More on Freedom 0

So, Matt Butcher, Scott Dexter, Tom Chance and myself landed up having a decent discussion on that blog linked below. I'd say that most of the discussion ranged over whether it was coherent to speak of a 'free software ethic' that was as minimal as those in the FOSS camp would want it to be. What does 'minimal' mean in this case? That FOSS injunctions do not address the issue of use of software (Freedom 0 is the freedom to the use the software for any purpose whatsoever), concerning themselves with access to the code, which even when dressed up as 'a question of freedom' are only addressing a rather narrow set of behaviors.

As you will see in my comments in the discussion (which after all, were sparked off by responses to a paper carrying out "a comparative ethical assessment of free software licensing schemes"), I'm not sure that the two questions need to be answered together (or even can be). But this discussion then took us further afield: the value of the copyleft provision for free culture licenses, and the moral rights that artists can (or should) assert with respect to how their art is used.