Re: Taboo Subject

[David Kastrup]

rjack <robjck@ixweb.com> writes:

> David Kastrup wrote:
>> rjack <robjack@insightbb.com> writes:
>>
>>> The Software Freedom Law Center has paid Eben Moglen over $437,000
>>>  in salary from charitable tax-free contributions in the last two
>>> years, yet I see no GPL defenders stepping forward to comment on
>>> this fact.
>>>
>>> http://www.eri-nonprofit-salaries.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=NPO.Form990&EIN=412165986
>>>
>> While I have no idea where you are deriving your particular numbers
>> from, it is not the point of a charity not to pay for the work it
>> commissions, but rather to commission that kind of work that puts
>> forward its cause.  If the point of a charity were be to pay nobody,
>>  it would not need any special tax status.
>
> I seriously doubt the sincerity of your assertion, "While I have no
> idea where you are deriving. . ." Perhaps feigned ignorance?

Sorry, but the above link gives total expenses not differentiated by
recipient.

> That aside, try the following publications by Eben Moglen:
>
> Freeing the Mind: Free Software and the Death of Proprietary Culture
>
> The dotCommunist Manifesto
>
> The DotCommunist Manifesto: How Culture Became Property and What
>
> We're Going to Do About It
>
> Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright
>
> Die Gedanken Sind Frei: The Free Software Movement and The Struggle for
> Freedom of Thought

So he talks about why the proprietary licensing of copyable material is
a bad idea, and gets paid for working in his trade (rather than getting
paid for licensing his work)?

I mean, where is the contradiction?

> Eben Moglen claims to have been a programmer before attending law
> school. If Moglen asks programmers to donate the fruits of their
> labors to the general public,

But he doesn't.  He is working on creating conditions where you don't
have to ask nicely time and again, but where you get the choice of using
preexisting material at the price of licensing your creation similarly.

> the least he could do is donate his time and efforts spent in urging
> and promoting others to donate their time and effort.

But he does not ask others to donate their time and effort.  He promotes
free licensing, not free work.  And indeed, the licenses he helped
create can be used freely by anybody.

>> So what is your beef with that?
>
> If you don't know, I won't be able to teach you.

That's pretty obvious.

>> compare the income from Bill Gates to the payment you get for your
>> charitable slander here, that would seem like quite a larger
>> discrepancy.  Yet you seem to enjoy doing his bidding.
>
> I don't see your strawman Bill Gates out there ardently preaching
> Marxism.

Marxism is hardly defined by arguing for reigning the excesses of
copyright law in.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum