GNU License for Hardware

[David Starner]

On Sun, Oct 17, 1999 at 11:42:41PM +0100, Angelo Schneider wrote:
> 
> 
> Richard Stallman wrote:
> 
> > which is rare in the OSS movement.  In my experience, people who
> > firmly reject non-free software do so at least partly based on the
> > moral disapproval which is the basis of the Free Software movement.
> 
> That is a strange experiance. Why should anybody have moral reasons
> not to use free software?

I assume you meant not to use non-free software, in which case you need
to take a look at www.gnu.org. Anyway, if you believe writing non-free
software is wrong, then using it perpetuates the behavior of writing
non-free software.

> >       For example the US Civil war was not fought
> >     over abolishing slavery, it was fought over whether states had the
> >     right to leave the Union.

That can't be a primary reason. "Hey, we like them and all, but we've got
to leave the Union, just to see if we can." No one cares about that
enough to die for it.

> > That was the superficial issue, but really it was fought about
> > slavery.
> 
> Sorry, Richard, thats wrong. The war is called seccesion war. 

In the South only.

> The reasons are very economical. E.G. the rich industrialized north
> fought against the poor agricultural south. Why? The south seperated.
> Thwy would had have the possibility to increase prices on food and
> cotten
> etc. to get a fairer exchange for the ibdustrial products they recieved.

Then why not succeed after tariffs were raised? Why succeed because
of Lincoln being elected?
 
> Nobody in the north was interested in slavery (excepted some
> brave men who gave shelter and possibility to escape).
Then why was slavery illegal in the North?

> Well, to explain all the reasons, the political and economic
> circumstances
> would need about 30 pages ...
Oh, many hundreds. Probably thousands. And the summary would say that
both slavery and econmic issues had an effect, and that the relative
degree of the effect is highly debated over. 

David Starner - dstarner98 at aasaa.ofe.org