[Discuss] EOMA68 Libre Hardware Standard and Libre Software project, currently crowd-funding (deadline expires 26th aug 2016)

[Matt Maier]

I feel you. I'm grappling with how to incorporate my own startup
specifically because I think a fundamental flaw in our current system is
that the people in charge of corporations are only allowed to consider
profit in their decisions. They literally, legally, due to their fiduciary
responsibility, cannot base their decisions on anything other than
maximizing the dollar value of the corporation.

That's messed up and it's messing everything else up.

However, that's not the same topic as libre/open. They're related, but
distinct. Libre/open is concerned with the legal status of intellectual
property. Corporate law is concerned with the legal status of incorporated
entities. Even if they both have an ethical angle, the ethical questions
are still different. It's important to distinguish between them because the
solutions can't just feel good, they have to actually work in the real
world.

That's why the libre camp can get frustrated with the open camp; because
open is more accepting of compromise to enable growth. It's extremely rare
for an uncompromising ethic to get wide traction in the real world.

Personally, I consider growth, for the most part, to be ethically more
important than purity. It's based on the assumption that we need to
maintain our current abundance and attempt to increase it. If we slide
backwards into deprivation then everybody will be forced to make bad
decisions just to stay alive. If we can keep growing we'll have extra that
can be devoted to uncompromisingly good decisions. A quote I picked up from
a blog somewhere is, "Parents will slaughter every last panda in the zoo if
their children are starving."

I figure it's more important to ensure that everybody has as much as
possible than to ensure nobody ever gets the bad end of a deal. Thus, my
focus on open, rather than libre.

On Wed, Aug 24, 2016 at 11:18 PM, lkcl . <luke.leighton at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 24, 2016 at 6:13 PM, Matt Maier <blueback09 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Yes, but, that seems like a different issue to me. What you're
> describing is
> > just normal, run-of-the-mill lying.
>
>  welcome to the reasons why i will be registering a CIC not a
> Corporation.  i recommend reading Professor Yunus's book "Creating a
> World without Poverty" cover to cover.  it's awe-inspiring.  i've lost
> my copy.  i should see if there's an e-book version.
>
>  alternatively, you can watch the first five minutes of the online
> documentary, "The Corporation".  Professor Yunus is more inspiring
> though.
>
>
> > Basically, the problem you're describing is that a company offers X with
> > features A, B, and C, while keeping feature D a secret because they know
> > that disclosing feature D would cause people not to buy X.
>
>  it's worse than that: they *say* it's got features A B and C but
> they're lying through their teeth about A and B, and C is designed to
> bring them in vendor-lockin revenue due to illegal and unethical data
> collection which they sell as "feature E" to a whole stack of *even
> more* unethical people.
>
>
> > That problem is why food has nutrition labels on it.
>
>  it's much worse than that.  look up the story of "Usana".  the
> founder was a pharmaceutical chemist, his wife was getting ill despite
> taking supplements.  he tested several (because he had all the
> equipment) and was shocked to find that items labelled "1000mg" had
> like... 4mg *OR LESS* of active ingredient, or they had chemical
> compounds that our bodies simply cannot absorb.
>
>  on further investigation he learned that the FDA's "approval" is
> based on "This Product Is Certified Not To Do Any Harm" - it does
> *Not* say "This Product Has To Contain What It Says On The Label".
>
>  so he set up a *pharmaceutical* grade set of supplements.... fascinating
> story.
>
>
> > That's not directly related to the libre/open paradigm. Whether or not a
> > company makes the recipe for their food public is different from whether
> or
> > not they lie about that food's effect on the body.
> >
> > Choosing to lie to your customers is already a standard question in
> business
> > ethics because people have been grappling with it ever since business was
> > invented.
>
>  i choose to reject that paradigm, the one which says that it's okay
> to lie to people and entrap them in order to get their money.
>
>  and i fundamentally disagree that "that's not the point".  it's the
> ONLY point.  we REALLY ARE talking about ethics, here.  it so happens
> that it's "ethics as applicable to technology" but if we forget that
> and start to focus *exclusively* on "the technology", there's really
> not a lot of point: we're just part of the same "lying to the
> customers to get their money" paradigm.
>
>  can you tell i'm not very impressed with the pathological effects of
> "Articles of Incorporation"? :)
>
> l.
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>
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