Re: NEWS: Microsoft Is Set to Be Top Foe of Free Code

From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sun May 06 2001 - 13:53:56 MDT


Anders Sandberg wrote:

>
> The luddites in themselves are fairly harmless in this mess, they simply
> represent the reactionary green wing of the stasists and happily ally with
> technocratic stasists. The irony is of course that plenty of luddites hate
> large corporations (it is hard to love them) but they are really on the same,
> broad ideological side: change is bad, don't let people develop technology
> without supervision - but for different reasons, of course. That Microsoft
> doesn't like open source software is not really because they are evil, but
> simply because it doesn't fit their business model and it makes pragmatic
> sense to try to inhibit it.
>

To put business interest above what is needed for the transformation of
humanity and what could well be required for humanity to survive what is
coming is nothing but EVIL. Either one is ignorant of the implications
or one knows them and willingly acts against the knowledge. There is no
"pragmatic" middle ground where evil is excused because it is perceived
as good for their business.

> Being a cryptoanarchist *and* transparent society fan, I think what we need
> is both to safeguard the freedom of writing and implementing code (and other
> technology) and to push for a more open society. We need to present a
> credible alternative to stasism, demonstrate why stasism doesn't work and
> develop new political tools to make the passing of stupid/dangerous laws less
> tempting.

Hear, hear! Or more generally push for real freedom across the board
and the dismantling of the huge machinery of the State. A positive deep
vision would also be of tremendous help.

- samantha



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