Re: RMS's note to am-info regarding software development models...

["Eric M. Bennett" <ericb@pobox.com>]

To am-info@essential.org and rms@gnu.org:


James Love wrote:

>I forward to Richard Stallman a note about the discussion on am-info
>regarding his proposals on government funding of software development.
>He was kind enough to sent me this note.  Jamie

Richard Stallman wrote:

>This is not "what I stand for"; it is an option.  What I stand for is
>that software should be free: users should be free to copy, change and
>redistribute software.  I've proposed various ways of funding free
>software development, so as to offer people the widest variety of
>options.

Well, this is not much of a clarification.  I already know he stands for
free software.  That is an end result.  My question is, "to what degree
does he support forced taxation to gain that result?"

The rest of the message basically restates the material I quoted fromm
www.fsf.org: he proposes multiple ways of funding free software.  My
question is, if the philanthropic and voluntary methods of funding free
software prove in the end to be insufficient, to what degree should we rely
on taxation?  If taken to the extreme point where we try to fund the entire
software industry almost entirely with tax money, I think the message that
comes across is, "Ok, you lousy bums wouldn't contribute to my vision
voluntarily, so now I'm gonna get the government to *make* you fund my
vision!"  Some people may take this extreme view; others may not.

I'm just wondering what supporters of "software taxes" have to say about
this issue, because if they support such a tax then presumably they have an
idea about how much should be collected and how it should be collected.  I
don't know how much thought Stallman has given to this particular
question... maybe a lot, maybe none.  A couple readers of am-info seem to
have given it at least a little thought, but I haven't seen any concrete
proposals.

In any case, this is a question that has to be answered eventually if there
is going to be any software tax, no matter how small.  Just waving around a
general idea without specifics can be dangerous, whether it's vaguely
talking about a software tax or whether it's talk about the government
suing Microsoft but not being quite certain about what remedies they want
if they win.  It's nice to know in advance (and in as much detail as
possible) what you're supporting.  That's why I'm trying to get people to
be more specific.



--
Eric Bennett (http://www.pobox.com/~ericb/), Cornell Chemistry Department

I believe it's fundamentally broken. . . . These are really dumb mistakes,
kindergarten crypto.
- Bruce Schneier, Cryptography Expert, on PPTP security in Windows NT