sponsorship?

[Michael Vasiliev]

On 05/29/2011 12:39 PM, Hetz Ben Hamo wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I just read this morning that Richard Stallman will not come to Israel
> due to pressure from the Palestinians who sponsor his visit.
> You can read it
> here: http://www.calcalist.co.il/internet/articles/0,7340,L-3519167,00.html?dcRef=ynet
>
I'd have to agree with Eddie here. Richard has given an opinion about,
and is well aware of both the tensions between us and the current
situation. Expecting problems and simply not offering to arrive to
Israel, since he has been here before would've been enough. But he
absolutely had to be led by the nose and help to make a cheesy political
PR stunt out of it, offering, negotiating, agreeing but later canceling
his visit on a short notice. I can hardly believe he expected a
political truce to be called under the umbrage of open source. While
programmers quite easily forget the political aspect of collaborating on
a certain piece of code or a paper, that has never been true with
politicians.

I hate to make this point over and over again this week, but "freedom"
and "freedom of choice" are two very different things, yet the latter is
a contemporary substitute for the former. Surprising is to see something
like that to come from our expert on freedoms, with all his precise
definitions.

--
M.V