[GTALUG] Economist article on open source

[Evan Leibovitch]

On Fri, 4 Oct 2019 at 09:53, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <talk at gtalug.org>
wrote:


> Yeah.  You can register for free and read a very small number of
> articles each month.
>
> I did that years ago.  But because of the limitation, I almost never go
> to the economist.  So it doesn't actually work well for them or for me.
>


YMMV. The registration feature allows one to see a few bits per month which
is generally good enough for the handful of links one might get from a
social media feed or a GTLALUG mailing list. This is how I use the NYT.

The Economist is quite expensive and quite good.  Perhaps paying for it
> would be a good trade-off for me, but I don't.
>

Disclaimer: I pay for the Economist online-only edition, which is much
cheaper because they don't mail the printed version from within Canada. It
actually costs less than subscribing to the Globe or Star online.

Expensive is in the eye of the beholder. At a time in which shitty
clickbait-driven journalism surrounds, I find paying for something earnest
and diligent is both worth it and "doing my part" to support the good
stuff. Everything in Canada has a palpable bias, at least the CBC's biases
are known so you can skip or read with the appropriate filters. But the
Star, Sun, Post and Globe have all joined political teams and they
suuuuuuck. So does the Guardian, which I once trusted but now find
unreadable (its Canada beat reporter has a visceral personal hatred of
Justin, there he's no better then Donald or Boris).

Most recently I've also taken to judging media outlets based on their
reaction to the latest Dave Chappelle show/rant on Netflix (see it if you
can). He's done a great job of fleshing out the SJW shame police.


> It's funny how many of us are willing to pay for netflix on the internet
> but not for magazines or newspapers.  That's mostly true of me.
>

Cutting the cord so I don't pay for cable or satellite TV has freed up
significant funds for online subscriptions. Family plans at Netflix,
YouTube and other services have reduced cost too. I've avoided Crave
because (a) its content is crap and (b) I detest Bell. I'll probably
subscribe to the Disney streaming service when it comes out because of the
sheer volume of the content vault.

I have no problem paying for decent content, and I happily disable my ad
blocker on sites that are useful and ask nicely. I do occasionally have
access to downloaded stuff, but mainly in circumstances where "rights
holders" have made it near impossible to legally get stuff. Regardless of
what you think of pro wrestling, the fact that Canada is the only country
on Earth that bars web-only subscriptions to wwe.com should be alarming.

But I digress.

| so I didn't get to read the bit where it presumably says "…
> | and we can get these geek rubes to write our software FOR FREE!"
>

I didn't see any hint of condescension or ridicule in the article towards
the model or those who use it.

I read the article and don't remember getting angry about anything in it. I
> did not learn anything from it.  It wasn't very deep (how could it be?).
> I don't imagine that anyone on this list would learn anything
>

Perhaps for some. Others might find it interesting, And yet others may find
it useful to explain what we do to people who don't know tech.

I called attention to the article for a few reasons:

   - This champion of free enterprise is explicitly touting what we've
   known along, that open source is not anti-capitalist or against profit. It
   points to IBM's acquisition of Red Hat as an example of the ability to make
   money while retaining the FOSS ethic.
   - It approvingly explains how FOSS is especially useful in this day of
   international tensions and tariffs, noting how China is able to use FOSS to
   mitigate the damage of US sanctions and how the US can use FOSS to verify
   the existence (or not) of spyware in Chinese devices
   - It introduces RISC-V as a credible open-hardware alternative to the PC
   status quo.

Nothing earth-shattering, but IMO an important feel-good piece that imparts
what we already know to a broader and influential audience.

-- 
Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
@evanleibovitch or @el56
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://gtalug.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20191004/ab3b4ec7/attachment.html>