Why We Shouldn't Begrudge Commercial Open Source Companies

Thinkcloud writes with a followup to recent news that Mozilla is once again looking into a do-not-track mechanism after having previously killed a similar tool, allegedly under pressure from advertisers. Canonical COO Matt Asay wrote in The Register that this is not necessarily the case, nor is Mozilla's decision necessarily the wrong one. "It's quite possible — indeed, probable — that the best way for Mozilla to fulfill its mission is precisely to limit the openness of the web. At least a bit. Why? Because end-users aren't the only ones with rights and needs online, a point Luis Villa elegantly made years ago. It's not a one-way, free-for-all for end-users. Advertisers, developers and enterprises who employ end-users among others all factor into Mozilla's freedom calculus. Or should." OStatic adds commentary that "Like it or not, commercial open source companies are still companies, and the economics of the online world have everything to do with their present and their future.

Comments

RMS got this in the 80s

[ciaran_o_riordan]

Richard Stallman was selling tapes of Emacs and GCC back in the 80s and made sure the GPL allowed selling.

Here's his essay about how to do it but at the same time ensure it doesn't end up funding proprietary software:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

Re:Tracking is evil

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I'm not sure explicit consent is required as much as a singular, easy-to-find method of opting out.

A very important addendum to opting out is that it needs to actually be opting out from being tracked.
To the best of my knowledge, all of the various tracker-specific "opt out" methods do not stop them from tracking you.
All they do is stop them from showing you advertisements based on the tracking information that they still collect.
You aren't really opting out from being tracked, you are opting out from being reminded that you are being tracked.

That needs to change.