Stop. I know the answer, and I already feel like enough of a dweeb.

My addition to this discussion is to remind people of the medieval notions of natural law and positive law. St. Thomas Aquinas, following St. Augustine, believed that there are two kinds of law: that made by men, the positive law, and that written indelibly by God in human hearts and in the natures of things, the natural law. The two must be in harmony with one another. If the positive law violates the natural law, it is no law at all — it is null and void — and it has no power. It is not being broken, because it is not a law. Ignore it as you would any childish silliness and go on.

A law that violates the natural law is not a law, and it should be ignored. This of course applies to a great many things. But it currently applies very well to the infringement of user rights in the realm of software we call “digital media.” The issue is justice — it is a great injustice both to the users and to the true producers of digital content. The law is unjust; therefore, there is no law.

Period. Full stop.

Perhaps we could paraphrase Princess Leia Organa, “The tighter you close your fist, the more you will find markets slipping through your fingers.”

Ironically, this vendor is writing scripts in PHP. PHP is free software, meaning that users are guaranteed certain freedoms by the PHP License. In fact, you can download the latest version for free without being assaulted by advertising. And the Apache Software Foundation does not complain. Imagine that.

So, here is a small, unworthy tribute to a pioneer. Memory eternal.

Now, I’m a software freedom advocate. I also happen to like open source software, though not as much. Both free software and OSS typically tend toward the “release early, release often” model. Cooper’s model, however, tends to violate this idea.

Rich Bowen, the founder and CTO of Cooper-McGregor, has intimated that it actually seems beneficial to free and open projects to have an initial period of closed developement, while the projects gets its legs. Subsequently, the project should continue with strong leadership that knows how to tactfully reject inappropriate code patches. If neither of these happens, projects seem to lose focus and dissipate very quickly.

That sounds like free and open projects should look more closely at Alan Cooper’s ideas.

This kind of thing really burns me. There are only two possibilities:

1. Fritz Hollings does not understand how his proposed legislation undercuts genuine, legitimate freedoms, and no one is explaining it in terms he can understand.
2. He does realize the problem, and he only cares about the money Disney and other corporations can give him.

It would appear that the second option is the only believable scenario, which makes the honorable senator the worst kind of American: one who does not believe in freedom and justice for all.

If you believe that software freedom is a good thing, make your voice heard.