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Stallman really is a strange guy. I was watching a video of a speech he gave at a University in Calgary, and about 3/4 into the speech he sits down, takes off the shoe and sock of his left foot, starts picking at his foot, and starts eating whatever he was picking... all while continuing to take questions from the audience.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 4771380326

He sits down, takes of his shoe and sock, and begins picking at his foot at 1:38:00

He begins eating the stuff he picked from his foot at 1:39:42

yea, ummmm... thanks for describing it so i didn't have the make the mistake of clicking on that link.

that's disturbing....I didn't think he was _that_ messed up.

He does come across as a misanthrope pretty much every time I listen to him in some way or another.

In this video, on this topic, I agree with him completely. Everyone here has probably already read on this topic, though, but a good video for someone who's never looked at this topic, that is, if you can avoid the eating of foot skin.

Whoa, he just equivocated pharmaceutical patents with murder. I don't know if pharmaceutical patents create a better market, probably doubtful, but there's a big difference between murder, killing someone with a gun or knife or poison, and someone dying of an illness, and then blaming the company that didn't provide medicine. It might still be unethical, but those two acts are very, very different.

Vogateer wrote:Whoa, he just equivocated pharmaceutical patents with murder. I don't know if pharmaceutical patents create a better market, probably doubtful, but there's a big difference between murder, killing someone with a gun or knife or poison, and someone dying of an illness, and then blaming the company that didn't provide medicine. It might still be unethical, but those two acts are very, very different.

yeah thats why I can't stand listening to him. The fact that he is the leader of a lot of people scares me.

Vogateer wrote:Whoa, he just equivocated pharmaceutical patents with murder. I don't know if pharmaceutical patents create a better market, probably doubtful, but there's a big difference between murder, killing someone with a gun or knife or poison, and someone dying of an illness, and then blaming the company that didn't provide medicine. It might still be unethical, but those two acts are very, very different.

He equated companies or governments trying to enforce phamaceutical patents in third world countries where people are dying for lack of drugs to treat certain diseases with murder. I don't think he's far off on that one. He makes a clear distinction between pharmaceutical patents in wealthy countries and poor ones.

He did make a distinction between rich and poor countries, but that's beside the point. When you're talking about active murder being the same as passively letting someone die of a disease, it doesn't matter who is enforcing the patents, those two things are not the same thing. For someone who makes such clear cut distinctions about so much in the software world, such equivocation on another topic isn't very consistent.

I think the idea he was trying to get across by using the murder equation in the case of trying to enforce pharmaceutical patents in poor nations, was specifically for patents on drugs for life threatening diseases. Any government or company attempting to enforce patents on such drugs with the full knowledge that doing so would result in the drugs being scarcer in that country and cause more people to die because they can't get those drugs, seems pretty close to murder morally, if not identical, in my book.

greggh wrote:Any government or company attempting to enforce patents on such drugs with the full knowledge that doing so would result in the drugs being scarcer in that country and cause more people to die because they can't get those drugs, seems pretty close to murder morally, if not identical, in my book.

I agree.

Look, if take a walk, and on the way I find a dude that has been hit by a car and he is dying, if I take out a gun and shoot the guy, that's surely murder. If I just sneer at him and continue my walk, he dies because I didn't help him, like by calling an ambulance for example. Murder is murder, whether directly or indirectly.

I like using a few extreme examples too to get a point quite clearly across, so let's say this, Hitler probably didn't kill any jews himself, but he told others to do it, so in that case there are two murderers in this scenario. One is the guy who actually hits the button to flood a chamber with gas, another is the guy who arranges for the killing to take place, and doing so knowingly.

Please note that I am in no way comparing say Bill Gates to Adolf Hitler! And I think that if you asked Richard Stallman about it, I think he would find it quite ridiculous too.

I'm actually starting to feel a little guilty for posting this thread. Stallman clearly has some personal idiosyncrasies. But, I hope people can look beyond them when evaluating what he has to say. Right after the foot eating segment he gives this great anaolgy of writing software to composing music, and what would music be like if there were music composition idea patents. What if you could patent the idea of a 4 note escalating motif in a symphony, etc... I thought it was a pretty compelling analogy. It starts at 1:40:30

Stallman made some very good points, and I agree that the music composition analogy was a good one. I certainly won't dismiss his valid points simply because he's sometimes a jerk and exhibits bizarre behavior.

I'm sure we're already at the "agree to disagree" stage of this discussion, but I strongly disagree with the equivocations you two are making regarding murder and other circumstances of death. There is good reason why courts treat murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree, and manslaughter differently, even though the result—death of a person—is the same.

Stallman starts off the presentation pointing out that patents and copyright are so very different that you can't even group them together to talk about them as being a part of a group, and then later equivocates two very different actions as being the same, and they are not the same morally, legally, or otherwise.

Letting someone die is not indirect murder, no matter how morally wrong it is. Murder has a precise definition, and when you distort the word, you change it's meaning in a frightening Orwellian newspeak way.

Since Tsuroerusu likes extreme examples to make a point, consider that people make the same argument—that letting someone die is murder—in cases where people with terminal illnesses are allowed to die. Sure, you could keep the person alive on a respirator, even if they're brain dead, but not reviving a person whose quality of life will only dramatically worsen doesn't even resemble murder, nor does it resemble allowing a person hit by a car to die, and allowing that person hit by a car to die is not the same thing as beheading or shotting someone, even if it is utterly morally reprehensible.

I object to this perversion of the language when it's used to make "intellectual property" sound like a good thing to the same degree that I hate it when it's used to argue that enforcing pharmaceutical patents—which may indeed be a horrible thing and result in many preventable deaths—is murder in order to make it sound bad. In both cases you're using semantics to make your case instead of logic. That's always bad form in my eyes, even if you're on the right side of an argument.

Vogateer wrote: Letting someone die is not indirect murder, no matter how morally wrong it is. Murder has a precise definition, and when you distort the word, you change it's meaning in a frightening Orwellian newspeak way.

It's not just letting someone die. Its more like taking active steps and knowing that those steps will result in people dying. You can argue semantics all you want but it's close enough to draw the comparison.

Vogateer wrote: I'm sure we're already at the "agree to disagree" stage of this discussion, but I strongly disagree with the equivocations you two are making regarding murder and other circumstances of death. There is good reason why courts treat murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree, and manslaughter differently, even though the result—death of a person—is the same.

Stallman starts off the presentation pointing out that patents and copyright are so very different that you can't even group them together to talk about them as being a part of a group, and then later equivocates two very different actions as being the same, and they are not the same morally, legally, or otherwise.

Letting someone die is not indirect murder, no matter how morally wrong it is. Murder has a precise definition, and when you distort the word, you change it's meaning in a frightening Orwellian newspeak way.

Since Tsuroerusu likes extreme examples to make a point, consider that people make the same argument—that letting someone die is murder—in cases where people with terminal illnesses are allowed to die. Sure, you could keep the person alive on a respirator, even if they're brain dead, but not reviving a person whose quality of life will only dramatically worsen doesn't even resemble murder, nor does it resemble allowing a person hit by a car to die, and allowing that person hit by a car to die is not the same thing as beheading or shotting someone, even if it is utterly morally reprehensible.

I object to this perversion of the language when it's used to make "intellectual property" sound like a good thing to the same degree that I hate it when it's used to argue that enforcing pharmaceutical patents—which may indeed be a horrible thing and result in many preventable deaths—is murder in order to make it sound bad. In both cases you're using semantics to make your case instead of logic. That's always bad form in my eyes, even if you're on the right side of an argument.

I just think you are completely wrong on this, and picking a really inappropriate case of an analogy to get this offended by semantics. The case that Stallman was presenting was so reprehensible and could result in the forseeable deaths of so many that I am not interested in getting to the semantic level that you are. Would it have been better or more accurate to make the analogy to negligent homicide or some other legalistic wording for killing than "murder"... maybe. I'll give another murder analogy, and lets see if you get as offended to the technically incorrect definition of it as murder...

There is this village that is suffering from an outbreak of some disease that kills within 24 hours. There is only a small supply of this amazing drug that completely cures the disease. A person in the village destroys the complete supply of the drug, with the knowledege that many people who otherwise would have lived if they had gotten the drug will now surely die. He is not actively killing these people, so you would again indignantly "object to this perversion of the language" if an analogy were to be made of this to murder? I think you are the one that is taking a very narrow semantic gamesmanship view of the situation here. But, yes, it does look like you are right that we are already at the "agree to disagree" stage.

Vogateer wrote:I'm sure we're already at the "agree to disagree" stage of this discussion

Wow wow wow, why all the novellity!

Vogateer wrote:Letting someone die is not indirect murder, no matter how morally wrong it is. Murder has a precise definition, and when you distort the word, you change it's meaning in a frightening Orwellian newspeak way.

OK, then let's put it like this: In theory it's not murder, in theory, in my examples of seeing a dude, that has been hit by a car and is dying on the street, me not doing anything is not murder. However, IN PRACTICE, it's murder, because that person could survive if I help him.

Vogateer wrote:Since Tsuroerusu likes extreme examples to make a point

OK, let me make a correction to my statement: SOMETIMES, I like using an extreme example, because sometimes it illustrates a point very firmly, rather than trying to describe it in an abstraction.
I am a little tired right now and I obviously for the the "sometimes" in there, because extreme examples in every sentence is stupid, yes this is Tsuroerusu writing this, in case anyone wondered.

Vogateer wrote:consider that people make the same argument—that letting someone die is murder—in cases where people with terminal illnesses are allowed to die. Sure, you could keep the person alive on a respirator, even if they're brain dead, but not reviving a person whose quality of life will only dramatically worsen doesn't even resemble murder, nor does it resemble allowing a person hit by a car to die, and allowing that person hit by a car to die is not the same thing as beheading or shotting someone, even if it is utterly morally reprehensible.

Well, I guess I kind of asked for an extreme example in return.

Here's the thing. I think there's a difference between somebody actively refusing to help somebody, because they don't find them important, and to let somebody pass away because they in practice already are gone, or would undergo a lot of suffering. Take one of my uncles as a really really good example. He has been battling rectum-cancer for a number of years now, he's been through Chemotherapy, and several surgeries, and it has not been easy on him at all. He has flat out said that if he has to go through Chemotherapy again, he will turn down the offer of treatment, because he just couldn't take it. The health care system respecting his wishes, despite them maybe being able to help him (Although at this point it's looking quite hopeless), in this case is not murder.

I agree that by >dictionary definition<, not killing somebody in practice is not murder, but I think in practice, such as in my original example (Not the Hitler one) would be classified as murder.

Vogateer wrote:I object to this perversion of the language when it's used to make "intellectual property" sound like a good thing to the same degree that I hate it when it's used to argue that enforcing pharmaceutical patents—which may indeed be a horrible thing and result in many preventable deaths—is murder in order to make it sound bad. In both cases you're using semantics to make your case instead of logic. That's always bad form in my eyes, even if you're on the right side of an argument.

Please excuse me Vogateer, but now you talk about the language in the tone/way Richard Stallman talks about proprietary software.