On 29 May 2010 10:18, Raymond Wan r.wan@aist.go.jp wrote:
So, no one is picky on you specifically or your enthusiasm...it's just (AFAIK) not on topic to this list...
Indeed. Hence my joke about the immorality of PHP ;-)
Mediawiki is free software, per the free software definition[1]:
* The freedom to run the program, for any purpose. * The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish. * The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor. * The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others.
Note that the first of these precludes moral restrictions on reuse of the program. You may consider this problematic, but freedom is considered by many to be the more important moral imperative.
Discussion of use is not entirely off-topic here - witness the recent discussion on the efficacy of using a WYSIWYG editor on an intranet installation of MediaWiki. But again, that addresses pure utility, rather than moral considerations per se.
So It's not clear how moral considerations are relevant to the list, if not entirely off-topic.
[1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
- d.