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I agree with this, mainly on a simple premise: If you start an arguement at two extremes, and give ground where your opponents do not, you weaken your position and put the compromise between them more in their favor. And when you keep giving ground, you keep showing a willingness to concede defeat, and your opponents will just ignore you. If you stand your ground, you are a stalwart wall of opposition that needs to be confronted, rather than ignored, eventually. In many cases (gay rights, civil liberties, patent law, equality / freedom) that stalwart position may require multiple generations. You don't get instant results when dealing with the entrenched status quo that is horribly wrong. But when you give ground you render your entire argument and stance illegitimate because your opponents can dismiss you as you keep conceding ground and giving up on your positions. Patents, as a whole, are archaic and bad. The turnaround time for any new discovery is now a matter of days, or months, rather than the years it would take in centuries past to distribute and market goods and services. In the digital world, everything is already information, it is all number patterns in electrical terms, and we had a track record of not letting people monopolize knowledge and information in the realm of mathematics before, and the digital era should never have been any different in my opinion. Of course, it is my opinion and all. But I remain dilligent in my stance for it. I have lost a lot of respect for Stallman because it seems in recent years his dialogue has propagated a lot of "buts" in his arguments. He concedes ground on what he believes in and that illegitimizes him more than anyone calling him cookey would in my book. |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window