Re: OT: Apple stealing "Lily"

[Tim McNamara]

> On May 6, 2017, at 3:47 AM, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> Robert Schmaus <address@hidden> writes:
> 
>>> Please cool down and stop overreacting.
>> 
>> 
>> Well your statement, which - very possibly without any bad intention - 
>> turned around the historical facts, so admirably matched that notion
>> that occasionally pops up also on this list ... namely that notion
>> that everything proprietary is an attack on one's freedom. And that
>> *is* paranoid.

Stallman, Lessig and the EFF all trend in that direction.  There is a tendency 
to try to keep the notions to computer code, but there are much larger 
implications to the foundational notions.  And sadly a certain amount of 
paranoia is called for in the modern information society:  who has your 
information and what they intend to do with it are salient questions for 
everyone.  I use Apple products because I find them practically superior to 
other options, but I do not trust Apple (or Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc.)- 
they have their interests at heart, not mine.  As a result I take what steps I 
can to protect myself and my information.  Linux creates different risks, 
mainly mitigated by the ultra-tiny market share, as well as a number of 
practical problems that I do not have the time or skills to solve.  While I am 
sympathetic to Stallman’s and Lessig’s notions, they are not without problems.

> Uh, no.  That is the _definition_ of "proprietary": being not at liberty
> for the taking.  That does not preclude putting the respective
> consequences into proper relation to one's own personal standards and
> aims.

This is ultimately questioning whether ownership of anything is moral, when 
taken to the logical conclusion.  If something (whether real or conceptual) is 
owned by someone then it is proprietary:  my house, my bank account, my car, my 
guitars and amps, the music I have composed and recorded/published, etc.  
Otherwise we end up proposing that only certain classes or types of property 
should be exempt from ownership, which becomes mired the very sticky set of 
laws that govern copyright, patents* and trademark.  That is a rather larger 
issue than is perhaps apropos for the Lilypond mailing list, I think…  Most 
Americans and probably most people around the world consider their right to 
ownership to be part of their liberty and not an infringement of liberty.

*FWIW, the US government has had a law on the books since I think 1910 that 
allows it to claim ownership- without compensation- of the subject of any 
patent, if it is for the “public good”- an extension of eminent domain into 
so-called “intellectual property."  It has been used to circumvent the cost of 
proprietary patented medications, for example, and may soon be used again in 
the state of Louisiana for treating hepatitis C.  The current 12 week course of 
treatment costs $84,000 and Louisiana is looking to cut those costs 
dramatically to be able to afford to treat the thousands of its citizens on 
public health benefits.  At the current prices, treating those patients alone 
would bankrupt the state; not treating them causes significant long-term health 
risks which are in turn expensive for the state and its taxpayers.  Whether 
doing this increases or decreases liberty is an interesting question.