[wilhelmtux-discussion] A new political licence?

Manfred Morgner manfred.morgner at gmx.net
Son Mar 30 00:29:34 CET 2003


Hallo Theo,

I understand your feelings and I agree with you in case of the USA
politic, but I completely disagree with you in the case of the
GNU GPL. Why this?

Looking to the war against Iraq, our feelings will lead us to
react contraproductive. Aggressivity will generate aggressivity,
and unethic behavior will lead to unethic behavior to fight 
against the aggressor.

But think about what we are talking about. We are talking about
software. We are talking about intelectual properties and we
are talking about freedom.

Almost all people in our world are able and allowed to use a
knife, even if a nife is able to turn into a weapon by a single
movement of it's user. Restrictions in using knifes by - let us say -
militaries, because militaries may use a knife as a weapon against
Iraq civilists, will not help the Iraqies anyway.

To prevent war and other terroristic action in the world, we have
to do political actions, not embargos. The UN embargo against
Iraq killed more than 1 million people because of its economic
consquences, but Saddam is in power as before. There was no benefit
for the people we are angry about.

Regarding the US Army or the isreal millitaries, it will not
to setup an embargo in any way, it's up to the people to
decide if they will tollerate there goverments and it is up
to the people if they are agree in spending 250 Billion USD
from there taxes to fight for the profit of the Bush clan.

Free Software has nothings to do with preventing crisis, or
forbidding war. But embargos in any form and restriction in any
way will hurd people not involved in non-ethic actions.

One example for better understanding:

Some weeks ago I heard a young women speaking about spending
there body (or parts of it) in the case of a sudden death.
She decided _not_ allowing this because she do not wish that
anyone will do genectic research with there eggs!

Now imagine. In the case she will die now and most of there
parts are healthy and functional. She may save about 4 to 10
lives if she spends here body. But may be, all of these people
will die too, only because she rejected the use of there eggs
for genetic experiments.

If you think a bit more pragmatically:

There are laws about genetic experiments and currently, there
is no legal way to use there eggs for genetic research. So she
don't need to worry about it.

If she don't believe, that the researchers are law abidding,
there is no way to prevent them to  use there eggs, because:

No on ever can see if there are some eggs missing in a dead
women, but anyone can see if there were parts removed from
here, because you need to open the body to take them.


In conclusion - there is no way to create additional
ensurement that the eggs are prevented from genetic
experiments, but now it's sure, that she will not help
anyone with any of there body parts. The result of 
this embargo did not hit the destination, but
it potentionaly hurds other people - or will kill them.


Ethic, moral, democracy are valuable goods, but
restrictions will not help in development of human
societies and there behavior.

If the Isreal army uses free software, at least, it will
spread the idea of freedom and international cooperation
to these militaries. May be, there is code in the software,
written from people livinig on the opposed side. I think,
this may help for better thinking, even if there are only
some people, but's a beginning.

Sorry, my english is lots too bad to express myself in
this case, but I hope, you will understand my point. If
not, I will answer in german to make the point a bit
more clear.


Greetings,
Manfred.