IBM Linux Video, going OT...

[Max Blanco]

On Fri, 21 Nov 2003, Keith Mastin wrote:

> Christian folks say that everyone is tainted until they die or something
> like that, but I don't think they condone not living because of it.
> 
> Knowing nothing about karma (or Christian religion, obviously), I think
> that contributing to OSS projects (yes, even by using them) is plenty.
> Someone mentioned that they don't use postfix because it's released freely
> (as in beer, not as in speech) under an IBM license. So what about qmail?
> It's not GPL, so does that make it bad? Does the fact that both of these
> freely (again, only as in beer) available software are emphatically
> superior to other (free, as in beer) mail server software make any
> difference, or should they both be shunned because they are not GPL? Does
> this make the GPL a religion, or just something else to be zealotreous
> over?

As a sometime proponent of free software who has posted in the past with 
regards to postfix, I feel it to be my duty to stand in for the particular 
someone to which Keith refers.

I think that that someone may have been more familiar with sendmail than
with postfix, as that has been, to his knowledge, the standard by which
other mail servers are measured.  I have yet to know from personal
experience that the alternative is better.  I have experienced many 
years of problem-free use of sendmail.  (Why would anyone seek to fix
what ain't broke, anyhow?)

The likelihood of a well userbase aside, I should only like to observe
that since collectivized groups of individuals have become interested in
what was once a garden of eden (to use religious metaphor) it has become a
victim of pimps and nogoodniks and the prey of evildoers (to continue the
religious metaphor, the use of which suits me just fine, I am surprised to
find).

I would have the reader observe that it tends greatly to be that wherever
collectivized ownership sets in to society, great evils tend to occur.  
The use of corporative fictions allows individual men to deny any (moral)
responsibility for their actions.  That has occurred most recently and
spectacularly with what was once the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

I find that the environment is a good example: no sane person would defile
the place in which he eats, yet collective ownership allows that same
individual to deny that what occurs under his very nose is his
responsibility.  We have developed, thus, a situation in which everybody
will point the finger at nobody when the Lord [*] calls on each to account
for his *own* conduct.  The use of Christian religious metaphor would call
for me to observe (slyly, always slyly!) that man will point at his
neighbour for any blameworthy conduct, and further to observe that that
may well be what at least one Christian has called hypocrisy.  (To which 
type of environment did I refer?  The physical environment, or some other 
environment?)

One of the purposes, as I have found, of the Christian religion is to
place burdens at home, where they belong, or put more succinctly, to know
that "society" condones nothing, or yet again, to know that each is master
over his own soul, The reader could well be excused if he were to ponder
the sixth chapter of Micah in conjunction with Exodus 20:5 at this
juncture (OT, I know).

This should be contrasted to private, or individual, ownership of
property--and, I fear it may be observed, sins, depraved conduct and
whatnot--but I fear I have expended my claim on the reader's time.  
Please note that this series of observations in no way condones ownership
of real property, but simply is a contrastive or illustrative device to
draw firm distinction between two different types of ownership: I have
tried to observe that one type of ownership has occurred in situations
with similar collective forms to IBM, regardless of what licence is used
to distribute the end... product.

In answer to Keith's final question, one's own freedom is indeed something
with which one must concern himself minutely, for nobody else will do so.
Whether the GPL meets the test of freedom is an open question, but it is
the best I have found in a generally sorry lot.  The GPL can not be said
to be a religion per se, but as a figurative tool which serves to
enlighten our dismal caves, it is quite an endeavour; I ought to
congratulate its conceiver.  I agree that the use of this tool to
enlighten the public may be considered unwise at this particular moment in
time, but I do not conceive I can be zealotrous within my own confines,
beyond which, to my knowledge, I have not strayed.

The answers to the questions Keith poses are personal (as are those of 
religion) by which I mean that every one should answer them as he sees fit.

[* It must be said that this religious metaphor becomes easy as one 
develops an observation.]


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