December, 2006:

What would be unethical is to unlawfully take and use s/w not licensed to be so obtained/used/shared.

There’s nothing remotely counter survival in making and selling closed source s/w. There’s a choice to use it or not, and that’s about it.

ESR (Eric S. Raymond) would like everyone to think it’s unethical, but he’s simply over promoting a way of life. His way of life.

Closed source s/w has and does help a ton of people to live better lives. Just like open source does.

Society lives and breathes through exchange. You contribute and receive exchange for it. Closed or open source will hardly fit the bill as unethical.

Arguing that society would look much better with only open source s/w is like saying society would look a lot better with only free food, or free plumbing. Saying that non-free food or plumbing is unethical does not work either, as long as these people produce and charge a fair price.

It all comes down to this idea that ESR would seemingly want to see money disappear. Which would bring us waaay back to when you had to swap products & services to exchange with others.

Money was a great evolutionary step, unless you are incompetent and unwilling to produce and like to live by being a freeloader. (It used to be easy to get a night of free food and lodging in earlier days.) A society functions so much better through this idea that money will give you value for your products and services. I never liked the idea of dragging livestock and what nots around.

For example. You cannot travel very well without money. Let’s say you produce a lot of value in one community. It could be said that you have credit with people as you and your products/services are well known. But then as soon as you leave how do you retain that value?

Today’s society could certainly work in theory on open source only. Without any money being charged for software. The problem is that some people make a living coding, and it would be very unethical to stop them from their choice of earning an honest living. Just like it would be to stop a farmer from doing the same. A better way would be to allow for other types of exchanges to freely exist, for those who so choose. The important parts are production and exchange.

For those of us using open source, we should probably be more interested in contributing back, than harassing people about closed source. You offer it and to the degree it is contributed back to that degree it will be successful. Certainly a lot of good is and will continue to come out of open source.

This is one of the dumbest things I’ve heard in a long time!

It has NOTHING to do with the websites, the Internet or anything else.

Take a guy who’s inept at something, anything. Let’s say fishing. He does not know how to attach the hook, that a bait can help or which bait is appropriate at the type of fish. He gets the idea to go fishing to impress his new girlfriend or whatever. He tells her he’s going to bring home some nice fish.

Now let him at it for long enough time and after enough frustration you may notice a quickening of the heart, profuse sweating, and furious tossing around and bashing the equipment. In extreme cases, the ailment can be identified by loud screaming.

Does that mean we have a new “fishing syndrome”?

No, all it means is that the guy is overwhelmed, frustrated or whatever. Nothing a good rest, or a walk cannot fix. Maybe some food and a rest is really what he needs. Then someone showing him how to fish.

Maybe you are at work and you told your tough boss that You’re The Man for the job, but you find there’s something you don’t understand and cannot get it right. As the deadline approaches and you’re still fighting to get it done you may notice a quickening of the heart, profuse sweating, and furious tossing around and bashing the equipment. In extreme cases, the ailment can be identified by loud screaming.

These “syndromes” are nothing but another attempt to make you think you suffer from a syndrome of sorts, but fortunately it’s nothing we can’t fix with the right psychotropic drug treatment. Unfortunately a lot of people have bought into that pseudo science. Which mostly lines someones pockets.

Did you know that during the world war in Britain not a single case of insanity was reported? But somehow here we all suffer from something unheard of 50 years ago. And Somehow it can all be treated with some drug!?

Actually the content of handbook used for billing treatments is voted in. They don’t scientifically discover some ailment but vote it in by popular vote. Yeah, Mouse Rage Syndrome my foot!

Wow!

Now this got me really scared! Some guys who are receiving money from the drug companies are doing suicide interviews to see if our school kids are in risk of committing suicide. Schools in turn receive more money for each kid on drugs!

First off I never thought about suicide as a child, I know of no normal child that has.

Secondly, steering them into evaluating suicide is not what you want to do.

Third, what constitutes a suicide indicator? Well questions like have you ever felt scared? Or uncomfortable in front of people? They offer kids pizza and movie tickets if they take these tests. Which will then label them for life.

Fortunately there is a lot of awareness coming up on these scam artists nationwide.

There is a teen screen link on Youtube. Check it out!

To mine, and many other parents, relief teen screen is running into very strong opposition all over the country and is not doing well at all. Some of the people at the top of teen screen is also being found lying to bodies like the US Congress.