Will someone please forward this /. post to Elliott Rusty Harold for me, please?

RMS is the classic schoolyard radical. He has all these social theories that he's never had to test in the real world, because he's spent his entire professional career subsisting on grant money.

Don't get me wrong -- there's nothing wrong with taking grant money. Just because something isn't economically sustainable, doesn't mean it's not worth doing. I just get very tired of the way the 'Free Software' folk insist that they've transcended the evils of software 'ownership'. Which they've never actually done. Their bills are paid for by revenues from the very businesses they are too pure to work for.

(In case you're wondering, I'm referring to this quick discussion I had on the Apple Java development list with someone who was explaining to people that they could still sell their software after GPL'ing it -- omitting that it'd also mean that anyone who wanted to sell their software could after the GPL release, with no compensation to the original coders whatsoever. What's worse, the conversation was what you could use with Java in place of the temporarily-suspect LGPL that would do what the LGPL was thought to be doing before -- specifically be used and released with commercial, closed-source code without losing rights to the closed source code as well. That's all essential context when somone, potentially wowed by your stature (not mine; Harold's in this case), is eating up your words without knowing better.

Hey, I like the guy's books, and refer people to them when I get a chance, but Open Source Software licensing of your well-earned intellectual property just doesn't make sense in every case.)