Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: ESR and guns -- what's the big deal?
Author: Seth Gordon Posted: 8/22/2000; 9:26:07 AM Topic: ESR and guns -- what's the big deal? Msg #: 19926 (In response to 19919) Prev/Next: 19925 / 19927
Perhaps it was "The Ethics of Free Software", an essay by Bertrand Meyer in Software Development magazine?Section 5 of this essay includes a quote from one of ESR's pro-gun essays, rants about how awful the gun nuts are, and calls on other open-source leaders to disavow Raymond's political views. I think this demand is silly -- in fact, I think Meyer's whole essay was a silly hatchet job -- but one member of the debian-devel mailing list remarked:
...you should be aware that it is a very common argument in France against free software ("Free software proponents are also gun lunatics because they want freedom, every freedom, freedom to steal software and to kill people. See Raymond for an example.")Perhaps, if I were French, I would understand the rationality of this argument, but I'm not, so I don't.
If advocates of open-source software have to apologize for ESR's political views, do the people who favor Oracle databases, Windows 2000, and MacOS X have to apologize for the personal and political faults of Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs, respectively?
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