[not entirely OT] proper terms for grades of freedom

[Oleg Goldshmidt]

On 6/10/10, Nadav Har'El <nyh at math.technion.ac.il> wrote:

> Yes, I always find it amusing that when hearing about the "Four Freedoms",
> Linux geeks think first of Stallman ;-)
>
> In his January 1941 speech, almost a year before Pearl Harbor, FDR told
> congress that the time for non-interventionism is over. That Germany is out
> to conquer the whole world, and to destroy the four freedoms that Americans
> hold dear.

Two, actually (freedom of speech and freedom of religion). He
"invented" two others (freedom from want and freedom from fear) for
current political reasons - note how even the grammar ("freedom of"
vs. "freedom from") is different.

Funnily, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms refers to "The
Free Software Definition, often called "the four freedoms" within the
free software community", but not the other way around.

It should be noted that the Europeans have their own "four freedoms"

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms_(European_Union)

and both Europeans and Americans talk about the "Fifth Freedom". Note
how Europeans concentrate on economic freedoms, the EU is not
concerned with FDR's freedoms *inside* the EU. EU did not have a
foreign policy mandate or infrastructure until very very recently, so
it's not "isolationism", it simply wasn't their business.

But this is getting more and more off topic. Thanks, everybody, I
think we can close this thread, there were some very good historical
references here (BIOS, UNIX, M$, FDR, etc.).

-- 
Oleg Goldshmidt | oleg at goldshmidt.org