Mar 24, 2009

Good and Bad Jabber

In 2007 I was so happy that jabber was taking off. Now having seen jabber in use via facebook and my niece, I am wondering if when I was helping getting jabber out of beta it was a good thing. I'm saying this mostly because facebook chat is setting itself up as a walled garden. You can't even email someone in Facebook. So two steps ahead and one step back. We now have jabber working well, pretty much out of beta, but companines are trying to manipulate people still. Google to me has the right approach with jabber. It allows federation between itself and other jabber companies. The good news is that jabber and skype will be exchanging info soon.

Mar 7, 2009

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS VERSES LOVE


You might have notices that I don't say "as people sue our lives become better". One of things life has taught me is that it is better to love than hate. Even if chocolate doesn't seem as powerful as a well placed bullet, I believe it is. Software development takes more work than song development, but the synergism developed by the GPL sounds better to me than 4 part harmony. And yet the suing that takes place because of some 200 sec sound bit is almost to the point where music is only meant for the birds. As an Ubuntu lover I am often criticized for being too vocal in my praise for GPL code developers and users. To me it seems amazing that someone is willing to sing for free, but more amazing that someone will code and allow others to code on top of his code and the program that comes out is very intuitive. How can you not give praise to that. Sure there are people who write code just to get more monies, (mostly Apple or Microsoft employees), but the people who write code with the foresight of helping others write onto their code deserve the praise. I even praise those people that only use GPL code because that creates a demand for more of it. Those that buy proprietary software hinder the love between people and care mostly about their immediate needs. We need more people donating time and monies to GPL coding. Thank you to all who have stopped buying proprietary software and look for GPL code for your software needs.