| Sure. The right to tinker is required for actual tinkering, and a right that's never exercised is pointless. Regardless, I don't consider the right to tinker an end in its self. The pleasure of tinkering is utterly unimportant compared with the good that a tinkerers work can bring into the world. But who said anything about the pleasure of tinkering? I don't think that was ever RMS' position. As for freedom of speech, I think the analogy is flawed. The technology equivalent of speech is invention, and the freedom to invent doesn't require anything like the GPL. The freedom to tinker is more like the freedom to copyedit somebody else's work. And hey, I'm for it! Remix culture is great stuff. But it's not in the same league as freedom of speech. That was specifically about X vs having the right to do X; I didn't meant to make a broad comparison between them. Subjects in analogies aren't supposed to map 1:1 in everything. When it comes right down to it, though, I don't consider freedom of speech an end in its self either. The value of free speech is the sort of society it produces, not the speech its self. I favour limits to speech when the effect of that speech is not a net good to society. Now, those situations are few and far between, but they do exist. Yelling "fire" and all that; our legal system has a long and nuanced tradition of weighing the issue in various situations. But "fire" is an exception mostly because Free Speech is supposed to protect political speech and we can say in a mostly objectively way that "fire" doesn't fit. But what about political speeches that are arguably not a net good to society, like e.g. calls to pointless (in your opinion) wars? Should they be banned? If not, why not, and aren't you contradicting yourself? The point is that dogma and fanaticism are counterproductive, whatever your goals are. The FSF is certainly not alone in this. Another word might be idealism. |