Verily I say unto thee, that Goblin spake thusly:
> 1. I actually believe that DRM is a "necessary evil" since people
> can't be trusted to act responsibly and obey the copyright laws
> (rightly or wrongly there exists copyright laws and law is not
> something we can "cherry pick" the bits we like)
That's a dangerous attitude, since it promotes the idea that laws should
never be challenged, no matter how unjust. There are laws in various
countries that (sometimes) violently oppress people. Should we just
ignore that?
IMO, laws like the DMCA, copyrights in general, and in particular
illicit devices such as DRM, are an unacceptable subjugation of our
ability to exchange knowledge in an environment of academic and cultural
freedom. Note: this does /not/ preclude people being paid for their
work. There is more besides the false dichotomy of Draconian
restrictions to secure an income from the creative and academic arts.
> 2. I support proprietary software that offers value for money and is
> "fit for purpose" - check my blog if you doubt that.
That's fine for people who value convenience over autonomy and freedom,
but sooner or later those same people who displayed such apathy towards
their freedom, will find themselves greatly inconvenienced by the lack
of it. Think "Abandonware", for example. As an ex-Amigan, I'm sure you
must know what I'm talking about.
> 3. I don't believe in a 100% FOSS computing model. I don't believe
> it could work.
But the fact is it /already/ works, as I, and many others who only use
Free Software can testify.
You seem to be conceding defeat without even trying.
> 4. I don't want mass migration to the Linux platform (lest we end up
> with a Windows type product) and I would like to see (in my ideal
> world) an equal balance of market penetration between all platforms.
On this point I strongly agree, but with the single caveat that each of
those disparate platforms should nonetheless be licensed freely. From a
/technical/ standpoint, there are many reasons to support a diverse
ecology of computing platforms - innovation being the main one. There is
also the question of security, since viruses do not propagate easily
within a heterogeneous environment (another reason to avoid Mono, and
yes even Java). Finally, more choice means better competition, better
prices, and more customer satisfaction (the long tail).
Again, this would not preclude earning a profit from the sale of this
freely licensed software.
> 5. I believe "software freedom" should extend to developers in that
> they are free to release their software as they please (sell it if
> they wish - point 3).
Well this is /already/ true, so no such extension is required.
However, be aware that if you, as a developer, exercise /your/ "freedom"
to subjugate /others'/ freedom, then you are not really exercising a
right of freedom at all, but actually an abuse of power.
>From a practical perspective, freedom is not really freedom at all,
unless it is /protected/ from subjugation. This is the essence of
democracy, the general principle that you are free to do anything you
want, /except/ cause harm to others. So it is with the GPL. The BSD does
/not/ offer this protection, and allows software to /become/ subjugated.
Proprietary software /begins/ and /ends/ with the principle of
subjugation. By choosing either a non-free or unprotected license for
your work, you are only giving yourself freedom by taking it away from
others.
/Selling/ software, or anything else, is irrelevant to this point.
Freely licensed works can be, and /are/, sold all the time. One need not
subjugate others in order to earn a living from creative or academic arts.
> 6. Whilst I don't know the view of Roy or anyone else in the FOSS in
> regards to this point, I would like to add that I am completely
> against piracy 100% no questions asked.
That's a fallacy, since this assumes copyright is morally defensible,
and thus dissent against those laws is not. This is essentially the same
argument as point 1. Note that dissent is not synonymous with crime.
> 7. I don't believe MONO is a patent trap
It is a patent minefield, but then so is all other software. The
difference here is that the /patentor/ is one with a documented
agressive agenda of opposition to GNU/Linux and Free Software. That
isn't true, to anywhere near the same extent, with /other/ proprietary
software vendors.
> but I am against it because IMO its another example (c#) of the
> de-skilling of the coder in favor of more user friendly high-level
> languages.
I disagree. Although I believe it /is/ essential to become proficient at
lower level languages /first/, in order to get a more complete
understanding of how the system really works, and to understand how
various /higher/ level language abstractions relate to that system, so
they can be verified for optimisation and security, and even customised
and extended, the benefits of higher level languages are greater
portability and faster production. This is an especially important
consideration for the commercial products you seem to favour, but can
also be of great benefit to Free Software that might otherwise stagnate,
if the complexity of the program is greater than the available
development resources.
> I do have other reasons for not wanting an involvement with MONO, but
> thats probably the main one.
My main reason is that it spreads adoption of Microsoft's standards and
development paradigm, which it then abuses to dominate the market, thus
excluding other platforms. This would be bad enough taken in isolation,
but consider that the company which benefits most from this arrangement
is one of the world's most disreputable, and the outcome is totally
unacceptable.
> Is it so wrong to look to the past and highlight the days of the A500
> and Devpac2 as examples of talented coders?
Bare-metal programming was an exciting challenge, back in the pioneering
days of the so-called Golden Age, where it was absolutely necessary to
squeeze every last hertz from the processor.
But times change.
These days it's more important to meet the deadline, or "release early
and often", and to produce code that is actually /maintainable/ through
many generations ... *and* hardware architecture changes.
Assembly won't give you that. High level languages will.
But if you still yearn for a taste of the old days, try this:
http://www.menuetos.net
> I thought that was the remit of the Windows user who blindly supports
> the platform without even trying anything else.
You forget that, thanks to Microsoft's monopoly, it's highly unlikely
that any given GNU/Linux user has never at least tried Windows, since it
comes preinstalled on nearly every PC in the world.
--
K.
http://slated.org
.----
| "The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which
| the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf
| denounces him for the same act, as the destroyer of liberty.
| Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of
| the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today
| among human creatures." ~ Abraham Lincoln
`----
Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.26.8-57.fc8
14:34:40 up 65 days, 18:32, 5 users, load average: 0.05, 0.04, 0.00
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