[Gnu-arch-users] Re: Exploitation defined [was: top posting and flame]

[Thomas Lord]

Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
>     Thomas> * "ex-ploit (v): to make use of selfishly or unethically" [1]
>
> Note carefully the disjunction.  Selfish behavior my be ethical.
>   
Note carefully the English language.   That use of "or" indicates an 
elaboration, not a
logical disjunction.   As in, "Elvis Presley *or* `The King' as he is 
known to some fans..."

The ethical greediness of which you speak is given in a separate 
definition in the
same dictionary entry.   I spoke to that other meaning in the second 
half of the
post you are replying to.

> Exploitation may be merely selfish.  (And unethical behavior may be
> selfless.  Chew on that one for a bit.)
>
>   
Always good to publicly rehearse the bleeding obvious, I guess.


> Don't you realize that everything you stand for is about exploitation
> in that selfish but ethical sense?  Does Tom have software I can use?
> I'll just take it.  "tla get ...".  Mark?  "apt-get ...".  Linus?
> "git fetch ...".  Slurp, slurp, slurp.  Getting down and dirty,
> compared to what you have received, what have you contributed?  Not
> much.  Maybe rms can say "one hell of a lot."  Maybe.  But who else?
>
>   
All correct except for "everything".   The second half of the post you are
replying to speaks to what you are calling "ethical selfishness" (and what I
would call "ethical gathering" or something like that to avoid the confusion
you are riffing on).   (Not a bad riff though.  Illusion of paradox is a 
good way
to highlight certain things.)

> Mark Shuttleworth is paying some people to do what they want to do
> more than anything else in the world---write software.  Is there
> something wrong with that?  It's a shame that you're not among them,
> but that's by your own choice.  (Please don't rebut that here, do it
> below at "SXEmacs".)  So what if he uses software that he doesn't give
> back to as the author wants him to?  Who does, to *every* *single*
> *author* whose code he uses?  The question is, are there
> *pay-forwards*?  The jury's still out on Mr. S.
>
>   
Circumstances vary and it is in their particularities that we find 
opportunity
for ethical choices.   At the level of abstraction you are speaking, 
there are
no reliable consequences for behavior (of note) and so no ethical question.
That same level of abstraction may be the basis of a predictive economic
model but, given a shift in shared consciousness, so would a different,
equally economically valid model that yielded different conclusions.


> I have to admit that I'm with Andrew where he says that Canonical
> presenting itself as a warm fuzzy friend of free software doesn't sit
> well with me.  Canonical is a business, they are going to (mostly)
> contribute to FLOSS where they think it will do them good, and even
> their charitable contributions will be calculated for PR effect.  You
> can live well in a "lifestyle business," where you *are* friendly with
> your customers, suppliers, and rivals, but to get as rich as Mr. S,
> you *must* depersonalize your customers (at least).  Big business is
> nobody's friend.
>
> But it's not anybody's enemy, either.  It's just business.
>
>   
The particularities of business design -- their effects on the world -- 
involve
choices to which ethics is relevant.   You can't brush aside ethical 
obligations
by saying "It's just a business."    What you *can* do with economics is to
model businesses and make good predictions about economic outcomes.
If one wants an ethical business it would be foolish to ignore economic 
theory --
as many dead company attempts have shown.   You overreach, though, when
you relieve corporate decision makers of ethical responsibility on the 
grounds
that the institutions they decide for are subject to economic 
analysis.   Economics
discovers degrees of freedom within which moral choices can be made.



> As I once pointed out to a truly clueless person on FSB, even the
> Internet doesn't make it feasible to treat all 6x10^9+ humans on the
> planet as individuals.  You *must* choose your friends as a miniscule
> subset of all individuals.  Business is about cooperating with all the
> rest, *all* the rest, including billions of individuals whose names
> you will never know, let alone greet.
>
>   
I won't be surprised if you say that *I* was that clueless person and, 
without
wishing to blame you for remaining cluelessness, I would like to believe 
I've
learned a bit from your posts, interactions, and on-line class notes.

That aside, yes, your statement is roughly true.  Business designers 
have a lot
of degrees of freedom and each faces individual circumstances.  There's no
need to go making blanket assertions about their morality in-general.  
It's quite
alright to expect them to each face up to their particular and 
individual circumstances.


> That doesn't mean I think Mr. S's behavior is ethical, let alone good.
> It means I don't know.  I haven't seen him lie, cheat, or steal.  I
> see a rather deflated project, but there is more than one cause
> apparent, and it's unclear which are most important.  There are plenty
> of unethical businessmen, perhaps more so among the rich ones than
> otherwise (though that's not clear); I don't know that Mr. S *isn't*
> one.  I just don't know yet.
>
>   
I presume not.  I mean -- I honestly presume he isn't an ass.  Really.

Why?  Well, it's obscure.   He travels in the same circles as other 
people I'm
pretty darn sure aren't asses.   Some of what he writes from a personal 
perspective
is pretty suggestive.   People I respect, respect him.

What we have here, I think, is a failure to communicate.


> You may be in a position to know.  But I don't know that either.
>
>   
Nope.  My guess is as good as yrs.  I think the Canonical business design
is blowing it badly.   I suspect the man himself is a decent sorta bloke.

> The only thing I do believe is that you will be happier and more
> productive if you "just get over it", and figure out how to deal with
> the world as it is.
>   
As opposed to?  This is the world as it is:  I have time and incentive 
to think about
and comment on these things.  

      "I am thinking about these things.
        Because when I do my job,
        that is what I think about."
                                 -- Laurie Anderson



>     Thomas>   1. I claim that the behavior of Canonical's agents
>     Thomas> caused unjust harm to me personally and to a public
>     Thomas> project.
>
> It is unjust, slightly, but it's nothing to jump off a bridge over.
>   
I think I'm mostly over my bridge-jumping impulses for the moment.   
Interesting
that someone with such a "happy dog" temperment as I have found himself in
that space.

> But "public project" is whitewash, unbecoming of you.  It's Tom Lord's
> Arch, no more and no less.  The public has *never* had any input,
> except to the extent that you "channeled" the public good.  Your
> buddies do, true, but they're not "the public" as a group any more
> than you are as an individual.
>   
Whatever you want to say about my ego involvement or control-freak approach
to design questions, it was largely funded by the public.   Intended as 
and funded
as a public project -- I think it qualifies as such.

>     Thomas>   2. I claim that there is more to a free software project
>     Thomas> than simply the sequence of tar-bundles containing source
>     Thomas> code releases.
>
> I most certainly agree!  In fact, I really don't much care about the
> tar bundles.  My argument (as of others) is that you are in no
> position to say anyone else harmed the Arch *project* more than you
> have, by your inattention and wilfulness.
>
>   
I either resent or resemble that remark.  I guess it's a question for 
the ages.
At a certain point I did stop working 60hrs/wk.   Family first, and all.


> You have done very little to "grow" this project beyond providing most
> of the design and the code, and integrate contributions from people
> who have stature in the community in their own right, and have long
> since learned to deal with cantankerous project leaders.  It's not an
> accident that a former denizen of debian-legal and two senior GNU
> Emacs developers are long time regular contributors to Arch, while
> less "robust" personalities have gone elsewhere to get their jollies
> (and get their features in).
>
>   
That is a choice, actually.   I don't think there is much value to this 
or any other
project if grown by ESR-ish formulas in the popularity contest game.   
In fact,
I consider to grow projects that way is exploitative of hoi poloi.  In 
fact, ...well,
I guess I've said enough for now about bazaar.


> Haven't you been concentrating on the tar bundles, too?
>
>     Thomas>   Aside: "Always motivate from the positive," is the
>     Thomas> wisest sales and marketing advice (and among the wisest
>     Thomas> general life advice) I've ever heard.  Well, there is
>     Thomas> figure and ground, no?  Can not one emphasize the figure
>     Thomas> (the positive) by darkening the ground?
>
> No.  You see, it's the complaint that is the ground---you darken
> yourself, and lighten that which you complain about.
>
>   
We'll see.   Not all feedback is what you see on the list.   In some 
ways I am
a quite patient person.

>     Thomas> * "ex-ploit (v): to employ to the greatest possible
>     Thomas> advantage; utilize" [1]
>
>     Thomas>   You start burbling about "*previously released*
>     Thomas> software" and I am disappointed to find you stuck in an
>     Thomas> overly simplistic economic model.
>
> No, I simply don't see that there was a project to destroy.  The
> people who left were in Arch only because it was the only frog in the
> pond big enough to jump to the next lily pad.  As soon as the
> Canonical bullfrog showed up, though, they jumped with it.  (In
> support of this interpretation, note that there are plenty of others
> who chose to jump with Git, or Darcs, although they didn't even get
> paid to do so.)
>
>   
I don't see why you preface an otherwise fine comment with "No".

Yeah, inciting that frog-jumping behavior is another way to express my
same-old-same-old say-it-again-and-again ten-different-ways-from-tuesday
beef with, not *only* Canonical but a lot of other stuff.


> Folks like Andy Tai, Stefan Monnier, Miles Bader, Alfred Szmidt, et al
> are still with GNU Arch, and they contribute like the mature adults
> they were when they came to Arch, but in limited roles.  Andy picked
> up an important leadership role in project management, but there's
> nobody who is ready for the role of architect or even CTO.  So the
> project is in a holding pattern, but not obliterated by any means.
>
>   
Pretty much agree.   (Well, if there's an imputation there I disagree 
with *that*
but the literal statement -- isn't that part of what I've been saying?)

> Some of the people who jumped to Canonical have perceptibly grown in
> that context, in ways that weren't possible for them in Arch.  I'm
> not faulting; I'm saying that there was growth as well as destruction.
>
>   
Absolutely agree.   I'd be happy to help suck out the poison that came 
with the
milk but, again, on literal face value, you are right.

> Cf. XEmacs vs. SXEmacs for a fairly exactly analogy, minus the
> commercial interest.  I think you know Steve Youngs, ask him about it.
> I'm too close to it all to arrogantly say, "he's grown," but he's
> undoubtedly happier, and much more productive, in SXEmacs than he was
> in XEmacs.[1]  As much as I wish he was working "for" us, it has proved
> out that he did good to fork, and he handled the fork very well.  The
> fact is that XEmacs has not made much progress since then.  But that
> isn't Steve's fault in any way, nor that of any of his collaborators.
>
> Note the quotes around "for".  I don't value the work he and his
> collaborators have done very much (by which I mean I've tried SXEmacs,
> and I wouldn't use the new features they've introduced at all often).
> I wish he were doing what I and my colleagues want done.  Nothing
> wrong with wishing, of course, but it must stop there.  Were he to be
> working "for" us, doing what we think is important, he would be
> subordinating his values.  We would be peonizing him.  No wonder he
> was less happy in XEmacs!  Sometimes that kind of constraint is worth
> bearing, of course, but it's *his* place to decide.
>
> Isn't that true of the Canonical hackers, too?  Even if money is part
> of their motivation, so what?  And isn't that true of you?  You're
> *not* in Canonical because that would be subordinating your values,
> making yourself a peon.  Good for you, standing up for your values!
>
>   
It's worth a little sweat to cultivate the land you graze.  That's all 
I'm sayin'.



> But that doesn't reflect on Mr. S at all that I can see; it's no more
> his obligation to compromise than it is yours.
>   
One of the things I truly like (from afar) about Mr. S is that he seems 
to genuinely and in
a heartfelt way recognize that his privileged station in life comes with 
plenty 'o
obligations.    He ain't a 19th century robber baron (at least in 
intention), not by
any means.

I think his behavior re all this is foolish.   His crew gave in to 
malicious instinct
(perhaps even unconsciously so).  Comparing that to *the man* -- no, 
this mess
is a tragedy all around.


>     Thomas>   Having recognized that he obtained value for what I had
>     Thomas> already done, in my project, Mark would have simply been
>     Thomas> *wise* to bet *for* *rather than invest against* my
>     Thomas> *future work*.
>
> Not the project, Mr. S got value from the tarball.  That's what free
> software per se is about, use of software without obligation to
> owners.
>   
Nope.   Not just the tarball.   Otherwise we'd have never heard from any
of them.   Not that never hearing from any of them would have been a
great outcome either -- just that in the form we did hear from them.... 
no. bogus.


> I'm not surprised he didn't perceive future value from a project run
> by you; his goals are very different from yours.  It would have been
> charitable of him to invest in your future work, but it would likely
> be a losing bet, because he's going to be able to use it anyway.
>   
We never got far in that conversation.   Mutual loss.

> While any additional value you produce in terms of unforeseen types of
> software is likely to be balanced by your disruptive effects on the
> business.
>
>   
Labeling what had been objectively rare productivity "disruptive" 
because the
effete value system of a certain subset of elites didn't know how to 
cope with the
form it took is the stuff that creates class distinctions and class warfare.

>     Thomas>   No, no -- the ethical principal in my family is that
>     Thomas> yes, you *may* respect the *expertise* but *certainly* you
>     Thomas> must respect the *man*.
>
> I didn't say otherwise.  Making an offer you can't accept is a rather
> mild form of disrespect, though.  Ask any Turk.
>   
I am hardly the most oppressed person on the planet.   I am oppressed, 
though, and in
ways that would once have been (*might* still be) rather trivial to 
relieve.   And as
someone generally sensitive to and active against oppression -- 
wouldn't/won't be a
bad place to make a leveraged investment.

> In any case, you show nothing but disrespect for others in practically
> every sentence you post on this subject.  You've argued before that
> when you think something is unethical, you are bound to say so.
> Perhaps, but your normal mode is disrespectful in itself, as you label
> *people* and their organizations, not their *actions*, as unethical.
> You've been asked many times over many months to describe exactly what
> is so unethical, and you've finally answered.
>
>   
I don't think that that's particularly correct.

> You've never paid any respect to others' needs, either.  Rather, you
> tell them that their perceived needs are bogus, and that they'd be
> much better off adopting your work habits.  Well, maybe, but that's
> frankness, not respect.
>
>   
Go ahead, get it out of your system.  Lemme know when you've calmed down.

> Nor to others' work.  What price respecting *man* if you treat the
> ideas of those "without expertise" like shit?  People have this habit
> of identifying themselves with their product, you know.
>
>   
"Not coddling" is not the same as "treating like shit."   Quite the 
opposite, actually.

> So it's hard for me, at least, to get too upset.  You'd be much more
> plausible if you put harm to the *whole* free software community
> first, as Andrew does, rather than spilling so many bits discussing
> how much harm has been done to the Arch project and you, and how dumb
> everybody opposing your proposals is.
>
>   
The whole is made of particulars.   I happen to have this vantage point on
some particulars.   Interpolation such as Andrew's is quite logical.

>     Stephen> Oh, come on.  "Software is forever."
>
>     Thomas>   Nonsense.  Sheer, utter, nonsense.  Well... most of the
>     Thomas> time.  Nearly all of the time.  With some exceptions.  In
>     Thomas> theory.  Maybe.
>
> Nonsense?  Never.
>
> Projects, as you point out, are fragile.  Software is forever.
>
>                "GNU Arch is dead!  Long live GNU Arch!"
>
>
>   
Bits rot.   Bits are leaves falling from a tree.   Projects can have life.
King's die.  Royal institutions live.

Long live the king.


Regards,
-t