Editorial

Wired: "If we're still in the race in a few months, I think you'll see a tremendous amount of development."

Wouldn't it be great if Dean and Clark went after Viacom, ClearChannel and Time-Warner, instead of the tiny companies that make blogging and social networking tools.

I find myself hoping they get their asses kicked, hard. I don't expect much of Bush, but I doubt seriously that he would undermine the mostly American software industry by competing with it with free software. Makes the Dems' pitch about exporting American high-tech jobs to India fairly hollow (NH is a high-tech state, so it has been an issue).

One of the reasons American programmers aren't competing here (in America) is that users expect to get software for free, and in that environment little new stuff gets created, and we have to keep creating to justify the greater amount of money we make (over Indians). But if all we make are commodities, then Indians working for low pay beat Americans working for free. (People who work for free have no incentive to please users, or even create usable software.)

How sad to see two leading Democrats fall for, even feed the lie that they can create user-oriented software for free. Shame on both Dean and Clark. They went after the little guy. Who wants a president who does that. Not me. Still looking for someone worth supporting.

and gregor rothfuss responds:

when free beats for pay

dave is ranting about how free software cannot be user-oriented. i bought a license of manila, and tried radio for a while. verdict: Movable Type has a better user interface than both userland products, and costs.. $0

Movable Type is a commercial product.

I find it amazing how poorly thought out the rebuttals are. Open source advocates like yourself would do well to read the Linux Advocacy Howto, and also think just a bit before you write.

My issue isn't with open source, it's with the campaigns reinventing software that already works, and being two-faced about supporting American software developers. They do it when they're stumping in New Hampshire talking to out of work programmers.

If you had been to New Hampshire to see the candidates you would know this.

Learn Gregor, open your mind. How disappointing to see you be part of the mob. Most of them I'm not bothering to respond to, but I thought you were a thinker, not a slug.

and here's my take on all this:

first of all, there's a huge difference between commercial and proprietary software. f/oss software can well be commercial, but not proprietary. commercial denotes that money can be made, whereas proprietary indicates absence of end-user (digital) freedom.

that been said, i'm not sure if dean is two-faced, and ther's no way i could find out for sure. i've heard that opinion before, that the people organising his campaign are not as straightforward, open to dialogue, and so forth as they would like us to believe. dunno know. i always vote for the lesser of two evils, and no alternative seems to be worse than bush.

now, back to software. can f/oss software be user-oriented? of course it can. openoffice, mozilla, kde, gnome, enlightment, and scores of f/oss applications are being designed to satisfy end-users' needs and wants. kde has proven time and again that f/oss can be as easthetically appealing as any other proprietary offering. so, there's no question here. but i think that someone 's missing the point (probably i do). first, i reckon that all weblog platforms are user-oriented, since their raison d'etre is to unleash the creativity of non-technically advanced authors, etc....now, if some people think that MT is more user-oriented that Radio, or the other way round, this is another thing, and it essentially boils down to individual criteria.

anyway, interesting ping-pong of ideas....

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