Politics and Interoperability Standards

You would also possibly think that the opensource, left-wing, content-is-free ideologues would be strongly against this proposal, as it effectively means that LL’s ToS — or at least a variant of it — would be enforceable (at least legally, if not technically) on foreign, non-LL grids. But anyone who understands the technical reasoning behind it doesn’t worry at all. I’m sure that the content-ought-to-be-free ideologues will not interconnect with LL at all. Rather, they will use the opposite policy, and only interconnect with other grids where content is, indeed, free. But they will never accept LL’s policies, and thus, they will also never interconnect with LL’s (or IBM’s) grids.

What is so hard to understand in this discussion?

Quoting Prokofy Neva again:

Minimizing the role of geeks in technology is desperately needed as a correction to their exaggerated overinvolvement in technology that affects many people, but about which they have no say as geeks have dominated the development process.

To which I can only add, with some sarcasm,

Minimizing the role of journalists, bloggers, and other media agents in defining technology standards is desperately needed as a correction to their exaggerated misinformation about how technology works or doesn’t work, which is actually read by far more people than it affects, but about which they ought not to have any say, as journalists and the media, with their terror about technology advancement, have been able to infuse that same terror in the minds of people — all based on incorrect assumptions — just to make a point to keep themselves as meaningful interlocutors in the process.

As I said before, this is like having bloggers “decide” how a cancer patient ought to be treated, because doctors cannot be relied upon to do a treatment that might affect the lives of the public. So… when a doctor says “it’s impossible to treat that client, but we can make them suffer less”, bloggers call that doctor “a lying sack of ratshit“.

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