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GPL 3 As Bonfire of the Vanities
morganew writes "Jonathan Zuck has written a CNET Op-ed stating that the GPL 3 is about returning the flock to the faith, and is reminiscent of Savonarola's 'Bonfire of the Vanities', urging true believers to burn things that took their eyes off God. From Article: 'The commercial humanists such as Lawrence Lessig with his Creative Commons initiative have turned away from the Old Testament, and the GPL 3.0 license is a call to the faithful to reject these vanities'. Given the reaction by Linus Torvalds and nearly all the OSS business community to the GPL 3, are we going to see a break in the church?"
Many in the commercial software community call open vs. closed source a religious debate. They argue they're on the pragmatic side. The open source community often tries to portray their side as practical, not idealistic. Framing this in religious tones in not going to help. It only stokes the fires and brings this article's author more readers. I see this as just media sensationalism with some facts thrown in.
Developers: We can use your help.
Yes, it does matter, because *I* want to know *WHO* is making the opinion, and what agenda might be satisfied by publishing the opinion. This way, I can decide which elements I can reasonably trust on faith, and which elements may have ulterior motives for pomulgating.
It doesn't necessarily invalidate his opinion (and I never said it did -- that would be argument ad hominem) but it should cast a certain amount of doubt as to whether he reached those opinions through research, or is just parroting his employers opinions.
Who would you trust more : a NASA scientist who warned you about global warning, or an Exxon scientist who told you that global warming was a myth? Why?
Tell me : if you were on trial, would you like the witnesses against you to have been paid by the prosecution?
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Ah, if only every argument was a purely deductive proof that we could analyze as such. Then a person's bias would have little effect on the efficay of their arguments. However, there are 2 major problems. First, most arguments only contain bits of induction in a much larger argument that has deductive and inductive parts (usually some crap too). Instead of "proving" anything, they person making the argument will supply a bunch of evidence. Bias often causes people to highlight the "evidence" in their favor, and brush aside evidence not in their favor. So when you hear an argument from a person with a strong agenda, you really should stop to think about what counter evidence has been overlooked or brushed aside. The second problem affects even the purely deductive kind of argument that might bring Aristotle himself to orgasm. This is that we must still evaluate the premises of any argument, and decide if they are reasonable. Not knowing everything in the universe, people really on expert opinion in many cases to determine whether these premises are sound. So credability becomes very important. Thus, in addition to what is being said, who is saying it does matter. The court system certainly recognizes this with the use of "expert witnesses". You can never logically just brush something off as false because it was said by a certain person, just as being hypocritical doesn't make you wrong. But unless the argument made is a 100% deductive proof with very simple assumptions, then the "who" as well as the "what" is important in evaluating the argument.