Their open-source impulses, however, are mostly "communitarian" or communist (in the vulgar way I understand that word). I'm sure they would not appreciate the association, because the communists have been the big losers in the global trade wars.
Their "libertarian" talk is just a way to shroud some very natural anti-property impulses in greed-compatible speech. Don't talk about "property" so much as "government". (But really, what's the difference...)
Also, we should distinguish between the fans of the software and the people who actually create it. I suspect that the programmers are more "left" than the users.
>on 8/23/00 2:08 PM, Matt Cramer at cramer at unix01.voicenet.com wrote:
>
>> the Microsoft Outlook you are using
>>
>Isn't using Pine the cyber-lib version of wearing a hair shirt?
>
>> Richard M. Stallman and other GNU (http://www.gnu.org) folks, believe that
>> this kind of software provides the best avenue for using
technology to protect
>> personal liberty
>>
>
>But he's no Techno-Libertarian:
>
>Richard Stallman: Well, I guess I am a sort of combination between a liberal
>and a leftist anarchist. I like to see people working together, voluntarily,
>to solve the world's problems. But, if we can't do that, I think we should
>get the government involved to solve them.
>
><http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworldtoday/lwt-indepth7.html>
>
>--
>bill
--
-------------------------------------- John Kawakami work (10am - 7 or 8) 818-385-2048 home (9 pm - 1 am) 818-543-0864 johnk at cyberjava.com, johnk at firstlook.com