We needed to have worn our TCGLUG hats. My buddy Joe and I were there. After we had already sat down at Townhall, we were pretty sure we spotted some geeks walk in. I too left at auction time. Too bad he took so long. I was really glad to hear him speak about copyleft and patent law. Despite the solipsisms and the weak arguments, I find there's a fair amount of commonality with his theories on freedom and software and the problems of intellectual property and copyright. What I'm curious about is whether he can see these commonalities and what he has to say about that. Is it all about software? On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 10:22 PM, John Gateley <tclug at jfoo.org> wrote: > p.daniels wrote: >> So most of you are probably out drinking. Damn my poverty. > > I didn't see anyone else at Townhall. I had a nice Octoberfest > and a blueberry oatmeal pale though. > >> A question that I walked away with actually stemed from the Q&A after >> the main lecture. Someone brought up a question regarding perceived >> incompatibility between free software and regulated industries (in this >> example, medical device software). > > I didn't stay once they began auctioning the gnu, but I was interested > in this question. I think it is a broader question: what about any > software, such as medical or the software that controls your car, where > there is a cost to failure. He was quite adamant throughout his talk > about not using ANY software that wasn't free, and I would have been > interested in his comments on this. > > I was disappointed in his painting things black or white. He was quite > harsh on proprietary software developers: they were a single person who > developed software as a power trip for controlling their users, and > there is no way to communicate with them (to get features added). > > I was a proprietary software developer for the past 13 years, and I > don't think he got a single thing right. I was part of a team, we did > it to make money, but also because it was a cool product (J. River > Media Center), and we had a support forum where we - the developers - > interacted directly with users, taking ideas and sometimes implementing > them. > > It was interesting - especially the number of people who raised > their hands for programming in TECO. > > j > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list >