The pot, on tint

Heather offers link-love to an article that rants about Wired. I agree completely about the poor journalism, I let my subscription lapse in 2001, after faithfully reading every issue from the beginning for years. The quality of writing had sunk to the level of local weekly fishwrappers.

Unfortunately, this article then picks a single point about the open source world’s need (at least in the eyes of some author) for a coherent messaging app and bootstraps to Arbogastian absurdity. A few tidbits: Anti-trust laws serve no public good and only punish the successful. Microsoft is successful, so they must be providing social value. The open source community is a bunch of hypocrites for suggesting applications with consolidated functions while persecuting Microsoft for the same. Newsflash: the issue was the bundling of applications with the OS in the context of exclusivity agreements with resellers. Right or wrong, it’s not relevant here. I think it’s time Mr. Givens took some time away from his legal studies debates and actually informed himself of the real world.

Finally, there’s a diatribe against the quality and security of Open Source software. Anyone who actually works with software from both Microsoft and with that from the Open Source community will certainly find this humorous.

Bill Gates is no John Galt. If Reardon Steel had used restrictive contracts and bullying lawyers to succeed, then Hank wouldn’t have been a protagonist. If Microsoft went out of business today and IBM, Oracle, Sun, Apple, and the myriad other successful companies that benefit from and participate in Open Source were all that was left Atlas would not have shrugged.