attacking FSF [Re: Paid trolls

[Barak Zalstein]

"Bernd Jendrissek" <berndj@prism.co.za> wrote in message
news:c77e2h$1n7$1@penguin.wetton.example.org...
> >OK, but what would they gain from trolling? Create FUD? What kind of
> >company would use such means? Large companies as part of a strategy to
> >create FUD about free software, perhaps? It sounds a bit far-fetched to
> >me, that's why I'm asking.
>
> They might imagine that trolling free software newsgroups is a way to
> slow free software down.  Free software authors replying to usenet
> trolls are not writing free software.

Or maybe they are just trying to learn why open source is successful while
free software can be seen as ethical, at most:

Since an open development methodology may or may not be commercially
successful depending on market conditions, undermining the ethics of free
software is the key element before abolishing the GPL and the philosophy
behind it.
As there is expected to be a growing number of people disilusioned from
whatever portrait of free software and society they had in mind, realising
that in the end it comes to marketing and profitability, not about being
creative and having fun, and certainly not about helping your neighbour,
it will be more common to see carefully-explained
non or anti GPL software license usage.
I already pointed here http://dspguru.com/wol.htm which is closer to what I
usually see, but I think that
http://www.bearcave.com/software/btp/freesoft.html provides better arguments
(resulting with "This is not public-domain software or shareware, and it is
not protected by a 'copyleft' agreement, like the code from the Free
Software Foundation. ")
Evil entities and trends will always exist or will be needed to be invented,
blaming Microsoft was explored enough, attacking open source or other
companies will
not inherentally change the way they operate (if you are here to do
business, you cannot focus
on saving the world), so at least here's the FSF to scrutinize.

Barak.