Re: [Gnu-arch-users] the way forward

[Andrew Suffield]

On Wed, Sep 07, 2005 at 03:55:52PM -0700, Thomas Lord wrote:
> You may not have noticed but nobody here has attacked capitalism.
> Andrew's comment that "money corrupts" perhaps comes the closest
> but I doubt that even he meant it that way.

FWIW, that point was pretty much what it looked like. This result is
an inevitable consequence of capitalism, and the American variant in
particular.

> You may not have noticed that you and yours at Canonical stand
> accused of the gratuitous disruption and destruction of a public
> project that, prior to your assembly under the financial umbrella
> of a wealthy hobbyist, was muddling through and showed considerable
> promise of a bright future.

It's approximately what Canonical always do, to varying degrees of
success. To date they haven't contributed anything new to free
software, they've just bought up existing 'community' projects by
hiring away critical members of them. The newly formed fork is then
oriented around its pursestrings; the result is inevitable. The
original project is left to sink or swim as best it can without the
people it lost.

They appear to think this is a good thing. Amazing what money and
kool-aid does to people's judgement.

> It's fascinating that you have a view of capitalism substantially at 
> odds with that of the wealthy who modulate the bulk of major 
> developments in our industry yet at the same time, a view that 
> well befits a complete tool trying to sell himself to the highest
> bidder and damn the consequences.

It [== the essay] looks rather like standard American school and media
indoctrination to me. "If you work hard enough to make other people
richer, someday you too will become rich".

[Which is, of course, lies; people don't get richer by being the ones
'providing value', they get richer by convincing others to provide it
to them. The indoctrination is intended to make sure that the next
generation continue to make the last round of winners richer]

It's quite amusingly blatant from my perspective outside US society;
TV and schools over there keep pounding the message home that if
you're a 'good citizen' then someday you will be selected to go to
floor 500. I find it hard to imagine why people fall for it, but then,
over here the common trend is to *satirise* the concept. Our
media stereotype of Americans is that they're ruled by money.

> Let's see
> what all our tomorrow's bring.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
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