Re: <nettime> Interview with Richard Stallman in New Left Review (September-October 2018)

[mp <mp@aktivix.org>]

On 01/11/2018 08:00, Carsten Agger wrote:
> So yes: Software should be available free of charge - and, on the other
> hand, those who can should take part in its funding, because with no
> funding it won't happen.

Software can only be used if you have access to hardware.

Hardware can - at least so far, it seems - only be produced if land is
grabbed, trees are cut, rivers are dammed, mountains are mined and
valleys are made highways and so on. Not to mention disposing of it
again (think underage children disassembling toxic stuff).

That is the first and biggest price of software (use): labour, minerals
and other materials, and energy: _pollution_

And those who mostly pay that price do often not give a fuck about
software: they'd rather live in a world without it, a world of trees and
bees.

James Scott writes about peasant uprising that one of the first points
of attacks commonly are the offices of documentation/paper holding
bureaucracies: there where power is preserved and managed. That, today,
would be server farms, I suppose.

So, should we really fight to get 'free' software (when it actually
entails destruction and let's be honest, in great part serves to satisfy
our own screen addictions and brain candy obsessions, or, as they call
it, intellectual pursuits)?
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