RE: [gentoo-amd64] Re: How To Play WMV (thread drift -slaveryware)

[Bob Young]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: richard.j.fish@×××××.com [mailto:richard.j.fish@×××××.com]On
> Behalf Of Richard Fish
> Sent: Friday, September 29, 2006 3:18 PM
> To: gentoo-amd64@l.g.o
> Subject: Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: How To Play WMV (thread drift
> -slaveryware)
>
>
> On 9/29/06, Bob Young <BYoung@××××××××××.com> wrote:
> > > But they *do* accurately reflect the relationship between vendors and
> > > users from Duncan's viewpoint.  Your viewpoint is obviously different,
> > > but doesn't mean yours is the only "true" one.
> >
> > Oh please, spare me the relative truth crap. You can argue all
> you want that
> > it's true from Duncan's perspective because that's the way it *feels* to
> > him. In the end that's just feel good rationalization and total
> bullshit.
>
> Ok, so now you are saying that Duncan's opinion is wrong.  You don't
> respect Duncan's opinion, but you expect us to respect yours?  I call
> hypocrite.

Nice strawman, I've never said, or implied that I didn't respect Duncan's
opinion. In fact just the opposite, I've specifically told him that I
believe he has thought a lot about this, and that I believe he is sincere.
Thinking that someone is wrong, or believing that they are using unjustified
terms to express their opinion is not disrespect.

> > conveniently avoids the confrontational point, namely that
> there isn't any
> > hard concrete logic and reason to support or justify the usage
> of words such
> > as slaveryware and freedomware.
>
> Hard concrete logic: *everybody* has the right to modify and
> distribute open source software.  How is that *not* freedom?

As far as *modification* goes I've already admitted that technically you're
correct that *is* a freedom, however to equate it with the freedoms that
people have given their life to protect is to do a great disservice to the
word freedom.

As to distribution, I can show you literally thousands of examples of
freeware and shareware that I can distribute legally, and they don't have
source code available, so that's not an advantage of OSS.

> Oh, wait, I can hear you now: "but that is no different than with
> closed source".  You already know the counter argument: with closed
> source, the only people who can provide the patch are those who own
> the source.

The point is that even when someone has the "freedom" to have someone else
fix a bug in an OSS app, %99.999 of the time, people wait until it's done by
the original developer/maintainer. Since that's the case, %99.999 of the
time there is no difference between the way bugs are handled under OSS and
the way they are handled under CSS. Given that, are CSS users really
"enslaved"...No they are not.

When was the last time that you personally submitted a *patch* for some open
source app/utility/driver?

> With open source, anybody can produce and send a patch to
> the user.

No, No, NO! *anybody* can't! and that's the point. You're scenario is nice
in theory, but it doesn't actually work in the real world. I'm a software
engineer, and I have enough trouble debugging and fixing code that I'm
familiar with and have written my self. In the past, I use to write graphics
drivers for a living, how successful and efficient do you think I would be
at troubleshooting a problem with a database application? Answer: I would
totally suck at it.

Another example: It would take me a very long time to fix a problem with a
SCSI driver, compared to someone who works on SCSI drivers regularly. Would
*you* want to pay for the many extra hours of troubleshooting due to my
inexperience with <fill in blank> type of code?

All code is not the same, and software engineers are not all
interchangeable. That's one reason why this "users are *free* to have anyone
modify/fix an open source app/utility/driver" is ssuch total crap.

--
Regards
Bob Young


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