Re: [tlug] Tux is now in Tokyo ! who wants to get it ?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Joshua B. writes:
 > On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 1:24 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull<stephen@example.com> wrote:
 > > Ah, so "Ricky" buys drugs at Canadian Pharmacy?  That would explain a
 > > lot....
 > 
 > So now you're dissing legitimate Canadian generics,

No, of course not.[1]  I'm dissing spammers, but even more so I'm dissing
illegitimate self-appointed guardians of privilege in the name of
freedom.  Only a truly tiny elite cares about "software freedom", and
AFAICS *proprietary* software has none of the social and political
implications of *government suppression* of speech.  So all of the
arguments for software freedom that apply to the general population
are purely economic, and that general population is quite clearly
unwilling to pay the cost of open source[sic] in many many markets.

N.B.  Those costs would be huge.  Just look at Senator Proxmire's Hall
of Shame list of "Golden Fleece" research projects, and that's on the
NSF budget alone.  Can you imagine the cost in useless projects and
generally unusable design if say Richard Stallman were responsible
for allocating the entire budget of the (currently proprietary)
software industry?  I wouldn't mind a billion-dollar budget for
development of Emacs (even though I would get none of it).

How 'bout y'all?<wink>

Footnotes: 
[1]  I know, I know, but if you're gonna leave soapboxes lying around
on the sidewalk I'm sure as shootin'[2] gonna jump up on one!

[2]  Now Playing: Pure Prairie League "Two Lane Highway".