> "Software vendors won’t usually be inserting spyware into their wares."
JFC. I'm sorry, but this "article" can be dismissed on that alone. Software vendors already are inserting spyware into their "wares." Did the author do any research?
JFC. I'm sorry, but this "article" can be dismissed on that alone. Software vendors already are inserting spyware into their "wares." Did the author do any research?
> The Free Software coterie is fond of insisting that words mean what they say they mean, and that is a profound misunderstanding of the nature of language. Such linguistic naïveté is not an asset in pursuing political goals.
Uh, take your snooty diaeresis and shove it where l'accent aigu don't shine?
Defining terms is par for the course in the general intellectual sphere. Academic papers, data sheets for microchips and ISO standards for programming languages all define terms and insist on using them in the defined way.
If that's not enough, there is outright misinformed claptrap:
> With all that said, the intent of the adherents to the term Free Software is to seek to promote certain freedoms for the users of software, by depriving the creators of software (at least in the United States) of the rights afforded them by Congress under Article I, Section VIII, Clause VIII.
What? Creators of software are deprived of freedoms by the Free Software Foundation? Not simply encouraged to copyleft their software, while retaining all rights to license it in other ways at the same time?
Crazy.
More abhorrent than that is the position that free software should be done in such a way that nobody claims credit, justified by a glib quote from Harry Truman. Harry Truman was a politician and, for a time, president of the United States. Presidents rely on other people to execute plans, and implicitly get credit for everything good that happens during their reign anyway, as well as blame for the bad. So it's easy to make seemingly magnanimous statements of that sort. I would rather say that the absence of a blame environment is more conductive to getting things done, rather than the absence of credit.
Software is a creative work made by specific authors, who undeniably deserve credit. Credit transcends even copyright. To falsely claim authorship of a work in the public domain isn't a copyright violation, yet it is plagiarism. It will forever be plagiarism, even when the work is millennia old. Falsely claiming to have produced a cave painting that is 30,000 years old is plagiarism. Some unknown prehistoric person is credited with that.
The western intellectual tradition is heavily steeped in credit. Theories, equations, industrial processes, objects and phenomena in nature, and other entities connected to ideas and discovery, are often named after individuals. Maxwell's equations, Einstein's relativity, Rayleigh scattering, Bell's palsy, Fermat's Last Theorem, Pascal's Triangle, Haber-Bosch process for ammonia production, Early effect in transistors ... credit, credit everywhere in STEM, philosophy, the humanities.
I find it obnoxiously odious for someone to dare suggest that free software developers should disrobe themselves of claims to credit. In free software, credit is your only reward, more often than not.
Oh, he's one of that kind of cunts. Someone with an axe to grind against FLOSS because he obviously hasn't studied history of copyright in addition to his misunderstanding of FLOSS.
Look at the giant tantrum basically every software vendor is throwing over the quite reasonable restrictions that the EU placed on spyware. I have to tell users about the spyware I'm inflicting on them and ask for consent first? End of the world.
But hey, if this guy's really a software architect then he might've cured my Impostor Syndrome, so I guess he has my thanks.