{"id":319,"date":"2005-09-08T18:15:00","date_gmt":"2005-09-08T18:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dresan.com\/blog\/?p=319"},"modified":"2005-09-08T18:15:00","modified_gmt":"2005-09-08T18:15:00","slug":"wikipedia-putting-the-free-in-free-encyclopedia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/2005\/09\/08\/wikipedia-putting-the-free-in-free-encyclopedia\/","title":{"rendered":"Wikipedia: Putting the &#8220;free&#8221; in free encyclopedia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Main_Page\">Wikipedia<\/a> featured post is about <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Anarcho-capitalism\">anarcho-capitalism<\/a>, the idea that we should do away with a compulsory state in favor of a society of individuals freely entering into contracts, which would subsume the role of the state while respecting each individual&#8217;s sovereignty.  <\/p>\n<p>While I personally am not convinced we should give up on the umbrella of state as long as we live in a rain of competing states, hostile ideologies and national disasters, the anarcho-capitalist Non-Aggression Axiom and its corollary, The Prohibition of Initiation of Force, are two maxims I try to live and judge by.<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, though, I think the Wikipedia could be seen as a product of an opposite stance, that of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gnu.org\/gnu\/manifesto.html\">free software movement<\/a>, whose ultimate goal would be to eliminate software as property through a compulsory government which disallowed certain kinds of contracts.  <\/p>\n<p>Certainly that&#8217;s not very anarcho-capitalist in its reliance on the state.  However &#8230; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gnu.org\/\">the minds behind the GPL<\/a> aren&#8217;t dumb guys (with a few <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stallman.org\/harry-potter.html\">exceptions<\/a>), and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gnu.org\/licenses\/licenses.html#GPL\">GNU General Public License<\/a> is a great example of how anarcho-capitalism and free software can work together.  <\/p>\n<p>In an anarcho-capitalist world, everyone that <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kool-Aid#.22Drinking_the_Kool-Aid.22\">drank the GPL Kool-Aid<\/a> would get the whole benefit of the free software world; people entering into non-free contracts would lose out because the &#8220;hidden costs&#8221; of enforcement built into our traditional intellectual property law would be spelled out, in the open, in the contract.  <\/p>\n<p>And if people actually saw what intellectual property law <em>really<\/em> cost them, no-one would swallow it.<\/p>\n<p>-the Centaur<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s Wikipedia featured post is about anarcho-capitalism, the idea that we should do away with a compulsory state in favor of a society of individuals freely entering into contracts, which&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-webworks","ratio-2-1","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}