Re: [security-discuss] Freedom 0: the utilitarian vs. the deontologist (was: gnuradio..)

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > > You have misunderstood freedom 0.  Freedom 0 means the program does
  > > not impose limits on how you are allowed to use it.  Whether it does
  > > what you want in any given situation is another question.

  > You might want to change the language of freedom 0 to match what
  > you're saying above.

I don't see a reason for a change.  They already match as far
as I can see.

    > scenario 2) GCC is inherently capable of Lisp compilation because
    >             all the working machinery for that is already there for
    >             whatever reason.  But there is a line of code saying "if
    >             lisp_code_found then abort".

Freedom 0 has nothing to do with this.  The freedoms that are
pertinent here are freedom 1, the freedom to delete that line, and
freedom 3, the freedom to redistribute that modified version.

  > In the case of GNU Radio Foundation, Inc., freedom 1 is useless for
  > changing the code that executes on the server of CloudFlare,
  > Inc. which discriminately blocks some users from reaching the
  > documentation.

Even if that program is free software, that is CloudFlare's copy, not
yours or mine.  We have no right to change the code in CloudFlare's
server, just as CloudFlare has no right to change the copies of free
software that we run on our servers.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/network-services-arent-free-or-nonfree.html
may help clarify this.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.