Are you a Real Libertarian, or a ROYAL Libertarian?
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I like a lot of the technical topics here, but I find the socio-political views I encounter largely limited to only one narrow perspective (with which I almost always disagree).
In fact it goes the opposite direction, and says in essence that individual people are too damn stupid to do what's in their common interest. So instead of letting you (the new recipient of GPL source) do whatever you want with that source like a BSD-style license would, restricts your ability to certain things with that source, all in the name of the greater good.
Even FSF recognizes that such a license is not the single useful tool in their overall goal of advancing Free Software, which is why there are other GNU licenses.
But GPL at least is socialist in the actual Marxist sense; people can take if they need it, but have to contribute back as well (even if that "contribution" is limited to not taking it proprietary capitalists), and can certainly contribute changes back to the commons in accordance with their ability.
Now, the anti-IP libertarian position would be in favor of neither the MIT/BSD nor the GPL approach, but simply in favor of abolishing copyright entirely. Then you would inherently have the right to modify and distribute any software in your possession, and wouldn't need a copyleft license to ensure you retain that right. However, so long as copyright exists, the GPL seems like a pragmatic approach to mitigate its damage.
But either way, keep in mind that the lawsuit you posit can only happen if the changes you speak of are not themselves licensed under a FOSS license. With GPL this is effectively impossible; you can't link GPL code with proprietary code except with certain limited restrictions (or maybe it was can't distribute, but either way no downstream should be affected by your proprietary changes). In this case GPL restricts your individual freedom even to write proprietary modifications and use them for the good of the whole commons.
Because of the "individual freedom" nature of MIT/BSD licenses, you can legally link BSD and proprietary code. If that ends up being a problem for someone else, well, so be it.
One essay on the subject: http://www.freenation.org/a/f31l1.html
These libertarians would still see GPL as a non-libertarian license then. GPL, like other "copyleft" licenses, depends upon strong copyright law to work at all. GPL without copyright is just public domain, and not GPL at all.
BSD/MIT-style licenses, on the other hand, barely use copyright at all. Most of the verbiage is to disclaim warranty and ensure the license itself remains with the source, the only thing mentioned about copyright itself is a simple grant that modifications may be made.
I would still argue that GPL's intended effect (that source remain open and available for inspection) is achievable only with copyright, while never achievable with BSD/MIT (which can always be taken proprietary again, even without copyright law).
So in that guise GPL (w/ copyright) is more concerned with society overall (i.e. having access to source), even to the exclusion of some individual freedoms. Additionally these restrictions cannot be enforced without some version of an IP regime which makes it even more non-libertarian.
You're right that the GPL has the additional affirmative requirement to actually release source code, which is using copyright law to compel a specific action. And yeah, that does seem to come from a certain collective-good concern: GNU want people to not only legally be able to modify software, but to be able to do so in practice too, so have written some things to try to make sure that's the case (the LGPL "users must be able to swap out the library" requirement is another example).
I wonder if there are any licenses that have the "viral" licensing terms but impose no other requirements. CC-BY-SA comes to mind, but isn't widely applied to software.
If the program comes obfuscated through a binary only release, such act would simply be a technical means to create a restriction. The restriction still infringe on peoples right to be left alone.
This is nothing new. Debt bondage tried to create a technical mean to recreate slavery, and it also infringed on peoples right to be left alone (freedom from slavery).
A key aspect of GPL is that you automatically find yourself at compliance with the license if you leave people alone who want to use, modify and share the program. Problems only arrive when one start to select which parts of the program to withhold, or when one start to use legal or hardware restrictions to interfere with peoples rights. Compliance is thus easy, and the only hard part is to avoid the urge to exploit people rights for profit.
Negative and positive rights (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights) are a critical part of Libertarianism.
Negative rights are permissions not to do things,
or entitlements to be left alone. Often the distinction
is invoked by libertarians who think of a negative right
as an entitlement to "non-interference" such as a
right against being assaulted.
Rights considered negative rights may include civil and
political rights such as freedom of speech, private property,
freedom from violent crime, freedom of worship, habeas corpus,
a fair trial, and freedom from slavery.
Do you have a source for this claim? It seems quite extraordinary. Anecdotally, everybody I've ever met in technology who has claimed to be on "the high side of the autistic spectrum" has in reality merely been an average-intellect asshole who: a) thinks he's much smarter than he is, and assumes his inability to "get along" is because others are jealous of his abilities or just don't understand what it's like to be "on the spectrum"; b) is looking for excuses for his own boorish behavior.
The "theory of mind" is a known challenge (not an impossibility) with those with autism [1]. This is basically the degree of awareness a person has on the fact that other persons have their own thoughts, prejudices, levels of knowledge, etc. Essentially the idea, can you put yourself in the mind or worldview of someone else?
With the types of libertarianism followed in the U.S. there is simply no need to care what other people think: The idea is that the rules are simple and easy to follow, and as long as they're rigidly applied anything that happens must be fair.
When you combine the difficulty of understanding why other people feel the way they do, with the very real awareness of how intelligent and knowledgeable our prototypical tech libertarian is, it starts to make sense why they believe that the outcome of these rules are fair. They are able to motivate to work, they are able to produce good work (at least, in their opinion), they follow the rules that respect others' things; why can't you?
When you scale that up to the idea that a society of people all trying their best to do good work and live by the rules must obtain the ideal outcome, the appeal is more understandable, if not actually obvious. Why should the government tell a person how to live or what to do, when that person obviously knows best what's good for them, especially when government in general has long historical examples of failure. Even if you point out successes of regulation, the rejoinder is simply that such successes could be replicated with the simple set of rules, if people would only follow them. And either way, how difficult could it be to make rules that are good at an individual level also be good at a national level?
The problem with the failure to understand the theory of mind is probably most pronounced with that last question... a difference in scale has always been a difference in kind, but how can you perceive that what's best for society is not always what's best for one person, when you can hardly understand that other individual people are not mirror images of oneself, let alone understanding societies at a macro level?
All the same, this is all just a bunch of supposition. I am sure there are better explanations (though I should hope that it's not considered surprising that one's ability for empathy, sympathy and theory of mind may play a role in one's natural political tendencies).
[1] http://www.autism.com/index.php/understanding_theoryofmind
And I would recommend Jonathan Haidt's book "The Righteous Mind"(if I gave offence, I apologize) for how differing political mindsets define fairness - it was quite illuminating to me when I read it.
To talk about technical topics, you need some experience and expertise, and those are a lot harder to come by. So the percentage of those folks declines as the overall audience grows.
What about comparing under-privileged from 1917 to 1988 in USA vs. Russia?
Do you have any counter-examples?
Edit: And until the collapse of European communism, the answer to your first example is North Korea.
For example, I’m about as socialist as it gets, but I think free markets are an enormously powerful and efficient tools and that, in the grand scheme of things, they have been a huge net-win for the world. I just don’t think they are perfect and can solve every problem (better than alternative solutions could). That’s all.
Similar arguments apply to other things that are near and dear to libertarians’ hearts.
To me libertarianism is lazy extrapolating.
Remember that Marx's "Socialism" was the utopian part that came after "Communism" where people would simply contribute what they could willingly, and take only what they needed gratefully.
Like other utopian fantasies this has never been accomplished on any large scale in any society anywhere.
While I certainly agree with you that free-market capitalism is much better macroeconomics, it's important to remember that just as the military is not the end-all/be-all of "winning wars" (just look at Iraq or Vietnam for proof), neither is capitalism the sole societal device needed for "the general welfare".
If nothing else, government has a big role to play in ensuring that vigorous competition actually is present in a free market (witness the disaster of having a few large banks "too big to fail" due to previous deregulation). They also ensure that "externalities" in operating a given business are not charged to the public at large. Government has also typically proven much better at helping to provide things the public needs that don't have short-term profit potential, yet eventually prove necessary for a stronger economy. Free public education, extensive infrastructure, etc. in the Western democracies is a very large reason why the entrepreneurs can rely on there even being available a workforce with the needed knowledge, skills and abilities (to use an HR term).
Just like anything else it's possible to have too much government, but that's essentially axiomatic.
Here's the thing, if Libertarians actually stayed true to the underlying principle of Libertarianism (the sovereignty of the individual over his own person, body and labor), and also stayed honest about what it means to have a free market (which follows from individual sovereignty over their person and labor), then I would become an ardent supporter. Unfortunately, as this article points out, most libertarians completely betray these principles when they argue for 100% sovereign rights over land and any other of the finite resources of this planet. If you understand the free-market, and you looked at it honestly, then you would realize that land ownership (defined as ownership in perpetuity) is completely antithetical to the free market, because you can essentially buy an infinite amount of something (perpetual ownership) for a finite cost.
In my opinion, a true Libertarian would realize that some things are part of The Commons, and by necessity we need to figure out a communal way for managing The Commons. If we want the free market to manage the commons, then we have to first treat it like the commons (e.g. we are all owners, and are all owed a share of the ground rent).
To better phrase it: I feel that the problems being solved with software on this community, while valuable, are typically addressed at other geeks, upper-middle class consumers, entrepreneurs, and the startup community.
I think we can agree that nearly no discussions on this site center around using our technical expertise at solving the problems facing those who are impoverished, ill, unemployed, discriminated-against, and/or facing extreme difficulty accessing the sort of quality of life many of us enjoy. Much of the solutions here have either low relevance or high barriers of entry (be it cost, technology, or educational background) for that population.
I'm seeking a community, be it a hackerspace, online community, conference, or similar that focuses on solutions that are driven more by social impact than profit.
While I disagree with libertarians on many issues, I did not mean to say that they do not consider these problems. I apologize
Why geeks, upper-middle-class, etc? That's where the perception of easy money is, and you see a lot of it here because this is one of the target audiences.
Why startup community or fellow geeks? There is a mantra to solve a problem you have, which means there are a lot of geek- or startup-related apps.
I would also ask you to believe that there are many people who are working on products outside of the "consumer app" space that doesn't advertise, per se, on this site.
Libertarians, as much as most other political thinkers (of non-Machiavelli type) care about roughly the same thing: well-being of people. It just so happens that the libertarian discourse is usually concentrated around rather deep root causes: unjust property laws, the seizure of power and wealth by the elite, obstacles built by elites that prevent people from producing their own subsistence.
This is a bit different from, let's call it, philanthropic discourse that usually concentrates on more immediate problems, e.g. providing hunger relief or better education in affected regions. These problems can be very serious and long-term (like elimination of diseases that may take decades) but usually are not about principal changes in the structure of the society.
There are, of course, other schools of thought that offer deep social changes to help people live better. But a significant number of geeks is attracted by libertarian ideas because they are so minimalist (as compared to e.g. socialism, as seen in much of Europe) and so pro-freedom (as compared to e.g. corporate etatism as seen e.g. in Singapore or Russia).
On topic: unfortunately, I don't know about a philanthropic geek community hub. My philanthropic activity is limited to monetary donations. But you could ask IT people from philanthropic projects, e.g. watsi.com; probably they know where like-minded people congregate.
What are your opinions of the article's arguments?
No worries, try CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR.
(NPR is one of the more accurate news organizations in the US for a reason, though.)
You're serious. Wow.
There was an actual "programmer privilege" submission. Twice.
The article is by a geoist, or Georgist. Those people are no more true libertarians than they are true Scotsmen. Or at least that's how it is according to the libertarians that do not agree with their principles.
If you're looking for social justice and community-based governance, you would be better served by hanging out with an-soc (or socialist anarchist) proponents, and then the an-caps (capitalist anarchists) will mock you for your beliefs.
If libertarianism seems like a narrow perspective to you, you might want to examine it from a different angle. Freed from the bonds of actually having to agree with anyone to accomplish something, libertarians can and will believe in almost anything that sounds even remotely plausible, then defend that well past the Godwinning of the thread. The end of a libertarian thread is actually when Somalia comes up, not Hitler.
In any case, the ability to argue endlessly over an irrelevant topic and always be correct, regardless of any findings of fact is strangely attractive to people with an engineering temperament. You see, the more government looks like a problem, the more tempting it is to try to solve it. And with more solutions proposed, the more tempting it is to argue over them.
And how many times have you heard a naive younger developer say, "Wouldn't it be easier to scrap the enormous messy kludge we have and start over from scratch?"
So I don't think you will easily find such a community unless you go out of your way to create one yourself, and police it rigorously with a NO POLITICS rule.
The problem I think you may be having here is the conflation of "I don't want to be part of any community fuck-you-got-mine" with "I want to have control over how I give back to my community and what community I identify with".
In a master stroke, when the Kings of Scots granted feudal titles to existing lords who controlled lands, who were inevitably potential rivals, they granted them feudal rights over different lands to those they actually occupied - ensuring long struggles between the lords that meant they wouldn't pose a threat to the kings.
I sure as hell don't. I talk politics plenty, but I haven't said "I am a ..." since probably highschool.
If you are already talking politics, then just tell people what you think about relevant issues. It makes for a better conversation anyway.
But I agree with your main point. Unless you have a good reason to accept a label, don't. It generally leads to poorer thinking.
I happen to share yours... maybe someday.
The downside is that, as others have pointed out, focusing on individual identity and personal beliefs hampers meaningful political organization since it requires a certain ideological smoothing and compromise.
Why should it be any business to the government what you are doing with your land (as long as it is not illegal)? I am not even sure the government should have the right to judge the value of any land.
I can understand Paine's argument. And for that I think it is not unreasonable that a light tax be assessed to land ownership. But today's property taxes are far too high.