I'm afraid you're just flat-out mistaken as a simple matter of fact in every single argument you've made here. Others here have dismantled your points more efficiently than I can, but two things call themselves out to me in particular for correction:
1) Though you seem deeply concerned about contributors being fairly compensated, you've assigned the very considerable effort spent by the original poster a value of $0. As a developer of iPhone software myself, I can assure you that it is a great deal more. The argument could easily be made that if anyone owes anyone anything, it's you that owes them some sort of compensation just for their service to the XPilot project generally. There are many excellent ways for labor to be compensated, but the model you seem to be advocating for the XPilot project is definitely not one of them. This is decidedly unhealthy for XPilot, and would be fatal for the free software movement if the better part of FOSS projects were run like it.
2) "Wanting to make money from their development time" is by no means any sort of ethical failure on the part of SM. It's not inconsistent with any version of the GPL, and if it is in some way inconsistent with the expectations of any other contributor to XPilot, I would say that that is clearly not their problem, but rather that of the other contributors. That's freedom.
At the current worldwide rate of consumption of about 80 million barrels a day, a trillion barrels would last almost 35 years. (That said, I've seen conservative estimates of growth in that rate to something like 140 mbd within 30 years. Whatever.) Anyhow, that puts us near the end of my personal life expectancy, so I'm OK with whatever the rest of you nuts do after that. You might check with my kids before you completely wreak the environment and run the world's tank down to the dregs, though.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm afraid you're just flat-out mistaken as a simple matter of fact in every single argument you've made here. Others here have dismantled your points more efficiently than I can, but two things call themselves out to me in particular for correction:
1) Though you seem deeply concerned about contributors being fairly compensated, you've assigned the very considerable effort spent by the original poster a value of $0. As a developer of iPhone software myself, I can assure you that it is a great deal more. The argument could easily be made that if anyone owes anyone anything, it's you that owes them some sort of compensation just for their service to the XPilot project generally. There are many excellent ways for labor to be compensated, but the model you seem to be advocating for the XPilot project is definitely not one of them. This is decidedly unhealthy for XPilot, and would be fatal for the free software movement if the better part of FOSS projects were run like it.
2) "Wanting to make money from their development time" is by no means any sort of ethical failure on the part of SM. It's not inconsistent with any version of the GPL, and if it is in some way inconsistent with the expectations of any other contributor to XPilot, I would say that that is clearly not their problem, but rather that of the other contributors. That's freedom.
And this is Quebec, so it would say "Defense de stationnment".
At the current worldwide rate of consumption of about 80 million barrels a day, a trillion barrels would last almost 35 years. (That said, I've seen conservative estimates of growth in that rate to something like 140 mbd within 30 years. Whatever.) Anyhow, that puts us near the end of my personal life expectancy, so I'm OK with whatever the rest of you nuts do after that. You might check with my kids before you completely wreak the environment and run the world's tank down to the dregs, though.