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How Richard Stallman Describes Animals Eating Another Animal (That's What the Term “Ecosystem” Implies)
In the past 5 nights the Christmas Day Bird showed up 80% of the nights (4 out of 5). Tomorrow will be the year's last day (today it is day 364 of 2025) and we hope to still see this bird every day. Yesterday while walking around Town we sadly saw not one but two dead birds (just like 'ours'); the latter was being eaten by a crow.
When asked why to avoid* the term "ecosystem" Richard Stallman - via GNU - explains: "It is inadvisable to describe the free software community, or any human community, as an “ecosystem,” because that word implies the absence of ethical judgment.
"The term “ecosystem” implicitly suggests an attitude of nonjudgmental observation: don't ask how what should happen, just study and understand what does happen. In an ecosystem, some organisms consume other organisms. In ecology, we do not ask whether it is right for an owl to eat a mouse or for a mouse to eat a seed, we only observe that they do so. Species' populations grow or shrink according to the conditions; this is neither right nor wrong, merely an ecological phenomenon, even if it goes so far as the extinction of a species.
"By contrast, beings that adopt an ethical stance towards their surroundings can decide to preserve things that, without their intervention, might vanish—such as civil society, democracy, human rights, peace, public health, a stable climate, clean air and water, endangered species, traditional arts…and computer users' freedom."
Similarly he says: "I don't use the term "Native Americans" to refer to indigenous people in the United States because that term has a prior meaning: people born in the United States. I am one of them. I am aware of the North American history of colonialism: massacres, broken treaties, and forcing children into boarding schools. My rejection of the term "Native Americans" does not seek to excuse any of those wrongs. I do not intend any disrespect by using the term "indigenous peoples" for those groups of people. It is a generally accepted term, and I expect they agree that they are among the world's indigenous peoples." █
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* Avoiding things isn't negativism but a rejection of deception and corruption (there are many other things to avoid; also GAFAM and other companies to avoid, even patents on software and nefarious things those companies pursue to hurt society and plunder society).