It amazes me that some people seemingly think that more one-sided mud-flinging will solve problems, or is even a noop when evaluating the problem. I’m all for public exposure when it is relatively neutral (although I disagree that the “solution” is either meritocracy or perfect equality [the problem is people — culture, man, not organization]), but in my opinion, people who look at this current event, draw a line in the sand, and then go throwing stuff over it are doing just as much harm — despite whether they are “in” on the problem or not — as the original perpetrators.

We’re an enormous community. Like it or not. We use each other’s software, we’re exposed to other people’s ideals in software and in writings, and they are exposed to ours. Unless you’re going to go to proprietary software la-la land and stop writing code/documentation/bug reports/whatever, you can’t escape that. So please, stop lobbing mud over the fence, because it turns out we’re all in one giant pen.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a developer, an ex-developer, a suspended developer, or just some random user: your public actions matter. They can make large reaches of people look childish and unprofessional. They can frustrate people trying to get work done. They can drive others into obscurity.

“Dried poo gives excellent pellets to fuel a fire. … I think that’s my quota of poo-flinging for this week…” MIMO.

Over the weekend, I suggested the gang in #lh partake of some good old-fashioned mutual killing in the form of an FPS. Saturday was Enemy Territory, which would have been entertaining had we more people, but on Sunday we fired up a great free (and Free) deathmatch FPS: Nexuiz.

So yesterday and today a bunch of us played it for hours on end and had a gleeful time fragging each other, torsos and skulls bouncing around the landscape as rockets explode and bolts of electricity fly about. The deathmatch FPS is such a simple game, yet so much fun in concentrated bursts.

It’s free, and it’s available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, so check out Nexuiz. (And it runs on older hardware, if you don’t all have AMD64 3800+ X2 systems with a 7900 GT and 2 GB of RAM.)

For greater certainty, the terms and conditions [for Windows Vista] remove any doubt about who is in control by providing that “this agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights.” For those users frustrated by the software’s limitations, Microsoft cautions that “you may not work around any technical limitations in the software.”

— Michael Geist

Vista’s legal terms are under scrutiny, and for good reason. Here’s some more juicy bits:

Vista also incorporates Windows Defender, an anti-virus program that actively scans computers for “spyware, adware, and other potentially unwanted software.” The agreement does not define any of these terms, leaving it to Microsoft to determine what constitutes unwanted software. Once operational, the agreement warns that Windows Defender will, by default, automatically remove software rated “high” or “severe,” even though that may result in other software ceasing to work or mistakenly result in the removal of software that is not unwanted.

— Michael Geist

Note that according to the above quote, you only get to avoid this behavior if Microsoft decides you can, even despite the fact that Microsoft may fully recognize the behavior is a “limitation” (or even an intentional limitation — see all the stuff around Vista’s content DRM). And people wonder why so many of the technically-savvy enjoy open source. To compare and contrast, here are some relevant sections of the GNU General Public License:

1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program’s source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

…

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions …

Vista releases to the general public tomorrow. Friends, don’t let friends buy it. The licensing is only one of its many evils.