Libertarianism and what is being called liberalism by some is not the same thing. There is a movement afoot by what, in the past, was called socialism. Now it is disguised as liberalism, but it is the same thing. Government intervention to create an ideal society. Libertarianism (and anarchy) says that creation of a free society requires the least government intervention possible, or, preferably, none. This is truly liberal today because the standard assumption of modern politics in the western world is that government can, and should, promulgate regulation and law to provide an appropriate society for the citizens. In fact, I see little to no difference between American Democrats and Republicans in this arena. Both would make government bigger and remove freedoms and individual choices, just in different ways and areas. But if my choice is one evil and another, I choose neither. The changes in the Republican party are unfortunate. At one time the party stood for smaller government, less intervention, less regulation, less law. Today that is no longer true.

Skilled labor is based on ability AND experience, not just one or the other. A capable firefighter holds certain skills and physical and mental abilities that I don't. On the other hand, when I was a sergeant in the Army I had certain skills and mental and physical abilities that firefighter does not have. Every individual is unique and different and to not value the individuals skills and physical abilities is to remove their individuality. Whether this is a goal of the new socialism or not, it is an end product of it. A product's value is determined by the value of the material, the skill involved in creating it, and the market demand for the product. Marxist/Socialist views would like to remove the factor of skill and market demand. There is no need to debate whether this is theoretically better or not. Command economies like Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Soviet Russia all failed in the 20th century because market forces and individual freedom are, and have been throughout human history, the drivers of society and progress.

Finally, I think it can be argued that the GPL is Libertarian in nature. The GPL removes the restrictions and barriers on what we do with software that are created by governments and businesses. It provides me with the freedom to do as I will with the software, provided I redistribute my changes to others. The Free Software movement is not about "free as in beer" software, but "free as in speech" software. Open software that I am free to investigate, modify and use as I see fit, although I may well have to pay for it. The founder of the movement had no qualms about charging people for his software, but it was their choice whether to pay for it or not, since there were other ways to acquire the software. That's not socialism, that's choice. The only way to make the GPL and free software work is with open source code, so that's not socialism either. In fact, since these things drive more freedom for the individual and less control for the government or business they are Libertarian.

Isn't it funny how:

• How if we do something in the U.S. a bit differently from how it's done somewhere else in the world (especially Europe) we in the U.S. are "doing it wrong"?
• How the fact that data centers are still dominated by Unix and RISC is because of the "hegemony of Sun"?
• Wintel dominance of small-medium business and desktop computing is because their technology is "new and improved" NOT because Microsoft is a monopoly?
• People read half your post and then attack without reading the other half?
• People write such inane crap in their journals and blogs? ;-)

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