Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Freedom is not merely choice

[Michał 'rysiek' Woźniak]

Dnia środa, 16 maja 2012 o 01:23:58 Mark Holmquist napisał(a):
> On 12-05-15 03:55 PM, Michel Van Eeckhout wrote:
> > I think that people can play with words and twist some of the
> > meaning, but what is important here is not choices imposed by
> > others, but my own choice, which is what I understand from
> > Richard-qbiciii 's post.  In the case of the browsers on Windows
> > ARM, my choice might not even be available, artificially,
> > because of proprietary choices to limit users. To really be able
> > to even have a true personal choice, I think you necessarily
> > need to have the freedom to run whatever you like and modify the
> > system itself if that is the limiting component.  If you don't
> > have that, you don't have true choice.
> 
> I think a large part of the issue many of us have with this "choice
> === freedom" definition is that, using your example scenario here,
> you could still wind up limiting yourself unduly. The most
> important thing that indicates that is the sentence

Precisely!

> > you necessarily need to have the freedom to run whatever you like
> > and modify the system itself if that is the limiting component.
> 
> The "if" at the end of that sentence is not acceptable, because if
> the system is *not* a limiting component, you don't require the
> ability to modify the system itself. After that requirement is
> removed, a pure "more choice is better" strategy will choose the
> operating system that has the greatest number of possible browser
> choices--possibly Windows or Mac OS X, or maybe even another
> non-free system.

Yes. That's the problem.

> By contrast, a "more freedom is better" strategy will notice that
> there is very little freedom in these systems, and choose the OS
> that allows maximal freedom, even with fewer choices. In practice,
> that user might have fewer choices when they start, but as time
> goes on, their choices increase to infinity, because they can
> create their own browsers or modify other projects, and do the
> same with every piece of software on the system.

Yes. It's hard, however, to get general public to understand, or 
rather: "feel" this. I think we need to seriously work on creating a 
clear message why freedom != choice.

> (sorry about the off-list duplicate, Michel, this email client
> doesn't seem to have figured out mailing lists yet)

Cheers.

-- 
Pozdrawiam
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak

Fundacja Wolnego i Otwartego Oprogramowania

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