[PLUG] Linux Distros

[Jeme A Brelin]

On Tue, 27 Aug 2002, Preston Crawford wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 26 Aug 2002, Jeme A Brelin wrote:
> > Red Hat, Inc. has corrupted the truly progressive Free Software community
> > by developing, encouraging, and marketting an alternative community that
> > compromises the ethics of the purely anarchic social structure of Free
> > Software in favor of the greed and exploitation based hierarchical
> > structure of corporate America.
> 
> ???
> 
> That's a huge assertion to make without more explaination.

...from where you're sitting.  I don't mean that as an insult, I just mean
that, given a certain critical framework, it's a fairly straightforward
recognition of the obvious.

However, I did say that I wasn't choosing my best words.  It was quite
late.

> Not that I want you to explain that "mumbo-jumbo", but it just doesn't
> make sense as explained there.

It's fairly simple.  Red Hat's purpose for being is to "increase
shareholder value" while doing all the same stuff that the community could
(and does) do for itself without the extraneous fatcat fattening.  Red Hat
then pushes this on people through marketting and an agressive PR
campaign.  All this adds up to folks who could be part of a progressive
system [as] outside the destructive Capitalist economy [as possible]
being, instead, little more than "software consumers".

And for an idea of how they corrupt the Free Software ethic, see their
page on software patents.  I don't fault them for their paltry
justification of their hyprocritical stance.  We all know how hard it is
to explain everything about a complex situation in a document read
casually and in short time.  However, they do go on to invent a new,
misleading term "Open Source/Free Software" (great idea, since people
think it means two different things already) and define it to mean
software licensed under ANY LICENSE RED HAT ISSUES.

So Red Hat is an undemocratic organization unaccountable to the community
that simply assumes the power to define and redefine important terms at
will (whatever will can be attributed to a beast made up of hundreds of
self-interested parties acting under selfish, greedy motivation) and use
those terms in the popular media as if they have commonly accepted
definitions.

> > I would say that the inception of Red Hat, Inc. was an unavoidable part of
> > this struggle between the old and new worlds.  Red Hat is no more or less
> > evil than any other commercial operation.  The truly disappointing (and
> > destructive to any hope of a progressive revolution) thing is that some
> > would choose this compromised alternative over one of the many that carry
> > higher ideals.
> 
> It's called pragmatism. It's not evil. In fact it's sometimes
> necessary to make true progress.

Pragmatism is an agent of evil.  Pragmatism is a type of situational
ethics that allows one to justify their evil as somehow less evil than it
would be in other circumstances.  I personally believe that a situation
can make an evil perhaps necessary, but no less evil.

But anyway, this isn't a matter of pragmatism AT ALL.  There are
organizations who provide the same or better services to the Free Software
community who do not make the same compromises to the existing power
structure.

> > > How has RH injected ``greed, selfishness, scarcity, and exploitation"?
> >
> > By working for profit.  By restricting access to paying customers.  By
> > keeping wage slaves.  By selling shares on the stock market.
> 
> I'll agree regarding the stock market, because I think the stock
> market is a ponzi scheme designed to shake down the average investor
> (or at least, that's how it's operated now).

The single effect of the stockmarket that makes it both the most
destructive to life and freedom and a most desirable to the powers that be
is the removal of accountability and motivation from the hands of those
who manage or maintain a "public" company and replacing all ethics and
morality with greed and profit motive.

Nearly every company that lends its name to stock traded on the market
modifies its mission statement so that the primary verb is "to increase
shareholder value" (in one form of the words or another).  The primary
motivators go out the window at that point.  If the board of such an
organization decides to make a major decision based on something other
than a consideration for shareholder value, they can be sued into
submission to the will of the profiteers.

That aside, you don't see how the up2date system increases scarcity (to
pick one of my other above statements at random)?

> The rest of this, is "mumbo-jumbo". :-)

I guess you're using the second sense of the word meaning "unnecessarily
overcomplicated"?  I guess this because I don't see any superstitious fear
here.  I have real-world rationale for each of those statements.

> > Linus is an amoral twit.  He has practically no ethics whatsoever beyond
> > his own personal happiness.
> >
> > I've written a hundred times that this whole world would be a better place
> > if Linus had just handed his copyrights to the FSF in 1994.
> 
> ?????
> 
> Care to back that up, or just let the stand as is?

Did you read his book?  Do you listen to him in interviews?  Do you read
his arguments on the kernel dev list?

He repeatedly states that he has no particular moral drive and his ethics
depend almost entirely on what is fun or easy.  He is a situational
ethicist at best and amoral at worst.

So I'll grant you that "amoral" was assuming the worst, but it is a
reasonable assumption given his comments.  And I'll also admit that "twit"
was just vitriole.

> > > And if this is all you have to offer in defense of your attack on Red
> > > Hat, I am not persuaded by your arguments.
> >
> > You didn't understand a word I wrote, sir.
> 
> And your argument sounds like a foreign language to me.

And that's totally OK!  I mean, it's disappointing and all, but it's great
that you didn't assume I wasn't making sense (all the time... you did
assume that a couple of times, I think) just because you don't have the
framework in which to couch my arguments.

Anyway, you're exactly right.  The language of class and economic warfare
is foreign to most Americans.  Every institution in our civilization is
driven by the overriding economic and political system.  All evolved
systems are somewhat resistant to change and self-protecting.  The concept
of class or economic warfare within that system is destructive to the
system and therefore not acceptable subject matter.

And so we are told to believe that our society is classless and since
there is no ruling class, there is no systematic method by which the
ruling class maintains its power and subjugates the other classes.

> I consider myself extremely liberal, but a lot of what I just read
> doesn't make any sense to me in the current context.

Would you like some suggested reading to expand your context?

> Maybe that's just because you sling rhetoric without explaining why
> "Linus is an amoral twit".

I do apologize for the insulting "twit" comment, but I really did think
that people understood that Linus was not involved in Free Software for
any ethical or moral reason whatsoever.  Even the title of his book show
that his hedonism overrides any consideration of the greater societal
effects of his actions.

J.
-- 
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     Jeme A Brelin
    jeme at brelin.net
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