Re: [security-discuss] gnuradio project DoS attacks GNU wget users

[Anonymous]

Alfred M. Szmidt said:

>    > By the same logic, I am being refused by the GNU project and the FSF
>    > to install free software on a PDP-10 since they are not providing me
>    > with MLDEV access, or DECtapes.
> 
>    You can't reject a real use-case with a hypothetical use-case.
> 
> Funny enough, it isn't hypothetical.

Being unrealistic isn't the only problem with your analogy.  It's
actually a fallacy (the false analogy variety), which means it's not
even an argument.

Jean Louis quoted the GNU guideline:

  "it is ok to use another server if you wish, provided it allows
   access from the general public without limitation (for instance,
   without excluding any country)."

and said:

JL> That way, I am limited, when using wget, and wrong Tor exit
JL> (hypothetically) to access the software. It is a clear limitation.

The GNU guideline condemned the variety of limitation that is
artificially imposed, whereby the capability would be there in the
absence of blocking actions resulting from a limitation that is
proactively constructed.  As Jean Louis suggests, the scenario of
using wget over Tor is a limitation, and it happens to be exactly the
same kind of limitation (IP-based discrimination).  People are being
excluded, and an effort has been made to carry out that exclusion.

Your PDP-10 analogy is not a constructed limitation (as an IP
treatment policy is), it's actually a "limitation" due to someone else
not doing some work for you, which makes it so perversely different as
to only harm your position.  This false analogy clearly puts
desperation on display.

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