Symphonious

I haven’t had a chance to read everything that’s been going around about Jonathan Schwartz’s latest comments about the GPL but I wanted to pick on David Jericho for a moment because his response irked me a little.

The problem with attacking something like the GPL is that it makes the attacker generally look stupid.

And the problem with defending something like the GPL is that it makes the defender generally look like a zealot.  There are multiple valid viewpoints for this argument, suggesting that the GPL is infallible and beyond criticism (which is how I would interpret David’s statement) is a pretty tough argument to sell.  The key difference here is one of philosophy, the GPL was explicitly created to force software to be open and kept that way.  It was created on the belief that all software should be free.  If you agree with those principles the GPL is very clearly a fantastic license and probably is from your viewpoint, infallible.  If however you happen to believe that intellectual property should be leveraged to make money and that this process fosters innovation then you probably think the GPL is bad for innovation or bad for the economy.  Neither side can be clearly proven to be right or wrong at this stage, and it’s quite possible that there will never be a definitive answer.  There are however plenty of opinions going both ways, but they are just opinions.  There are also case studies supporting both sides.  David mentions India and China as examples of the GPL doing wonders for the economy, I’d mention the current economic super powers as examples of traditional intellectual property approaches doing wonders for the economy.

In general when you find yourself calling a very senior officer of a very large corporation stupid you’ve probably missed something.  Perhaps you’re wrong or perhaps you have just failed to realize the direction they’re trying to take, either way they are very unlikely to be outright stupid despite the fact that they will still make mistakes.  Jonathan Schwartz has been pretty consistent in his comments about intellectual property, open source and the GPL so I’d suggest he’s thought it through and has pretty good reasons for the stance he’s taking and the statements he’s making.

I find it particularly irksome that David makes such a fuss over Schwartz’s use of the third world to stir up emotions when he himself then ends with:

Sun would do very well to gag Jonathan, lest people start equating Jonathan’s anti-GPL evangelism with SCO’s We-Own-Linux story

If there’s one thing that will stir up a more emotional response than the third world it’s SCO.  Cheap shot indeed.  Sun has very clearly played by the rules of licensing, they aren’t attempting to lay claim to anyone else’s code, they are merely arguing that licensing code under the GPL isn’t a good idea.  There’s a very big difference there and it is just bad form to try to twist that argument and pull on the emotional string labelled SCO.

At least with Schwartz’s comments relating to the third world you can dig down and see his point - he believes that intellectual property should be used to make money, not given away and his argument follows from that viewpoint.  The GPL has the disadvantage that if you build upon it, any intellectual property you generate yourself (when building on it) has to be given away.  In essence the GPL gives you a leg up by providing intellectual property but if you subscribe to Schwartz’s belief that IP should be used to generate income directly then it’s pretty clear that the leg up is totally useless since you can’t use it to generate income.  If you subscribe to a viewpoint more like RMS’s or believe that supporting services are more profitable than directly selling the intellectual property, then you’ll believe that the leg up the GPL provides is of huge benefit.  It’s all in the initial view point.  Having said that, Schwartz was definitely taking the opportunity to pull on a few emotional strings which I don’t approve of, but if you take the time to understand his viewpoint you’ll see that his argument is not stupid even if you believe it to be based on incorrect principles.

Hadley Stern raises a bunch of questions about how much time kids should be spending in front of computers (and TV and video games etc).  I’m not sure why this is such an issue for people.  Growing up I spent a huge amount of time in front of computers and I’m (at least reasonably) normal.  The key element isn’t so much restricting a passion for computing or even TV and video games, it’s more about encouraging other activities.  Kids won’t enjoy other activities much if they do them because they are no longer allowed to be doing what they really wanted.

I’m sure there are cases where kids have an unhealthy addition to computers, TV or video games but they’re pretty rare.  It’s also just as damaging for kids to be spending all of their time sitting in their room reading or spending all their time out playing with their friends.  Doing any one thing to the exclusivity of everything else is the problem, not being passionate about something or enjoying something and wanting to do it a lot.  Some kids love books and spend most of their time alone reading, some kids like video games and spend most of their time playing them, some kids enjoy socializing and spend most of their time with friends.  None of that is a problem if they spend some of their time doing other things - socializing, reading, playing and “veging out” are all important activities and the balance between them will differ for different people.

Perhaps instead of limiting the time your kids spend doing something you should just make more time available to spend with them doing something else they enjoy and that you feel provides balance in their life.  Just the fact that you’re spending time with them will most likely give them some interest in the activity (unless you’re just making them hold stuff for you while you fix the car - that just drives kids nuts).  Obviously they won’t be interested in everything but you need to find the things that you are both interested in doing and do them together.  I believe it’s called building a relationship or something.  Just because you can set rules for them doesn’t mean it’s always the best way to achieve things.

Of course, none of this is specifically directed at Hadley or anyone in particular.  Each situation is different and needs to be handled differently - I doubt it hurts a child to have rules about how much TV they watch etc anyway. I’m just a big fan of avoiding rules when possible and instead using encouragement and expectations.  Encourage children to consider their actions instead of just telling them what’s right and wrong.  They won’t be able to understand expectations when they are young but they will understand encouragement.