The Grumpy Editor's Obviously Incorrect 2006 Predictions

Posted Jan 11, 2006 9:34 UTC (Wed) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

> Duncan, your threat of withdrawing your
> subscription is childish in the extreme.
> [I]f you want the site code published that
> is completely separate work and you should
> offer Jon professional rates to do the job
> properly rather than having a tantrum.

That's a reasonable argument, but it doesn't account for personal beliefs,
childish or not. OK, I've trimmed this a bit but it's still long. Oh,
well...

I left MS after a decade for my beliefs in Freedom. I choose to run
Linux, not one of BSDs, for those beliefs. I've had exchanges with people
who demanded I stop calling proprietaryware slaveryware, for my beliefs in
freedom. It came out that the folks requesting that believed in "Open
Source" rather than "Free Software", as the argument goes. They said it
wasn't worth sacrificing for, it was just a choice. I, OTOH, can't
honestly say that I'd be willing to give my life for it as yet, as many of
the US founding fathers gave their lives or those of their family and
friends, but I equate it with the same principles, and think I /should/ be
at that point -- it's FREEDOM at stake, after all, and I'm not at all sure
that a life without that freedom to express myself would be worth living.
I /have/ actually contemplated the possibility that acting in accordance
with my beliefs may one day mean I have to choose between physical
freedom, and freedom of mind and spirit. IOW, there may be a time
when I'm imprisoned for my belief in Freedom, software or otherwise, and
I've faced that possibility

That's what I BELIEVE. If it's "childish" or "radical", so be it.
However, a good portion of the reason I subscribed to LWN was because I
believe in the message and service it does and can present to this
community that for myriad personal reasons (not all directly parallel to
mine, certainly) has happened to be supporting freedom in their actions,
if not always their full beliefs.

I've been rather more active onsite this year, but last year, there were
several months I didn't get to LWN hardly at all. Still, I considered my
subscription worth every penny, despite my not visiting at all that month,
because of the message and service LWN provides to the community.

Would that I /could/ provide those professional services you mention. I'd
donate them in a heartbeat, no charge, because I /believe/ in the message.
Meanwhile, LWN isn't presenting the clear clarion call of Freedom that
it /could/ be presenting, because while the /words/ are there,
the /actions/ have been partially missing for more than two years. If the
promise hadn't been made, it would be one thing, but it /was/ made, and
two years later, this representative of our community looks like it says
one thing, but can't 100% support what it /says/ in actions.

When I was last shopping for a mobo, I visited the sites of the
front-runners. One had everything in what appeared to be sfx-exe
slaveryware format. The docs, exes. The BIOS updates, exes. Everything,
exes. They got an email saying exactly why they lost out on the sale, and,
I'm told, now at least have the standard format documentation and BIOS
update packages, not proprietaryware executables (altho their Linux
support still sucks). Maybe my email had a part in that, maybe it didn't,
but I sent it. The other (Tyan) not only provided standard PDF docs and
zip file bios update packages, but they had Linux FAQ pages for most of
their products, and provided lmsensors config files (plus slaveryware
Linux drivers for some onboard chips, unfortunately, but you can't win
them all). The choice was obvious. Same story with the last hard drives I
bought. Of course SATA hard drives are pretty much standardized and "just
work" in Linux. Still, one choice listed only MSWormOS releases as
supported, the other listed a number of alternatives including Linux.
You /know/ which one I ended up buying.

When I switched to Linux, I ended up with Mandrake. About a year and a
half later, I ended up switching to Gentoo, in part because I could no
longer in good conscience support Mandrake with my money OR time and
personal investment, because part of my investment would be going to
support the slaveryware they licensed for their paid product.

Given the above, it should be no surprise that I'm unable to in good
conscience continue supporting LWN. Would that it were not so! Stating I
can't, however, isn't a threat, it's a statement of fact, of belief, of
following thru on that belief, as a man of principle doing his best to be
a man of personal integrity.

For those who can continue to support LWN and even up their subscriptions,
more power too them and good for LWN! The service to the community, mixed
message tho it may be, is still there. I'm glad someone can support them
in it. Unfortunately, I cannot. For me personally, just as I had to jump
ship from MS, just as I now cannot support NVidia, just as I had to switch
from Mandrake, I have to, with regrets, pull my support for LWN, until its
actions are once again in 100% agreement with the message it's promoting
with its speech, a message I 100% believe in. It's not a choice for me.
It has become a matter of acting in accordance with MY beliefs. If I were
to fail to do so, LWN's actions wouldn't matter to me any more as I'd be
the one whose words failed to agree with his actions, a man whose actions
betrayed his belief.

If being a man of belief, of personal integrity, is childish, then I'll
gladly be childish, or radical, or whatever other label you choose.
That's external, your choice, something I don't control. It doesn't
change my internal beliefs or integrity, nor can it.

I don't mean to offend, and in no way am I condemning others for not
holding the same principles, as these are mine, others have their own, and
I acknowledge that. This is, however, something I must do, or it'll be a
failure of my integrity.



That, BTW, is why it doesn't much concern me how cleaned up the code
is, or what continuing support there may be, altho I agree a security
audit is probably necessary for practical reasons. Clean code is good, but
available code is better than unavailable code, clean or not. If it's
unavailable, there's one person that can clean it. Once it's available,
in whatever form, others at least have the /option/ of using it, cleaning
it if necessary first, an option not available if the code isn't
available.

The promise was made, someone in the FLOSS community's word was given. It
hasn't been delivered upon, and because that someone is held up as a
representative of that community, the failure to deliver on that promise
is a failure for the entire community. If I continue to support that
representative as a spokesperson and beacon of that community, I too am at
fault. It's my integrity called into question as well, the more so due to
my continued support.

Back to your post, however. I don't have the talent to donate to help the
job get done, but that doesn't mean I'm unwilling to help, even tho I
don't expect to ever make use of the code myself except as a website
visitor. Admittedly, what I can provide is little more than a token
amount, but this is something I believe in enough to do so. Jon has my
personal contact info available, if he's interested, and I'll throw what I
can in to help, meager tho it may be. I'm not asking for the code to
appear immediately, as I recognize that's demanding the impossible, but
some visible movement this year would be nice, and I think entirely
reasonable.

Duncan

Posted Jan 11, 2006 15:05 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

"Incidentally, there appears to be no licence granted by Eklektix for copying of LWN content. Is LWN content published on an 'all rights reserved' basis or have I missed a licence somewhere?"

Another one of those "on the list" items. What we want to do is to put all non-subscription text under something like the CC attribution license. In this case, it's mostly a matter of sorting out copyright notices with guest author content (which they continue to own), stuff taken from the net, etc. Certainly, in every case where somebody has asked to republish content, we've let them - and we've not bugged those who just did it without asking.

If I have my way, we'll be making some moves over the coming months to push some things forward and stop just running in place. Stay tuned.