Re: fork, trivial confinement, constructor

[Marcus Brinkmann]

At Wed, 14 Jun 2006 07:33:35 -0400,
"Jonathan S. Shapiro" <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 2006-06-14 at 12:59 +0200, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> > My position is that the encapsulated constructor mechanism is a
> > security threat, because it attacks user freedom.  My arguments for
> > this position have been carefully laid out in "Ownership and
> > Contracts", and have not been challenged yet.  Jonathan disagrees, but
> > his disagreement at this point is just dismissal of the concerns and
> > goals.
> 
> Excuse me, but this is untrue. I do not share your goals. I disagree
> with them quite strongly. That is not the same thing as "dismissing"
> them. To "dismiss" them would imply disrespect or unwillingness to
> understand. I understand quite well what you are trying to achieve. I do
> not agree. However, I respect what you are attempting.

Ok, so you disagree with them strongly.  But you do not articulate
your disagreement with respect to my arguments.  You have not rebutted
my analysis or any parts of its evaluation.  Your broader disagreement
with my goals is likewise left unarticulated and in essence
unsubstantiated.  Nevertheless, you don't stop attacking me for them.
What is that supposed to achieve?

> If you succeed, I think there is a chance that you will destroy (or at
> least severely damage) the incentive structures that have driven
> creative process since the beginning of recorded history.

Please explain what you consider to be "the incentive structures that
have driven the creative process since the beginning of recorded
history."  I want to understand your position, and, more importantly,
see the evidence you are basing it on.  So far you have only offered
opinion, hearsay and anecdotes.  That's not sufficient to make your
case.

> It is possible
> that what you advocate will be better, but it is by no means certain.
> You are engaged in an irreversible experiment with no control population
> and no ability to reverse course if you are wrong. This is not your
> fault; it is an inevitable consequence of attempting social change
> within a closed social system. Whether your ideology is correct or not,
> *any* experiment of this form is intrinsically dangerous, and must be
> watched carefully. Certainly it must not be dismissed.

My point of view is quite different.  In my opinion, the experiment
was the proprietarization of bits, and it has already happened.  For
example, for music, it started in 1877 with the wax cylinder and ended
with bumps on a tin-foil in a plastic disk.  Society has, in this case
as in many others where totalitarian monopolies on information where
suggested, rejected the experiment.  In the context of digital
information, I am just supporting social change that has already
happened.

BTW, I think it is quite easy to see that my system structure allows
to implement Unix as well as Windows on top of it, without taking
anything away (this is of course the case because neither system
properly accounts for the resources used in the system).  This covers
the vast majority of general purpose computer systems currently in
use.  To frame my position as extraordinary looks to me like a
dishonest attempt to put me into a corner.  However, more likely is
that you are (again) confusing my ideology with what I actually want
to put into practice, something that you have done repeatedly over the
course of the discussion.

To make this very clear: I do not agree with your characterization of
my system design proposal as "an experiment" (with society).  To
support your claim, you should explain what substantial social change
my system design (as opposed to my ideology) propagates.

However, I do agree that you are doing an experiment.  The tragedy of
your experiment is that it comes way too late.  Society has already
progressed beyond a simplistic view on information control.  Any
attempt to enforce totalitarian control over information is a
reactionary grasp at a straw to extort more money from the system
before it finally blows up completely.

Thanks,
Marcus