[sclug] Cheap'n'nasty Tesco Linux machines

[Phillip Chandler]

Hi Simon.

My apologies if I mis-interpreted what you were saying, this is the
problem with emails, theres no emotion so no way of knowing if someone
is serious or joking.

Hi Alex.

Richard Stallman. Id read that he even refuses to have a mobile as he
has to give information to a company about himself, and that he lives on
site as a legit squatter ? From his own site and what Id read about him,
I get the impression that he totally refuses to use anything that is
closed source, proprietary etc, and to have anything that means having
info store on any database ????
Its unfortunate that unless your an illegal immigrant, and working for
back-handers, then you have no way of getting away from the fact, that
there is probably a hand full of official government databases out there
that contain info about a person. Im talking NI number, medical records,
voting register, DVLA, thats four databases for a start. The info about
where you have lived and worked since leaving school is available, even
what type of car you have driven since driving legally (You are legal
arnt you ?).

I can understand if Richard Stallman is saying that he wants to limit
the amount of info about himself, and say he refuses to go to Walmart
and get a free loyalty card etc. If thats what he's saying then I get
the picture. I maybe have misread his bio, I was under the assumption
that he totally hates copyright except the GPL thingy one that says you
are entitled to have the source code, modify it and then redistribute
without having to pay a penny to the original creator, as they have
licensed the product under the GPL.

On Sat, 2008-03-15 at 12:11 +0000, Simon Huggins wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 15, 2008 at 10:42:14AM +0000, Phillip Chandler wrote:
> > So if the two rodneys who said the two comments up top, if you wanna get
> > moralistic, fine, thats your privilege. I on the the hand dont give a
> > rats arse if I use closed source, copyright software / drivers. Thats
> > the freedom of choice, and if it means my computers work perfectly for
> > me, then tough luck, Im using the non free closed source alternatives.
> > Thats why you have the media repos (especially for ubuntu) because
> > enough people have the same attitude as me.
> 
> Hi, I am apparently one of the "rodneys".
> 
> > > Copyright is evil and morally and ethically wrong.
> 
> My point was that copyright is required for Free Software (the licences
> depend on it) in the same way that it's required for proprietary
> software.  Saying it's "evil and morally and ethically wrong" doesn't
> show much understanding of software licensing issues.
> 
> But you're misrepresenting my views when you say I'm getting moralistic.
> I really don't mind what you run.  I like Free Software and I tend to
> choose it in preference to proprietary software when it works but I'm
> pragmatic.
>