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Simon Phipps's personal commentary

Open Letter to Ralph Nader from an Unenfranchised Alien

Dear Mr Nader,

I respect you greatly and very much admire what you have achieved in so many places. Your principled voice has had an impact on America and on the world that many would envy. In the last US election, I was thrilled to see the degree of support you were able to garner for alternative causes - until I realised that you were splitting the liberal vote. My Green Party friends in the US told me not to worry, that sometimes a loss was necessary to make the greater gain in the future.

Instead I have seen George W Bush elected and have seen consequences that have impacted not just Americans but also me and others in Britain, as well as millions elsewhere in the world. We don't get to vote in your election, but its outcome can mean life or death to millions. You helped Bush win and because of that you helped start an unnecessary war that has endangered the world and left it, in Nelson Mandela's words, a less safe place. You helped Bush win and resume creation of a world where unaccountable corporations are once again in the ascendant. You helped Bush win and made totalitarian immigration and travel controls a part of daily life globally. These affect me personally every day.

So this time round, though I have no franchise in your country, I am begging you to work to prevent a second term for Bush and the powers of the right-wing. Please do whatever it takes to stop Bush winning a second term and cementing the ungovernability of the US by Democrats or Greens. Even if that means eating your pride and deciding not to stand. You have the principles, you have the moral strength - now please have the humility not to run. For the sake of those of us with no vote.

Yours sincerely,

Simon Phipps

[inspired by a US appeal to Nader and a shockingly prophetic Onion article]

posted at 10:47 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Spring Blossom

I'm finally back home after a pretty strenuous month of travel and the blossom is out in the garden - pinks and whites of every shade on the various trees. My apologies for the lack of steady traffic - I found that connectivity in the places I have been has been spotty at best, and the lack of a meaningful offline editing facility for Blogger has been a barrier too. It seems there are so many things I haven't commented on this month - not least one or two press items that scream for a response - but I'll try to catch up gently and not create a torrent of out-of-date stuff :-)

posted at 4:29 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

ESR response

Despite the title of the post on Slashdot, I've not issued a rebuttal to Eric Raymond's Java rant - I just conducted an interview with a PC Pro journalist. It's interesting the way these things get reported - I was asked at some point late in the interview "would you say Raymond's article was just a rant" I replied "yes, 100%" - but that was hardly my first comment. It's then galling to see the link on Slashdot is to a summary on another site, not even to the edited highlights in PC Pro. The digest of a digest of selective reportage of a conversation does not constitute a 'rebuttal' in my view...

However you look at it, though, Raymond's rant is unhelpful. I do wish he'd called or e-mailed before posting - there are several people who no doubt would have done some helpful commenting and turned the thing into helpful (if perhaps impatient) support for Sun's significant open source thrust. As it is, RR just hurts the people who are trying to make the right things happen.

Anyway, if you do want a decent response, look no further than Charles Ditzel's blog entry. ESR has added a rider about share prices by the way, but still seems no closer to understanding that the share price at any point in time is not a useful indicator of the value of a company. Red Hat just hasn't done any stock splits.

posted at 1:30 AM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |