? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Cuba, communism and stupidity (Score:1, Insightful)
Comical Indeed, Bill Gates Inspired Them! (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder how RMS is going to spin this victory to his States-side detractors?
Look no further than the fine AP article for an explanation:
So, thank you Bill Gates for inspiring Cuba and many other countries. The disturbing part of this story is that citizens of the free world willingly give Bill Gates the authority that Fidel Castro will impose by force, and that's the real inspiration provided. I don't have any illusions that Fidel Castro will allow real software freedom anymore than he allows a free press, free association, free worship, so on and so forth. Fidel Castro and his party will be the owners of whatever Linux distribution he makes, just as Bill Gates is the owner of Windoze.
Whatever their motives, software freedom will be better for them. The government will own it's systems but their people using free software may also get a taste for real freedom and have better tools to persue it. Unless they use further M$ tricks like DRM, Cuban computers will work better with really free sotware.
So, how's a dose of reality for a spin? When you use non free software, someone else owns your computer. The non free way of "be so grateful for what my software does for you that you do as I say." When you look behind the rhetoric and lables, what you find is minds that think alike [slashdot.org]. You would never move to Cuba or China because they would strip you of many of your freedoms. Why willingly surrender your software freedom, with all of the dire implications for other freedom of speech, press, and what those freedoms safeguard?
Re:Cuba, communism and stupidity (Score:3, Insightful)
What matters is that there is a clump of neurons in our brains that encode "evil", another that encodes "good", and a whole bunch of others that represent words/concepts just waiting to be connected to one or the other. We go through life making most of those connections in a completely unconscious and uncritical way; in fact, there are entire industries dedicated to helping us along with that. The concepts behind those trigger words don't matter; what's important is whether you can make a label stick, and that can be done simply through repetition.
The point is not whether "communism" or "terrorism" or "democracy" are really Good or Evil on their merits; it's that we can make things Good or Evil through indirection just by sticking those labels on them. And so only our enemies are terrorists or dictators, even when the formal definitions of those words often fit the actions of our friends - or ourselves - equally well.
Re:Not surprising. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's "collective property", so in a sense, *YES* (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would a form of communism work in the digital world but fail utterly everywhere else?
Because in the digital OSS world, you can "take" anything (modify it, change it, copy it, use it) without having to appropriate the original. Source code can be "collectivized" without taking it from the authors. Farms can't be collectivized without taking them from the farmers.
Gee, communism only works where it doesn't involve forced resource redistribution, or society (actually the *government*) appropriating private property.
Imagine that.
Re:Communism (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:An Old Canard . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price.
A lot of capitalists are making a lot of money off Linux. I work for an Internet company that runs on a +2000 Linux cluster. We were recently sold for $4 billion. Linux is not about socialism, it's *not* anti-capitalist anymore than Google or IBM is.
The GPL has nothing to do with social equality. It's purpose is to ensure that great software will continue to evolve. The main restriction it places on a programmer is that he must ensure his code stays open for others to improve upon. He can sell and profit from writing code, and be as much a capitalist as he wants. The GPL doesn't prevent that in the least.
Re:Cuba, communism and stupidity (Score:1, Insightful)
Neither country claimed to be totalitarian, either.
A political entity must be judged by its actions and not by its pronouncements.
And since Marx claimed that he was not Marxist, well that gives you a cute little get-out-of-losing-arguments-free card, doesn't it? When confronted with the facts concerning communism, you can always say "well that wasn't real communism."
Here is real communism:
Pol Pot. Buddhist nuns tortured by insertion of cattle prods. The Chinese Cultural Revolution. The environmental disaster of the Aral Sea. The Tiennanmen Square massacre. The Berlin Wall.
Yes, yes, we all know, that's not real communism. Real communism says that it is sunshine and freedom and delicious food. Therefore death by the millions and enslavement of billions cannot ever be the product of communism. Marx wasn't Marsixt. Communism isn't communist.
And to the expected laundry list of the failures of capitalism, well that's not real capitalism.
Re:Communist Spectre (Score:2, Insightful)
Like they were scared away from MS when Fidel bought licences?
I think not.
Re:Politically and PR tone-deaf (Score:4, Insightful)
The embargo is utterly ridiculous, it's an obsolete relic from the days of the red scare. Somehow the Republicans in the USA say how important the embargo is to force the end of communistic regimes, but they don't mention that we have absolutely no qualms about trading with China or Viet Nam, especially exploiting those countries for cheap labor.
Republicans also like to claim that the many Cubans trying to get out of the country to the shores of the USA prove how bad it is there, so we must keep the trade embargo up. Yet the fact we have Mexicans illegally trying to cross the border for the same reasons means we can maintain full economic and diplomatic relations with Mexico.
It's also ridiculous how hypocritical the right wingers are regarding illegal immigration. They think Mexicans coming in illegally must be deported, illegals here should be deported, yet Cubans that make it to shore should be granted immediate citizenship! And finally, just to prove how ridiculous our double standard is regarding Cuba with other nations - If anyone reading this knows of an illegal immigrant who wants to become a citizen, just have them wander over to Miami and claim they're a Cuban who just came off the raft, and they'll be granted citizenship within a few days!
Silly recipe-sharers, jail is for dissenters! (Score:5, Insightful)
Again, very funny. Because the governments of Cuba & Venezuela are both ALL ABOUT freedom of information for their citizens. Oh, except Venezuela is also cracking down on the freedom of the press, firing judges who dare to challenge its authority, and let's not forget prison conditions [hrw.org]... but other than that? Yays Open Sources!!!!
Not sure I entirely understand how Stallman isn't getting slagged for this, after Google got so roundly derided about its decisions to filter results in the China market... after all, Google is a company, interested in profits. Stallman professes to be all about idealism, and freedom, doesn't he?
Re:Can we get another spokesman? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Cuba, communism and stupidity (Score:2, Insightful)
Here is why. "A political entity must be judged by its actions and not by its pronouncements", yes this is true, so we can say that while the USA and the UK *claim* to be democracies, the facts show that they aren't.
"And since Marx claimed that he was not Marxist, well that gives you a cute little get-out-of-losing-arguments-free card, doesn't it? When confronted with the facts concerning communism, you can always say 'well that wasn't real communism.'" Marx said in response to certain groups at the time saying that they were Marxist, that if they were Marxists he wasn't. He would have said the same thing about Lenin. When confronted with the "facts concerning communism", I give a definition of communism that is correct. I don't say that what is claimed by people to be communistic (the USSR or Cuba) is good. Or bad for that matter (though being an anarchist I don't like either possibility). I simply try and educate ignorant people like yourself on what communism really is. That being a classless stateless society where resources (and/or the means of production) are held in common.
"Pol Pot. Buddhist nuns tortured by insertion of cattle prods. The Chinese Cultural Revolution. The environmental disaster of the Aral Sea. The Tiennanmen Square massacre. The Berlin Wall.
Yes, yes, we all know, that's not real communism. Real communism says that it is sunshine and freedom and delicious food. Therefore death by the millions and enslavement of billions cannot ever be the product of communism. Marx wasn't Marsixt. Communism isn't communist." Just because a group of people who have a lot to loose (the rich and powerful in the "West") spin examples as being "communistic" because they were put in place by people who claimed to be communists (but never that there countries were) doesn't make it so. Would you rather believe someone who obviously have a lot to lose from the implementation of another system (for example the aristocrats who claimed that free and universal elections (i.e. "democracy") would cause chaos) or someone who is presenting the facts of the matter and trying to argue rationally without resort to spin or similar?
"And to the expected laundry list of the failures of capitalism, well that's not real capitalism."
A lot of people don't think it is. However, going by what the people in power call it (capitalism) I'm more likely to believe them because if they had anything to loose, they would call it something different. And besides, even if you don't call it capitalism, even if you are an "anarcho-capitalist" wacko who wants true capitalism. We can still argue theoretically why thier ideas are completely fucked up and not anarchistic (or whatever). But communism in theory and what is called communism in reality are so different that there is no point.
Re:'almost dictatorial' ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Really a big win in North America? (Score:3, Insightful)
That will just cause people who make decisions for the wrong reasons to shoot themselves in the foot, giving a competitive advantage to others.
Re:An Old Canard . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Your comrade,
Bill Gates
Re:Communists and Stallman (Score:4, Insightful)
The issue is much broader and deeper than "capitalism". Quite seriously, I think that the monkeysphere theory [pointlesswasteoftime.com] explains this better. Regardless of the ideologies at play, when people who don't know each other and don't belong to the same community exchange goods and services, it's common not to worry much about the needs of the other party: each party is considered responsible for themselves. This is human nature, not "capitalism". There may be some relatively wealthy people who have the luxury of worrying about whether people they don't know are or aren't being exploited, but the average person really doesn't have that luxury.
What capitalism does is allow this general indifference to strangers to scale up, if you will: so that by handing over $1.99 for a pack of tube socks at Walmart, I can efficiently exploit child labor (etc.) in a foreign country that I don't know anything about, and unless I have an unusually well-developed conscience, I don't even have to think about it. So the vaunted efficiency of capitalism is also a major flaw: it's efficient, and that efficiency cuts both ways, amplifying the human attitude to people outside their own group (family, town, country, religion...)
These issues are rooted in human nature, and no ideology will overcome that on a large scale. If you want to deal with it, you have to build realistic ways of handling it into whatever system you're using. Neither communism nor capitalism does that.
Re:An Old Canard . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you even know the meaning of socialism? Here it is (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/socialism
"a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole."
This would fit the definition of linux and the GNU, except for the fact that the Free Software foundation is at the top (many people give all of their IP rights to the GNU..as described in the license), so, this fits more in this definition:
"a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state"
Which is communism.
I guess you can decide which one applies to linux, but I feel it is somewhere in-between.
If I buy 2000 machines and put linux on them, will someone buy them for $4 billion? I didn't think so. The purchase for 4 billion had nothing to do with linux. It was more about your customers, IP, and work that was put into the company.
"The GPL has nothing to do with social equality. It's purpose is to ensure that great software will continue to evolve. The main restriction it places on a programmer is that he must ensure his code stays open for others to improve upon. He can sell and profit from writing code, and be as much a capitalist as he wants. The GPL doesn't prevent that in the least."
It's not about social equality, it's about software equality. A business does not want to put thousands of hours into R&D (which costs lots of money), sell a piece of software, and then allow anyone to sell it or give it away for free (without having to put any R&D into it). From this aspect, it does not make sense as a business model. It does, however, if the business selling it is not the original developer or they are using it to somehow save money in licensing fees.
When anyone can do something (or in our case, download it), the value of it starts approaching 0.
Re:Bill Gates has it wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
That said, I don't think that Free Software is about communism or is communistic. But it is still more so then Microsoft software.
A match made in heaven (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:An Old Canard . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
What planet do you live on? Cuba's economy tanked in the late 80s (do to lack of freebies from the former Soviet Union) and it's GDP shrank every year until about 2000, at which time it began to grow again, based entirely on freebies from their socialist buddies in Venezuela. Living off of foreign aid (read charity) is hardly what anyone would call a healthy economy.
Re:OSS is communist? (Score:5, Insightful)
GNU-licensed software is analogous to communism in the same way that public streets, utilities, libraries, and schools are. To avoid effectively being a communist, you should (a) refuse to accept any benefit of civilization unless you're paying full monopoly prices for them, and (b) refuse to contribute anything to society or the public good for which you're not fully and directly compensated. There must be no motivation other than greed.
If you create something of potential value to others, it is wrong to allow them to benefit from it without compensation. If you can't sell it, perhaps because market channels have been monopolized or are inaccessible or inequitable, then the only proper course of action is to destroy it. Wipe your disks and forget about it. If you allow your neighbor to use it, you may be taking money out of the pockets of deserving corporations and their shareholders.
Only then can we stamp out communism and keep the rights to software out of the undeserving hands of those who create it.
Re:An Old Canard . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't know but sib post is perferct example! (Score:4, Insightful)
Capitalism IN Africa is not what is killing its people, but rather the disposition at which capitalism places African nations with little in the form of natural resources to exploit and export.
We, as a wealthy nation, don't bother ourselves with an African nation unless it produces something we want. In fact, we have no problem buying from them, as long as it's cheap and profitable for us (e.g. the monstrous diamond industry). Conversely, if it has nothing to offer us, we couldn't care less even if their illegal government is committing genocide against its own people (e.g. Darfur).
No, that doesn't bother us. What does bother us however, is a crime we didn't care about when happened 30 years ago because at the time ignoring it suited our business interests, but now we do because the dictator who did it wasn't co-operating any more, and was harming our business relationships in the region. I speak of course of Iraq's Saddam Hussein gassing the Kurds 30 years ago. We not only "forgave" him, we propped him up, because he was co-operative and good for our business interests. When he changed his mind, we killed him and took over his country. But I digress...
Now, to bring this tangent back to the original discussion, I think what Stallman is doing is admirable.
He's bringing free software into nations where the average annual income is less than the average monthly income for a minimum wage earner in the United States, sometimes even far less. Does that mean those people should simply be left behind on the technological ladder? If you're a giant corporation, your answer would be yes, because it would keep you at the top. If you're a giant corporation like Microsoft, they're an opportunity. A "gift" of say, 3000 Microsoft Office licenses, looks good on paper, can even be tax deductable, and yet at the same time, in order for the recipient to actually use them, they have to shell out for those Windows licenses. That means, your gift was actually a trojan horse designed to fatten your bottom line.
Stallman however, doesn't have a bottom line, although I'm sure he gets paid for his time. He doesn't make money off software licenses, and he doesn't make money as the shareholder of a major software company. That means he's actually doing this because he believes in it, which is admirable.
While I understand that communism has a bad name, on paper it is a beautiful thing. But only on paper, as it doesn't work when humans are added to the equation. If only we could somehow hold on to the "equal opportunity" part and the "you deserve to get what you need" part of socialism, while throwing away the "you can't have more than that - we will decide what you need" part that has always been added to it where it's been practiced, while at the same time holding on to the "excel if you can" part of capitalism, we'd have a much better world. Of course, I also know that I will never see that world, as it would actually require us to stop being so damn selfish all the time.
Re:Stallman shouldn't be dealing with thugs (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, it's kind of depressing that a non-democratic, repressive government like Cuba's will likely be using Open Source before ours will. I suppose I'm guessing, but I expect that this may be partly because the Cuban government is not as heavily influenced by Microsoft and other lobby groups as are western democracies.
Re:Somewhat (Score:3, Insightful)
USSR, Cuba, and even "communist" China were never good examples of communism. They are all totalitarian states. Yet in America, we call them communism.
The truth is that only decent example of pure communism would be Israeli collectives.
The simple and obvious conclusion is that communism simply doesn't work beyond small, dedicated, voluntary groups. The Marxist ideal of communism supplanting capitalism on any scale larger than "small village" is a crock of shit. I once had a very illuminating conversation with a former hippy commune dweller, who really laid out the folly of universal collectivism. His observation was essentially this:
In the 60's the idea of communes was popular. At a new collective you'd have a fairly representative cross section of work ethics found in general society. At one end of the Bell curve you have the ringleaders, the Competent Idealists. These were the people who truly believed in the commune and usually were the ones who set it up and ran it, despite the supposed pure egalitarianism of the collective. They were the ones working 16-20 hours a day to keep the water running, the food cooking, and generally contributing effort wherever it was needed. Sometimes they'd be bossy dictatorial types, but mostly they were just skilled, energetic idealists who really wanted it to work. The classic "good" hippies who believed in self sufficiency and made their own clothes.
At the other end of the Bell curve you have the Leeches. These were the folks who thought communism meant you didn't have to work hard and that somehow food, clothing, shelter, and drugs would show up of their own accord. These were the "bad hippies", like the ones you used to find following the Dead around the country, living off the handouts of others, the kind of people who could say out loud at a party, without shame, "I've got papers if anyone's got weed".
In between you have the Vast Majority. Most of them were there because it was fashionable and sounded like it might be better than the status quo. They worked reasonably well, even if they weren't terribly skilled, and took direction fairly well from the Competent Idealists.
In the beginning, it worked. The Vast Majority and the Idealists were productive enough to make the inevitable Leeches not be a problem. As time went on, however, members of the Majority began to realize that commune life was not actually easier than life "outside". It was, in fact, more work for somewhat measurably less gain. The Majority, not being as thoroughly dedicated as the Idealists, just didn't get that same sense of satisfaction from living "outside the system". As time went on, the Majority began to shrink as disenchanted members left to get regular jobs that paid decent money and let you live in homes with running water. Eventually, as the Majority dwindled, they were left with a small core of hard working Idealists busting their asses even harder to support a small group of lazy slacker Leeches, while their standard of living continued to decline. At some point, the competent Idealists said "fuck this", and went to work for the EPA, or Greenpeace, or some idealistic org or another that needed competent folks and actually paid money. This left the commune unworkable and the Leeches went off to sell plastic beads to middle class concert goers and cajole others into letting them live in the closet under their stairs.
Now imagine what would happen if there were guards at the edge of the commune, telling the Majority folks "No, you don't leave. You get back to work." Any idealism they may have had is long gone. Clearly their motivation will drop to the lowest common denominator, that of the Leeches. Now, the Leeches work a little harder because of the guards with the guns, but not a whole lot. As a result you have a commune that's 10% hard workers, and 90% clock-punchers doing the bare minimum. This is why communism is doomed to fail (or at least doomed to stagnate) at larger scales. You can't enforce
Re:Corrected Headline: (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it worth pointing out to those policy makers in the US, that if they lifted the trade embargos against Cuba, the influx of new trade, exchange of information, and monetary flow that would inevitably occur would not only result in great improvements in the Cuban economy, but probably a much greater push towards democratic rights for the citizens of Cuba? Look at China, while of course its still under the heal of the most repressive government on earth, capitalism is flourishing there because its essential for the country's growth, and some small freedoms are worming their way into the people's lives. Not much mind you, but some. The exact same thing could be happening in Cuba, if only the US could get its head out of its arse, and realize that while it may wish to actively promote democracy, the way to do so is by encouraging other countries and by example, not by punitively punishing countries because they are different.
Re:An Old Canard . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not surprising. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, Linux is more secure if configured right, however, it's certainly not immune, and the current generation of Windows OS's has narrowed the gap nicely. Your argument might have made some sense back in '98, but today it's really a non-issue.
No, I don't. (Score:3, Insightful)
(This is not to say he dislines - or likes - communism, capitalism or any other ism. My point is that it doesn't matter. What matters is whether he honors the very standards he sets, and this shows that he does so. What's wrong with that?)
Re:Stallman shouldn't be dealing with thugs (Score:3, Insightful)
But what? You have nothing to back up your argument, but you like the idea anyway? A person in the US can read every book on that list if they want.
Funny you bring up DeCSS -- some people in the US have it on t-shirts. Do you think a person in Cuba could get away with wearing an anti-Castro slogan on a shirt?
Re:Mod Parent Down (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not asking him to cure the sick, give money to the poor, clothe the naked, and feed the hungry. I'm simply asking him to be consistent on his message that freedom is good, and I invite him to say so to the government of Cuba & Venezuela. Not congratulate them for valuing freedom, which they clearly do not.
This is not "Yays! Linuxes for the Peoples!" This is "Oh nos! Linuxes for your gulags, re-education centers, and government ministries!" The money the government saved will only be plowed right back into the pockets of the governors, or into finding new & creative ways to persecute dissidents & clamp down on "dangerous" freedoms. Or did you really think that the students at the state-run, state-controlled universities will be allowed complete freedom to set up a Cuban version of MySpace where dissidents can meet, plan, and disseminate their ideas?
And, also for the record, is there a single person here on Slashdot who really believes that the governments of Cuba & Venezuela would bat an eyelash about violating the spirit, letter, sanctity, and pure white virginity of the GPL if they thought it would somehow benefit them and give them greater control?
Re:Stallman shouldn't be dealing with thugs (Score:1, Insightful)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hKz4QgVQBHI [youtube.com]
Re:What a load of crap (Score:3, Insightful)
How about the house or apartment you're in? Pretty nice, how it's all well-built with construction materials and designed by some house manufacturing company. THANKS, CAPITALISM.
And the car you drive to work or school? That thing has an advanced combustion engine built by friggin' robots! THANKS, CAPITALISM.
Just checking... is there any argument lurking in here, or are you just pretending that capitalism is wholly responsible for anything and everything inside a capitalist state?
You like the clothes you're wearing? I bet they're pretty nice clothes. THANKS, CAPITALISM.
"It's your great nation that makes our happy meals possible."
So, it appears that supposed "blind luck" and those "craptacular market failures" are doing pretty well, at least to better your life.
Some of them, yes. I guess that means... nothing really whatsoever?
The real reason lefties love communism is because it puts all the power into the government's hands.
Oh, here it is. The classic "pardon me while I assign arbitrary preferences and motives to my opponents" style of argument. So let's get ridiculous. I'm sure you're right, the reason "lefties" want to regulate the market is solely to consolidate power in the hands of corruptable/incompetent government, in the barely whispered hope that some power-mongering dictator will abuse/misuse that power and make everyone's life worse. Yup, you've really hit the nail on the head. I'm sure none of them advocate it as a lesser of two evils, or see fundamental problems with the tendency of capital to get extremely lumpy if left untended, or care about the difference between partially transparent and nearly opaque organizations, or think that it's unethical to trade with rampant human rights violators, or think that a truly free market can act as a Petri dish for evolving new, effective ways to dump your costs on others. No, my fellow lefties and I love government regulation of the market because the market is the One True Enemy, Responsible for All Evils. Only by indulging in our basest fantasy (a giant flowchart that plans out the entire economy, perfectly, all the time) do we see the true path to freedom: slavery.
So we advocate public spending on research on the hopes that the government will research enough Big Brother tech to finally live our lives for us, not because we think the market (especially in some countries) is often myopic. We want universal health care to drive up costs and drive down quality, so we can gum up the extraordinarily successful private system we've got right now. We want better minimum wage to make it harder to own a small business, because it obviously doesn't benefit the workers anyway.
Instead of the people regulating their market as consumers
Oh yeah, us consumers are really sharp when it comes to that. We buy brand-name, chemically-identical-at-a-higher-price aspirin, because we saw a picture of it on television (which, of course, cost money to produce). We're all smart enough to know that getting the best deal is enough to regulate a free market (unless we saw an ad, but... cut us some slack, it was on TV!), and don't have to worry about corporate ethics. The modern, savvy consumer: a model of informed, responsible participation in a free market.
Re:Corrected Headline: (Score:1, Insightful)