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Re: [security-discuss] Freedom 0: the utilitarian vs. the deontologist


From: Nomen Nescio
Subject: Re: [security-discuss] Freedom 0: the utilitarian vs. the deontologist
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2017 15:37:58 +0100 (CET)

Mike Gerwitz said:

> >> In the early days of GNU, you'd request a physical copy via mail.
> >
> > That wasn't discriminatory.  They didn't say liberals had to go
> > through those hoops, while registered republicans could download
> > it, for example.
> 
> That's not a proper comparison.

It's not a comparison.  If the whole public is given the same
mechanism and same access, it's not discrimination.  How is this
unclear?

If you divide the community, and give different (and unequal)
treatment to different groups, how is that not discrimination,
particularly when none of of the groups are wholly malicious?

> If I were flooded with requests from some address beacuse they were
> proxying them from around the world, I might very well request that
> the post office return them to the sender rather than deliver them
> to me.

Without more detail it cannot be judged whether your hypothetical case
above is discrimination (which has at least 3 different definitions).
If I give you the benefit of saying you're not trying to exploit
equivocation, then the claim above may or may not be similar to the
discrimination against Tor users by GNU Radio Foundation, Inc.  If you
were needlessly refusing legitimate mail based on some foolish
criteria like whether it passed through a particular post office (one
that is not itself malicious), then your analogy would resemble the
problem.

If the mail is proxied by the classic postal junk mailer (pre-Internet
mailing lists of the 1970s) service, then it really is 100% malicious,
in which case blocking them is not discrimination by the same
definition of "discrimination" (which is /to discern/).  That variety
of discrimination does not resemble what GNU Radio Foundation, Inc. is
doing.

As you try to tune your hopeless analogy, the closer it gets to
malicious discrimination with needless collateral damage that impacts
legit users, the more it resembles what GRFI is doing.  The more
removed it gets from that, the more of a false analogy it becomes.

> >> You can send me an e-mail and I'll send you a copy.  You can mail
> >> me some writable media with postage and I'll mail it back with a
> >> copy, and maybe throw in some other GNU software as a bonus.
> >
> > Are you willing to repackage the website-hosted documentation that
> > is excluded from the git-downloadable package?  Would you mind
> > doing that periodically, since the web-published content changes?
> > If someone wants to edit the gnuradio wiki, can they send you
> > update instructions?
> 
> None of that is relevant.

Of course it is.  Quite simply, if you're not going to solve the
problem, your offer is empty and the problem remains.

> Your freedoms apply only to the software you receive.  It provides
> no guarantee that you'll ever get an up to date version of the
> software.

You're talking about the rights inherent in gnuradio as a free
software package.  That's actually irrelevant to the claim of GNU
Radio Foundation, Inc. violating the freedom 0 principle, exclusively.
No one has said "the gnuradio software is non-free", yet this is what
you're addressing.

More precisely, you've just used a fallacy of composition.  That is,
freedom 0 is a criteria for determining whether an application gets
the "free software" badge of approval.  You're trying to reverse that,
and take criteria outside of the text of freedom 0 (the application
thereof) and inject it into freedom 0 (so as to limit it).  That is a
fallacy of composition.

It's also immediately evident that you're not understanding the
problem I've described when you start with "Your freedoms apply..."
The word /apply/ signals that you think the discussion is over
freedoms that are guaranteed in some way (e.g. by a license).

When a company goes against a philosophical principle, it's not
necessarily legally actionable.  It can be simply nothing more than a
failure to embrace a philosophical principle.  And this is the case
here.  The freedom 0 *principle* that GNU Radio Foundation,
Inc. undermines is *not* license non-compliance.  (if it were, I would
have titled it as such).

> > Whether you realize it or not, your comments attempt to support a
> > precedent that will make it easy for more GNU projects to become
> > exclusive clubs in walled-gardens, while at the same time
> > accepting charitable contributions of code and money from the
> > public relies on them.
> 
> I explicitly stated otherwise.

If you mean your statement claiming to have a reverse bias, that was
fallacious and without impact.  Your arguments have the opposite
effect.

> > RMS has clarified *his stance*.  It's important to realize that he is
> > not defending user freedom, but rather the GNU project that has become
> > freedom-hostile, for which FSF is responsible.
> 
> This thread has been quoting the free software definition---the four
> freedoms---that he himself wrote.  "His stance" _is_ the definition.

That's nonsense.  Freedom 0 was written decades ago.  His statements
today are his stance today, inspired by the sudden motivation to
defend GRFI.  Your appeal to authority fallacy has been called out.

> > Clarity on the status quo is only useful to the extent that we
> > realize what must change to restore and retain the public trust
> > amid new threats that control people who (quite rightly) don't
> > want to be controlled.  What is clear is that we've not yet
> > reached that level of clarity on the problem as a whole.
> 
> Yes, but let's not misattribute.

You can obviously scroll up to see who is talking about the legally
binding aspect of freedom 0 to see where clarity is missing.  It's not
legal application or obligations that's at issue with freedom 0, and
you've muddied the waters by bringing it up.

> >> If the disagreement is the use of CloudFlare, talk about CloudFlare.
> >> It isn't a software freedom issue.
> >
> > CloudFlare is the instrument by which software freedom 0 and a long
> > list of civil liberties are being denied.  It's also the instrument by
> > which security is compromised.
> 
> I don't feel at this point that anyone here is going to convince you
> that Freedom 0 cannot possibly be violated in this circumstance.

This is because you've limited yourself strictly to the legal
application of freedom 0, and skipped the high-level philosophical
principle.  This viewpoint neglects to see the forest for the trees.

--
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