My only complaint about Python

[Paul Boddie]

"Ben Last" <ben at benlast.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.2188.1093250649.5135.python-list at python.org>...
> 

[...]

First of all, I apologise if I caused unnecessary offence. However, I
don't quite see what relevance my brother has in this discussion.

> I'm entirely content for Richard Stallman to continue his campaign, and also
> entirely relaxed about Microsoft continuing theirs.

Although you didn't explicitly equate the FSF agenda to the Microsoft
agenda according to any particular criteria, I was merely pointing out
that there is a big difference between them in nature, and that the
Microsoft agenda has significant consequences not only in the
ideological realm but also in ways which are generally regarded as
being both serious and negative, have typically involved regulatory
authorities and assorted legal proceedings, and are clearly concrete
in the sense that paid-for speculation about the supposed negative
effects of the GPL clearly are not.

Now I know that I'm probably not even reading between the lines of
your message here, so feel free to disregard this paragraph, but I
think that there are various things that are still worth saying. It
seems to be the big thing in various circles these days to pounce on
people defending the FSF and declare them extremists or impractical
ideologues - a perusal of any of the major news sites related to Linux
or related technologies will yield numerous comments and contributions
of that nature, and comp.lang.python hasn't exactly been spared this
particular meme. Yet the FSF (including Mr Stallman) has not only
significantly helped the Free Software (and open source) community get
where it is today - it also provides a coherent framework for the
management of software ownership and an ethical mechanism for
licensing that software. Although this might seem uncool and an
unnecessary distraction to those who are just grabbing "the good stuff
for free", I think it should be the duty of software professionals to
at least consider the various implications brought about by the
software they choose to use and deploy.

And is it good enough that your compiler or some hypothetical version
of Python is a free binary made available at the discretion of your
current favourite software company or even a restrictively-licensed
source code edition from an enthusiastic researcher? Perhaps it is for
now, but in the former case that company had better be generous in the
long term (and not interested in moving in on your business), and in
the latter case that researcher had better remain enthusiastic for
years beyond the end of that research project of theirs.

Paul