> It literally goes back to Plato and arguments about how you can be free if you're not free to make other people slaves.
He may have been the first (recorded) philosopher to make that point. But he's not exactly the last to think about this, and the enlightenment was largely about finding a good answer to it.
Basically (hyper-abridged version), the answer is self-ownership, and self-ownership precludes selling yourself into slavery, because once you've sold yourself, you don't own yourself and therefore cannot accept consideration for the sale, which then is invalid (a sale without consideration isn't a sale, it's a give (or take!) away). It does not preclude contracting a limited commitment (eg. to do work for renumeration), nor does it preclude accepting conditions in such a contract.
In short: A definition of Freedom is wrong (or at least sub-optimal, bigoted, biased) if it can not pertain to all humans at the same time without creating a paradox.
At the risk of being down-voted (but less so due to this very sentence), the quote below can be true for everyone and I believe it to be very important Interpreting it I would say that a creator is free to choose a license, any attempt to try and force the use of another license upon a creator than that of his choosing will lead to paradoxes in freedom. I.e., such a definition can not be applied to all humans (for example: I can force conditions upon you by which you should share your work, you can do so to me and you can they force me to not share my work or at least under arbitrary conditions):
“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
-John Galt (Ayn Rand; Atlas Shrugged, which is a nice book if you like the philosophy of freedom)
With regards to forcing "a mind" I love this piece of literature: [0]
Do not open your mouth to tell me that your mind has convinced you of your right to force my mind. Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins. When you declare that men are irrational animals and propose to treat them as such, you define thereby your own character and can no longer claim the sanction of reason—as no advocate of contradictions can claim it. There can be no “right” to destroy the source of rights, the only means of judging right and wrong: the mind.
He may have been the first (recorded) philosopher to make that point. But he's not exactly the last to think about this, and the enlightenment was largely about finding a good answer to it.
Basically (hyper-abridged version), the answer is self-ownership, and self-ownership precludes selling yourself into slavery, because once you've sold yourself, you don't own yourself and therefore cannot accept consideration for the sale, which then is invalid (a sale without consideration isn't a sale, it's a give (or take!) away). It does not preclude contracting a limited commitment (eg. to do work for renumeration), nor does it preclude accepting conditions in such a contract.