Subj : Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again)
To   : comp.programming
From : David Golden
Date : Fri Sep 16 2005 02:42 pm

Gerry Quinn wrote:

> The point is that 
> nobody is forced to sell their rights to anyone.
> 
Yet again, you simply presuppose "their rights" are valid.

> it is dishonest 
> to represent that statement as being the opinion of the author, as you
> have done.

I did no such thing, I merely attributed the quote to its presumed
originator.  If it had been said by Bozo the Clown, the advice in the
quote itself would be every bit as applicable to dealing with you and
your  kind's mission to send humanity into a new Dark Age of
technological feudalism.   Sid Meier (or perhaps an underling who may
have actually wrote it, I've no idea if he personally wrote every line
in the game) deserves credit for his succinct and poetic phrase.  Would
you have me deny him that credit?  

The information of the quote has value as advice.  Your failure to
recognise that and instead harp on about who said it may be symptomatic
of a chronic undervaluation of information, perhaps underlying your
apparent failure to grasp the motives of someone contributing to open
source, whereby if A contributes 1, B 5, C 15, ALL have 21, in total
contrast to real physical property. 

Perhaps you are a member of an old generation of programmers many new
programmers have encountered, incapable of working well with others,
and deep down you fear that you can never compete with those of us who
choose to cooperate willingly out of enlightened self-interest, so you
hang around public fora, offering bad advice to new programmers.

> (And you lie - there was no parenthethical remark explaining 
> this.)

[Where "this" is something other than what the parenthetical remark
addressed]

The parenthetical remark pointed out that what the quote meant:

You wrote:

> I don't recall any of his games 
> being offered free, in the hope that players will subscribe together
> to pay him to develop a new one.

I wrote in response:

DG> And?  That's not what the quote says, now, is it? I even helpfully
DG> included a parenthetical remark pointing that out this time. 

Where the parenthetical remark in question, saying *what the quote
says*:

DG> (Preemptively: no, that is not an argument for forced disclosure,
DG> just saying not to trust those who don't disclose.)

.