Comment by tptacek
6 days ago
I love how many people have in response to this article tried to intimate that writing it put my career in jeopardy; so forcefully do they disagree with a technical piece that it must somehow be career-limiting.
6 days ago
I love how many people have in response to this article tried to intimate that writing it put my career in jeopardy; so forcefully do they disagree with a technical piece that it must somehow be career-limiting.
It's just such a mind-meltingly bad argument, man.
"A whole bunch of folks ignore copyright terms, so all complaints that 'Inhaling most-to-all of the code that can be read on the Internet with the intent to make a proprietary machine that makes a ton of revenue for the owner of that machine and noone else is probably bad, and if not a violation of the letter of the law, surely a violation of its spirit.' are invalid."
When I hear someone sincerely say stuff that works out to "Software licenses don't matter, actually.", I strongly reduce my estimation of their ability to reason well and behave ethically. Does this matter? Probably not. There are many folks in the field who hold that sort of opinion, so it's relatively easy to surround yourself with likeminded folks. Do you hold these sorts of opinions? Fuck if I know. All I know about is what you wrote today.
Anyway. As I mentioned, you're late-career in what seems to be a significantly successful career, so your reputation absolutely doesn't matter, and all this chatter is irrelevant to you.
I don't know who you're quoting, but it's not me.
I'm not quoting anyone. Perhaps wrapping the second paragraph in what I understand to be Russian-style quotes (« ») would have been clearer? Or maybe prepending the words "Your argument ends up being something like " to the second paragraph would have been far clearer? shrug
12 replies →