Terry McAuliffe
Terry McAuliffe, theChairman of the Democratic National Committee, was on Microsoft’s campus today talking to employees. Quite a few employees in attendence were devoted Democrats, but there were enough other viewpoints represented to make things interesting. Terry seemed most uncomfortable when answering questions about antitrust policy, which is only natural considering the history. And he fumbled early attempting to connect with the audience when he said thatGeorge Bush had “spent the surplus on tax cuts for the richest 1%”. Most people in the audience are giving more than half of their incomes to the IRS each year, and are probably sick of hearing that the $600 (not even enough to pay the tax accountant)they got back last year is somehow “robbing” the rest of the population. The class-envy and race-baiting that may work well with other constituencies is not very effective with Microsoft Democrats.
But despite these minor nits, I think he did really well. He made some interesting comments with regards to antitrust litigation. Someonesuggested that laws were being written through the judicial system rather than the legislature, and he agreed; but he pointed out that legislation, like litigation, can be a double-edged sword. In the case of litigation, recent news about Sun and Oracle demonstrate this point.
He also made some other comments with regards to campaign finance reform which are relevant to my recent complaints about GPL. Asked about the efficacy of campaign finance reform in the face of loopholes, and he replied (emphasis mine), “The section 501c exemptions really worry me. When we are given a huge donation by an individual donor, we get ripped on by the newspapers and Republicans, but that’s OK. At least the contribution was out in the open where people could see it. The 501c and 527 have almost no disclosure requirements, and the hard money and soft money limits mean that more money will now be going to these other places where you can’t tell who it’s coming from. And that’s not good for Democracy.“
One cranky coder has taken exception to this particular argument in my “No Love for GPL” post, replying, “insuring that something you give as a gift to the community remains collective property is not organized crime.” Pleasantly, this statement shows an understanding of GPL that is lacking in many OSS advocates. GPL philosophy is that intellectual property should be collective property. I don’t believe that collectivism is criminal, or even wrong in all cases. But I think that collectivism is best used sparingly. Collectivism (the rejection of individual property rights)is the antithesis of freedom. When RMS champions a collectivist platform and cynically says itembodies “free as in freedom”, it’s not exactly the end of the world. Naive, pathetically retro, and cynical are adjectives that come to mind.
But I am concerned that so many otherwise bright developers fail to see the obvious incongruencies in GPL philosophy. Computer people are smart; we are supposed to be able to figure things out. So why is it that nobody is throwing a compiler error on a guy who says (collectivism == freedom)? Not only do they fail to see the typo in that statement, they even cut-and-paste the equation into every ZDNet forum they can find. The other major bug in GPL philosophy relates to my comments about transparency. GPL advocates often assert that ((IP == secretive) && (GPL == transparent)). This equation is only true in a very narrow scope that is mostly irrelevant (source code)to most developers, and is exactly opposite in most places where it matters. This flawed equation is basically the same as saying that ((capitalism == secretive) && (collectivism == transparent)). Asserting such is like saying that down is up and up is down - capitalism has produced some secretive and shady folks, but collectivism brought us Pol Pot and Josef Stalin. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that GPL is “a threat to mankind”. I am simply pointing out that it should be self-evident that ((capitalism == transparent) && (collectivism == secretive)). When someonesuggests that collectivism (GPL) is the way to encourge more transparency, while insinuating that capitalism (IP law) encourages secrecy, my mind suffers severe cognitive dissonance. I believe that most people are pretty intelligent, and have honorable intentions. So it is really difficult for me to understand how someone could truly believe that GPL promotes transparency. Initially, I rationalized the GPL as being a typical cute prank pulled by a clever social engineer (in the spirit of Church of Subgenius). But the fact that nobody has called the bluff for so many years leads me to believe that a whole lot of people are just plain duped, and have some very fundamental defects in their understanding of democracy and freedom. I am sure that GPL is not the cause of this deficiency, but rather a symptom. Our schools don’t teach civics or logic anymore. And that isn’t good for democracy.