Re: [gNewSense-users] Re: Freedom and webapps

[Ciaran O'Riordan]

"Dave Crossland" <address@hidden> writes:
> I am proposing that this is a practical problem, not an ethical one.
> Please explain the ethical dimension of this.

If the user accepts a binary without source code, they have given up their
individual freedom to help themself, and they have broken the solidarity for
the whole user community to help each other.

A binary is a temptation to give up that freedom and break that solidarity.

So the user loses the ability to protect their other rights such as their
right to privacy, and society loses the ability to control the general
direction of software progress and to decide how software should treat
society.


Saying that software is purely practical is like saying that the news in our
newspapers is purely practical (it's just information, right?), but everyone
can see the ethical aspects of freedom of the press.

-- 
Ciarán O'Riordan __________________ \ http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3
http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ _________ \  GPLv3 and other work supported by
http://fsfe.org/fellows/ciaran/weblog \   Fellowship: http://www.fsfe.org