Re: twitter.el, anyone?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Joel Mccracken writes:

 > One "hiccup" is that Twitter-the-company has taken a semi-hostile
 > stance toward twitter clients.

Of course it has.

The business model is (ab)using customer data for business purposes,
in ways that often surprise and sometimes shock the individuals
concerned.  (The shocked ones are usually pretty darn naive, but who
are we to judge them?)

IOW, twitter.el has the same effect on privacy that Javascript has on
software freedom, AFAICS.

Not to mention that it's an inherent problem (the twitter database is
closed and can't be opened because that would legally be a hairball),
whereas the Javascript problem is easy to fix: grep the downloaded
code for a license notice.  If there isn't one, don't run it -- it's
not free software.  Otherwise, check the license.

Then write an RFC to standardize license notices for use with software
that checks licenses of data downloaded from the Internet, and create
an IANA registry.