From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Google modules integration Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 02:21:01 +0900 Message-ID: <87aanm2802.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> References: <878w3a1x9s.fsf@keller.adm.naquadah.org> <87iq2c262m.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1284313471 8330 80.91.229.12 (12 Sep 2010 17:44:31 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 17:44:31 +0000 (UTC) Cc: julien@danjou.info, emacs-devel@gnu.org, carsten.dominik@gmail.com To: rms@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Sep 12 19:44:28 2010 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1OuqbJ-0001JF-Mu for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 12 Sep 2010 19:44:26 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:53747 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1OuqbJ-0000BV-4D for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 12 Sep 2010 13:44:25 -0400 Original-Received: from [140.186.70.92] (port=47158 helo=eggs.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1OuqbD-0000Aq-LX for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 12 Sep 2010 13:44:20 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1OuqbA-0007jO-CR for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 12 Sep 2010 13:44:19 -0400 Original-Received: from [130.158.254.171] (port=54423 helo=dmail02.cc.tsukuba.ac.jp) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Ouqb9-0007iQ-Lr for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 12 Sep 2010 13:44:16 -0400 Original-Received: from imss12.cc.tsukuba.ac.jp (unknown [130.158.254.130]) by dmail02.cc.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7238CF5F33; Mon, 13 Sep 2010 02:27:23 +0900 (JST) Original-Received: from imss12.cc.tsukuba.ac.jp (imss12.cc.tsukuba.ac.jp [127.0.0.1]) by postfix.imss70 (Postfix) with ESMTP id A3FDCF4003; Mon, 13 Sep 2010 02:27:08 +0900 (JST) Original-Received: from mgmt1.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (unknown [130.158.97.223]) by imss12.cc.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix) with ESMTP id 92FD1F4002; Mon, 13 Sep 2010 02:27:08 +0900 (JST) Original-Received: from uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp [130.158.99.156]) by mgmt1.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8DEF03FA03B6; Mon, 13 Sep 2010 02:27:08 +0900 (JST) Original-Received: by uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 71F621A266F; Mon, 13 Sep 2010 02:21:01 +0900 (JST) In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: VM undefined under 21.5 (beta29) "garbanzo" ed3b274cc037 XEmacs Lucid (x86_64-unknown-linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6, seldom 2.4 (older, 4) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:130021 Archived-At: Richard Stallman writes: > > We should recommend that people not give Google Maps > > specific addresses. > Huh? That's very close to recommending not to use the service! > > I am surprised you say so, since I use Google Maps. You are not a typical user. > Instead of giving an address, I request a town, then look around it > and find where it is. Maybe that works for you, but I assure it won't work for the majority of people in Japan. It's possible, but due to both idiosyncracies in the addresses themselves and the dependence on public transit, with extremely complex linkage of schedules, pricing, and even physical connections, nobody with an appointment would do it that way. It will take too much time and effort to connect all the relevant information, when Google Maps or Yahoo Maps will do it all for you, often in less than one second, and at price zero. > E.g., if the addresses are public knowledge anyway (eg, the > location of the FSF offices), what's the harm? Perhaps "not > give personal addresses" is what you mean. > I would rather not give any address Again, you are atypical. You are extremely protective of your personal freedom. ISTR you have argued against such institutions as (legal) marriage because the contract might bind you to a person you don't feel like being obligated to any more. You argue that the purchase of a single proprietary program subjects one to a domination akin to slavery. I also suspect that you are more likely to attract the attention of abusers of such information than most people because you are a well-known activist. However, most people are willing to accept that the benefits of constraining others via such contractual relationships are worth accepting similar constraints themselves. Similarly, most people are willing to accept a small chance that knowledge of the addresses they're interested in might be abused. > unless I were going through TOR. So go through TOR. Assuming that, is there a problem with getting a map to the FSF offices? > This is grandstanding again. Sure, the choir will use it, but > we came to call the sick, not the healthy, right? > I don't enjoy being insulted. If you make your point without > insults, I will read it. I take issue with the word "insult". I described your behavior, not you. However, I'm sorry it made you feel bad. Let me rephrase: While freedom is a universal value, not everyone values it as you do. In particular, many people see freedom as a multidimensional, continuously variable attribute of society. Many see freedom as a relative value, which can be compared to and traded against other values to a more or less limited degree (cf. marriage and purchases of a single proprietary software program). In the case of free software, this difference turned out not to matter, because the open source movement was right: there were (and are) sufficient economic advantages to free software to give it momentum in some very strange places (eg, three of the companies most active in the pursuit of the advantages of monopolized technology: IBM, Sun, and Apple), as well as among ordinary hackers. These companies (well, two of them, anyway) continue to protect and extend the domain of free software for those economic reasons today, although they clearly do not hold software freedom as a principle as important as, let alone more important than, profit. However, you also were (and are) right. Somebody has to talk about freedom itelf, not just as an instrument of economic growth. Freedom is an essential value for human beings, and free software is an aspect of that. Unfortunately, as freedom-loving as you are, you nevertheless found it necessary to build a wall between the free software movement, and the open source movement, many of whose leaders are just as dedicated to freedom in their own way, though without making software freedom an absolute value, and who believed that it was possible to promote software freedom in terms of its instrumental values, rather than for its own sake. What I fear is that you will once again draw a line between yourself and those not as extreme as yourself, over the database-ization of social networks, not just those which we call "social networks" (F***B**k and friends), but also the implicit networks defined by people traveling to meet friends or to eat dinner, making phone calls to their mothers or their brokers, etc. I fear we will once again hear of "traitors to the movement" and "backsliders", and so on. But this time I think it matters a lot more to the success of the movement, for the reasons set forth in my previous post. To summarize those reasons, the economics of software are basically the economics of programming behavior combined with network economies, and this promotes growth of free software in several ways which do not depend on the degree to which users value software freedom (although of course that is an additional promoting factor). The economics of "social databases" (for want of a better name, and I don't think that's a good one, although it's better than "Web 2.0" :-) is a combination of network economics (as with software) and those of trade secrets, which is not going to work strongly for "free social databases" in the way that it did (and does) for free software. It is going to be important that all lovers of freedom work together. We will need (IMO) to avoid ostracizing those who find reasons to support "free social databases" other than the pure value of freedom. To misquote another great lover of freedom, in this case I fear that if we don't hang together, we'll all hang separately.