Background

For those completely unfamiliar, YouTube is an advertiser-supported service that allows users to upload and download videos for free. In a world where personal upload bandwidth is not yet remotely sufficient for most individuals to self-publish even text and images, this serves a fairly valuable purpose. Although to start it seemed to be publishing primarily unauthorized copies of already published material, it seems to have matured to the point where it consists primarily of home clips of people recording their pets, their vacations, their silliness (or outright stupidity), and their personal accomplishments.

by Zed Pobre, January 7, 2005

Richard Stallman did an interview with KernelTrap that is a fascinating read. I agree with most of his philosophy, and am involved in the Free Software movement myself, partly through my contributions to the Debian GNU/Linux distribution, and partly through bits of code that I have written and released under the GPL. I reached one portion of the interview, however, that highlighted where I have to part ways:

I once ended up in a discussion with a strongly pro-Israel LSU REU student named Uri Andrews who attempted to convince me of the absolute purity of the Israeli people. Since I felt we weren't getting anywhere without supporting materials, I asked him to write up his positions and view of history in E-mail, where I could take the leisure to examine matters more fully. He did so, and then seemed quite surprised when I made point-by-point responses based upon what I could find in my own research on the history of Israel, and declined to follow up on the discussion except verbally.

My reply is sadly lacking in references, and I wouldn't quote from it, but I've decided to make my reply (quoting his message) public, for those who might find it interesting.