[lbo-talk] Re: Purer Than Thou

Tayssir John Gabbour tayssir.john at googlemail.com
Mon Jan 22 16:02:29 PST 2007


On 1/22/07, ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
> * Incremental steps are preferable to revolutions that return us to
> where we were (in the words of G.K.Chesterton)
>
> * That these steps are not progress remains to be shown
>
> * To not understand the limits of such steps is wilful blindness
>
> * The real Internet Left is, to repeat, Richard Stallman

Out of curiosity, do you consider Stallman to be a purist, in the sense you discuss? Because he's often regarded as a purist in the tech world. (Tim O'Reilly, the well-known book publisher, called him George Bernard Shaw's "unreasonable man", the sort of person upon whom all progress depends.)

So for example, Stallman says that you should become a waiter rather than write proprietary software, which he calls "evil". He unfailingly corrects you if you refer to the operating system as "Linux" (instead of "Gnu/Linux"), or "Opensource" when you're really referring to "Free Software." (The latter because Free Software is concerned with ethics and freedom, while Opensource is more about the practical matters which businesses are interested in.)

But it's not clear to me from your essay whether your consider him a "purist" or not, so maybe we're in agreement.

Tayssir



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