Comment 60 for bug 938180

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RJ Skerry-Ryan (rryan) wrote :

Can I play devil's advocate and propose a thought experiment?

Let's consider sudo. It violates user freedom, because everyone should have access to ring 0, right? No! It implements a policy or contract. The policy is an agreement between the computer users and its administrator. The users have certain permissions about what they can and can't do with the system. sudo is Free software even though it implements this policy. I assume everyone agrees with this.

Another case: Let's say a bank runs on an AGPL software project, GNUKnox. If GNUKnox were truly free, it would allow its users to transfer money from any account to any other account? No. There's a policy / agreement between the bank and its users about how it will execute transfers and manage the user's money.

Where does this leave us with Mixxx and streaming services? The streaming services will allow users to access music they have a subscription for under certain conditions. There's a contract between the user and the service describing those conditions. We have the option to implement that contract to let the user participate in the contract using Mixxx. How is freedom being impinged here where it isn't being impinged in the above two cases?