This morning I saw an interesting post on Twitter.  Which in-and-of-itself is kinda amazing, but that’s not the point.  The post was on something called the Windows 7 Sins site.  It is a campaign created by the Free Software Foundation to highlight everything that is wrong philosophically with Windows 7.  Now, I’m all for philosophical debates, but this is just plain batty.  So what did I do?  I acted!  I emailed the FSF people at campaigns@fsf.org the following email:

Ya know, if you sold software, you wouldn’t need to keep asking people for money. Basic principle of economics. Just sayin.

Also, a widget provides functionality and interaction. An image doesn’t. See the Windows 7 Sins “widget”.

Now, what I don’t get is this whole Boston Common thing. Is this an attempt at recreating the Boston Tea Party, except with (what I hope is) more regard for the environment and not tea, but software, as the “widget” proposes? If this were the case, in order to get a hold of said software, legally, you would need to buy it. Sounds counterintuitive.

Unless you are proposing people illegally obtain, as per license agreements define, the software and do what they will with it. Which is pretty much just plain ol’ illegal. “So was the Boston Tea Party” is an excellent counter argument. However, the Tea Party was about rebellion from a Government, not a company. The government makes laws, a company does not. The rebellion was against unfair taxation, something the Government controls. Unless of course you are rebelling against the government too. Which I guess is ok, except the government has already ruled against Microsoft in many cases regarding such topics as anti-trust, anti-competitive nature, etc. They don’t like ‘em either. Well, the justice department doesn’t anyway.

I just don’t get it.

Regards,

Steve Syfuhs
Software Developer and/or Architect Guy

I wonder how many people I annoyed with it.  We shall see.