> I agree with whoever said that one should not look to anyone
> in the IT department for political guidance. <...>
this is less a response to carrol than to the thread as a whole.
i'm *wicked* skeptical about all the 'gift culture' blabla that eric s. raymond has propagated. but he isn't linux, and linux isn't open source software; and 'gift culture' or not, the pro- spect of free(-as-in-free-beer) software is attracting a *lot* of interest in corporate IT departments. and *that* is really going to monkeywrench the profitability of an economic sector that, if it isn't quite the adequate cause of the US economy's rebound over the last few years, neverthless is widely regarded as its symbol. this has nothing to do with eric s. raymond.
*you* may not want to look to your IT department for radical ideology, but there are an awful lot of speculators who *are* looking there and nowhere else--and betting the house on what they hear there, too. and there are seismic shifts going on in intellectual property law, in large part because of the focus on IT as the 'cutting edge' of capital.
the notion that the patter one hears emanating from IT depart- ments should be taken as gospel seems awfully naive; but it hardly follows that it isn't extremely important in the sense of being efficacious.
having said that, raymond's got his head so far up his bum he could pass for a klein bottle. lucky for him halloween is only a few weeks away.
cheers, t