I am not sure who this guy is, but he seems a little out of this world.
I'm not familiar with his predictions, so can you give a few examples.
This seemed like a far-fetched dystopia when I first read it. Now, Kindle et al. are not far away from this.
I also remember reading some piece from Stallman on software patents, from the eighties or early nineties. Well before software patent trolls, etc.
And then the scenario stated becoming, if not true, the a helluva lot closer. And the irony of Orwell books being removed remotely from Kindle's in 2009 [0] was evident and tied into the dystopia feel of it all.
[0] http://mobile.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18...
Yeah, it wasn't a software patent, but. It's not hard to see something that's happened before and "predict" it could happen again.
Someone else would've likely done the same thing sooner or later.
The problem now is this rampant hostility towards all proprietary software of any form for any purpose. The FSF is still fighting the same pointless war against proprietary operating systems when the real threat is IoT junk, cars, and medical devices full of unauditable code.
sure, someone else would likely have eventually come up with the concept of free software, but would it have missed the critical mass of the early web? the idea that free software didn't play a large part in the modern technology landscape is just wrong.
You should probably hold a slightly lower opinion of your fellow human. We're rather well-known to go after any possibility of free things, and critical mass was more along the lines of the days of Napster (when, hey, FREE MUSIC!)
> If you think he's crazy about a topic just wait 5 years, you'll admit he's right.
2012 → 2017 : yep after Snowden leaks in 2013 that confirmed Microsoft joined PRISM in 2007, the fear of eavesdropping in Skype does not seem unfunded anymore.