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Tilting At Windmills
GreedyCapitalist writes "Anne Applebaum writes in the Washington Post about environmentalists who are opposing renewable energy sources." From the article: "Already, activists and real estate developers have stalled projects across Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York. In Western Maryland, a proposal to build wind turbines alongside a coal mine, on a heavily logged mountaintop next to a transmission line, has just been nixed by state officials who called it too environmentally damaging. Along the coast of Nantucket, Mass. -- the only sufficiently shallow spot on the New England coast -- a coalition of anti-wind groups and summer homeowners, among them the Kennedy family, also seems set to block Cape Wind, a planned offshore wind farm. Their well-funded lobbying last month won them the attentions of Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), who, though normally an advocate of a state's right to its own resources, has made an exception for Massachusetts and helped pass an amendment designed to kill the project altogether."
I've got a different kind of green in my underwear
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...Slashdot moderators are clueless when it comes to selecting their sources when talking about any political issues. Guys, stick to the tech posts, please.
Wow, you just described zealots to a t. With minimal replacements (and not fixing any of your typos):
This is just another example of a larger trend. GPL zealots and GPL groups sabatoging free software progress by insisting on perfection. By refusing to comprimise or to throw their weight behind the less damaging projects/praise those who implement them GPL zealots sabatoge their own cause.
I mean consider this from the perspective of a company, or even country thinking of implementing some measures to minimize the IP harm of their actions. If they know that they will still get bad press from the GPL lobby for the damage/harm they are still doing rather than praise for improving their act they have little incentive to improve. In fact making small steps which will be met with criticisms that they don't go far enough can actually make for worse publicity than doing nothing at all.
This is part of a greater refusal on the part of GPL zealots to prioritize and to admit that their values, while important, need to trade off with human values. For instance by refusing to even consider (maybe it won't turn out to be worth it but it should be considered) other open source licenses enviornmentalists guarantee that we will continue to use proprietary software and risk Trusted Computing. Sure it might be possible in theory to acheive this goal by all using our own GPL'd software and other solutions in practice this has a great deal of problems and people are resistant to this level of change. Only by favoring comprimise and slight improvement where politically possible can we get real progress.
Worse, by refusing to prioritize the GPL movement makes sure many people don't take them seriously. Go look at the pages of major GPL groups or read their newsletters. You see articles written in the same alarmist tone and message of impending disastor as the warnings about global warming. No wonder people don't take threats to privacy as seriously as they should when implicitly the GPL groups put it at the same level as the sort of IP protection that has been occuring for years with limited impact.
If we want to get anything done the GPL advocacy groups need to buckle down and make some hard choices. They need to stop appearing to favor the GPL over people and instead tell people why saving free software is in people's best interest. Also they need to clearly prioritize and tell us that constant surveylance is far more serious than threats to habitate and wildlife and praise free software projects EVEN IF THEY ARE NOT GPL.