--- On Tue, 8/18/09, Jordan Hayes <jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com> wrote:
> It is interesting to me that you would be suspicious of the
> ideological preference of Free Software but not to it's
> alternative. Why is closed-source, proprietary
> software any less ideological?
>
[WS:] Not at all, it is ideology disguised as technology and innovation.
My suspicion comes from a different direction or perhaps a different position of the issue. My preferred alternative would be a version of a single payer system. All computer code in the market is publicly owned, guaranteed compatibility and compliance with universal standards, and vetted for planned inefficiency, obsolescence and other marketing gimmicks. Developers of that code would be paid by government (or an authority designated by government for that purpose) from general tax or user fees. From that POV, any sneer on "government meddling" in "innovation" and "freedom" smacks of neo-liberalism to me.
Besides, there would be no computer technology as we know it without helping hand of the government.
Wojtek