DConf 2013 Closing Keynote: Quo Vadis by Andrei Alexandrescu

[Joakim]

On Monday, 1 July 2013 at 21:29:21 UTC, John Colvin wrote:
> On Monday, 1 July 2013 at 17:45:59 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> I wouldn't call closing source that they legally allowed to be 
>> closed antisocial.  I'd call their contradictory, angry 
>> response to what their license permits antisocial. :)
>
> Just because you're doing something legal doesn't mean you're 
> not being antisocial.
Read my previous post.  Of course it's possible for a license to 
technically allow something but for the authors to disapprove of 
it, not that its antisocial to simply do something they 
disapprove of.  But, as I said earlier, the BSD crowd does not 
publicly broadcast that they disapprove of closing source.  In 
fact, they will occasionally link to press releases about 
contributions back from corporations who closed the source.

For people using the BSD license to then get mad when yet another 
person comes along to close source is the only "antisocial" 
behavior I'm seeing here.  It'd be one thing if they publicly 
said that while the BSD license allows closing source, they're 
against it.  Feel free to provide such a public statement, you 
won't find it.  It's only after you talk to them privately about 
closing source that you realize how many of them are against it.

As I've said repeatedly, I don't much care that their behavior is 
so "antisocial," :) as long as its legal to close source.  But it 
is pretty funny to cast that tag on somebody else, who is simply 
doing what their license allows and what their press releases 
trumpet.

> It's a pretty psychopathic attitude to conflate legality and 
> morality, it's effectively saying "I have the moral right to do 
> whatever I can get away with"
On the contrary, it's a pretty psychopathic attitude to make such 
claims about morality when

1. nobody was talking about morality

2. the BSD crowd doesn't publicly talk about their problems with 
closing source either, whether they think it's immoral or 
antisocial or whatever.