Re: General Resolution: Removing non-free

[Jules Bean <jmlb2@hermes.cam.ac.uk>]

On Thu, Jun 08, 2000 at 05:52:17PM +1000, Craig Sanders wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 07, 2000 at 08:38:03AM -0400, Branden Robinson wrote:
> 
> > It is a largely technical proposal with some alterations to the Social
> > Contract to clear up some muddy language and terminate a compromise
> > that was made years ago for pragmatic reasons.
> 
> what a nice way of saying "break a promise we made years ago".
> 
> maybe you should look for a career in marketing. you've certainly got
> a talent for spin-doctoring. a willingness to break promises shows the
> right ethical standard for the field too.

And were the amendments to the American constitution breaking
promises?  Is every change of British law a broken promise?  The
social contract is a partly idealistic, partly practical document.
The proposal is to alter some of the practical aspects. a priori,
that's not wrong. (Certainly, one can disagree with the change. But
the /idea/ of changing the social contract is not intrinsically wrong)

-- 
Jules Bean                          |        Any sufficiently advanced 
jules@{debian.org,jellybean.co.uk}  |  technology is indistinguishable
jmlb2@hermes.cam.ac.uk              |               from a perl script