12 October, 2007















Love to ya all,



  1. Thanks, this was a brillaint read

  2. Amen to that!

    Kevin's statements sort of verify something that I've blogged about before and a slogan about KDE that I've sort of come up with.

    KDE: Integration done right

  3. Thanks, this very nice read!

    I'd like to share these ideas with my not-so-geeky colleges.
    Maybe you know if somebody has/is working on a presentation about the "big picture"?

  4. @ anonymous asking for presentations/more: there is an excellent (though rather old) essay by Erik S. Raymond, dubbed the Cathedral and the Bazaar (http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/).

    This does talk about these things. Also, Richard Stallman himself has talked about these kind of things a lot.

    Actually, one of the main reasons Stallman things proprietary software is "evil" is because it doesn't do justice to the fundamental predisposition of human beings to share and work together. He considers that wrong, a bit like how Marx considered taking away the fruits of labor from hard working people, and/or not letting them be involved in the whole process was a wrong thing to do.

    Marx considered 'creation' an expression of being human, and not allowing people to express themselves that way is denying them their humanity. And it's not just Marx who thought that, though others considered his standpoint of work being THE think which makes one human a bit limited. But see how people in the modern society have hobbies like pottery. See how rewarding it is do to something with your hands if you work all day in an office. See how we love to create things. Marx got a point, even though it's not the full story.

    Stallman likewise sees sharing, cooperating as fundamental to human beings, and sees it as inhumane to take that ability away from them. See what currently happens with music - if you meet a friend, and you share your mp3 music with him, it feels totally natural. Not doing it (giving him while you don't lose anything!!!) feels wrong.

    The music industry has to fight that natural tendency to share, imagine how difficult a job they have... Teaching us sharing with others is wrong... The same the software industry has been trying to tell us for years. Some bought it, yes. But that indoctrination has to stop etc etc etc...

    I guess you get the point ;-)

    There is so much more to this, you know... A talk by Richard or even better, Eben Moglen can start you thinking about these things. Look for some of their talks online, video or just audio.

  5. @ jucato:

    your article is really good, it should be linked to from as many locations as possible ;-)

    Serious, the kde wiki's, promo stuff (no idea if we even have collections of links about promo things somewhere) etc, should link to it. Maybe the KDE.org site, even...


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