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by colejohnson66 2401 days ago
From the dictionary:

> straw man (n):

> an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent's real argument.

So, no, it isn’t a straw man because he’s not manipulating/misrepresenting your argument. Whether an argument is about defending malicious behavior or not has no bearing on whether or not it’s a straw man.

1 comments

Moving the argument, which has been about a user of a free software program having neither an actual nor a moral capability of demanding that the free software fits their particular needs (which in this case means to work as a critical part of their business and continue working as such under their particular environment) into the legal realm and making it into a proposition that a user of a free software has no rights at all, not even legal rights to defend against malicious behavior of the producer of the software, is an intentional misrepresentation of the argument, and it is easier to defeat than the actual argument since there are clearly such defensive rights.