I appreciate the various responses to my article. I can't really join the discussion and apologize for this (I am trying to finish a book) but would like to clarify a couple of points.
1. "Kzinti" writes that I "expressed the opinion that C (and presumably C++) programmers, having learned too many bad habits, shouldn't be considered for `real' OO development projects".
Sorry, I wrote no such thing. Read what my book "Object Success" says on the matter and criticize it, but please don't attack me on something I didn't write. Especially when talking about ethics.
2. Some of the posts I saw accused my article of making ad hominem attacks on R. Stallman and E. Raymond.
This is quite inaccurate -- a rhetorical device (and, to boot, ad hominem) to avoid facing the points of my article. The article cites numerous extracts from open-source and free software publications, and critically analyzes them. The topics of discussion are not the authors but their ideas.
3. I have also seen criticisms of the form "Stallman and Raymond are extremists, not representative of the free software community at large". (Some messages I received include worse words than "extremist".)
That's quite possible. But when you discuss a movement whom can and should one discuss other than its most widely recognized and respected proponents, who also happens to be its most vocal and cogent? Who are the theoreticians of Free and Open Source software if not the people mentioned?
These comments by no means begin to address the wealth of observations published in this thread, and in the numerous e-mail messages that I am receiving (and which I probably won't be able to answer as I would like to). Let me simply add that I find much to agree with in the posted comments, including some of the more critical ones. I think that questioning the ethical basis of an approach that uses ethics as one of its fundamental justifications is healthy and indispensable; that's what I have tried to do.
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I appreciate the various responses to my article. I can't really join the discussion and apologize for this (I am trying to finish a book) but would like to clarify a couple of points.
These comments by no means begin to address the wealth of observations published in this thread, and in the numerous e-mail messages that I am receiving (and which I probably won't be able to answer as I would like to). Let me simply add that I find much to agree with in the posted comments, including some of the more critical ones. I think that questioning the ethical basis of an approach that uses ethics as one of its fundamental justifications is healthy and indispensable; that's what I have tried to do.
-- Bertrand Meyer