Absolutely agreed.

Deletion of information should by my meaning be crime under any circumstances, all over the world. Blocking access is at least opened to discussion, even if I assume it is overused even in the current world and after all much less effective and unbreakable then expected in many lawyers should-work-like-this stories.

Anyways I (as multiple children parent) postulated a theorem what I would call "Psychological quantum law": You can either watch (either openly or secretly) someones information, or directly act according to (against) it. Period. There are many examples in the wilderness (and I mean real children wilderness), that shows, that any other approach has just one of the following outcomes: 1) Any further information in such area gets hidden from you. Children are more clever than humans, didn't you know? And not knowing what your children REALLY do is dangerous weakness. 2) Your action will be forcefully (any means available from the nature of situation; no sorry or collateral damage considerations) immediately countered or long term undermined. 3) The child will hate you (even if in very moderate level, but the effects are cumulative over all the children life) because of strong injustice feeling; too bad should you be the teacher, fatal should you be parent.

There however ARE many good ways how to act regarding the information you know and here is the exception of the above mentioned "Children are more clever than humans" rule: in long term deep thought strategies you should always have top over children, stress on DEEP THOUGHT.

And there is one more psychological rule (this time even postulated by real psychologist), humans (including children) tends to act in the manner you assume they are when you interact with them. So the more responsibility you can pass to the children and the more you can make them to absorb, the best.

So as the conclusion I always tend to offer children more liberty than usual, however based on two pillars: 1) They prove in advance psychical and technical ability to cope with the situation under my supervision, eventually in prepared model situations. 2) They never betray the trust I put in them. Should they fail, the rights they poses are revoked appropriately. This is the best tool to deal with behavior like defiance, vandalism and even more subtle, like not willingness to help to old or incapable. Children like their freedom so much, that you can find just little more (if any) motivating things. So far fully verified by my own results, however looking forward to check them in the stress testing of the puberty. Off course, application of this approach requires strong nerves and hypertrophic self- and in-children-confidence. And maybe plenty of undeserved luck as my wife use to say.

Exactly. And this is why I would especially in the countries with Zimbabwe-like historical background vote for complete trade cut-off. Even humanitarian, call me unethical should you want. These days North Africa events shows, that nothing will move, when civilized (?) countries step back before intimidation and basically feed population of otherwise incapable totalitarian despots. Once this "humanitarian help" falls below sufficient level, the things moves and (even with some ((un)necessary ?) casualties) turns to the better future. So conclusion, so-called humanists are collaborators (or at least unwilling supporters) of non-democratic rulers (not all and not under any circumstances, off course !).

Other such a county is North Korea, where people should either die of starving (solving the problem anyways - call me a cynical one) or (and more probably by me) move and through the rulers away, should there not be a massive food supplies sent every year (if I remember well, it is more than 50% of yearly consumption after all).

Please may I have your XXX (please fill-in yourself, I am not sure which of the three most important you serve) agent ID nr? I wonder, if you are just a PR department or "real" hardcore operative and I can check this from the ID, this is the reason I ask.

No other conscious human would say such an unargumented blackmailing to innocent man, would he?

Strange, that (if my browser search is not corrupted already) noone mentioned SkyNet or Terminator(s) here so far. Even if SkyNet booting is somehow overdue now, still:
1) such a things happens regullarly in technics
2) that may be the latest Terminator's timing correction after Connor reached Cheyene mountain in the third sequel...

Joking, of course... hey, do I ?

Hey, quote it properly: did this not say that evolution strategy setting dinosaur some 64 mil. years ago ?

YES, THERE IS (who to vote)! In EU there is (even if still much overseen) pirate parties movement on it's (long term) ascent. Seek for your countires Pirate party and read carefully their pages...

I forsee big future of this movement, maybee even bigger than the green movement's one in 20th century - once the oppression will come high enough to raise silent citizens (we are near this level allready).

Ahoy! Sails up ;-)

Oh yes ! They do ! Even if not in minds of end users, the community reputation is fair enough motivation not to make stupid bugs (well, at least not to do them often, ehm).

Finally, after this last reply, I can agree with your in many points.

Just remove the following point

as this does not differentiate FOSS and non-FOSS product. If you read carefully in EULAs, you can see that this situation is exactly same for most of commercial products. Nobody is responsible for collateral or consequent damages, as maximum you can get price of the product back (which is immanent in the case of FOSS ;-) ).

Regarding the rest the key is your wording

except that I would say "exists", not just "can exist".

Further I agree with

but my good praxis includes the following points in the software choice:

1. Allways search for suitable FOSS project first, allways check whether it fullfills all your needs (but see 3. bellow), if in doubts, with no prejudice compare with commercial products, based on your preferences weights list.
2. Account some +20% point value for OSS concept, another +10% for even FOSS (if not covered by points for price as separate item)
3. Compensate properly for slower development curve of FOSS project with the higher features standard in future on mind.
4. Do not stress about rapid versioning in FOSS projects. You can allways follow "if it works, do not touch (=upgrade)" approach in the production environment (as I do).

So far I got negative client reaction for my recommendation (even after longer usage experience) just once, and it was of the "it is not Microsoft" nature.

I simply disagree: it does ! At least in longer horizon.

1) No vendor jail, no discontinuity due sudden increase of selling price on specific version.
2) FOSS projects (bigger than some limit of course) tends to never stop it's development. While progress in commercial projects tends to (brutally simplified off course) fast-but-flattening (features=sqrt(version_number)) learning curve, FOSS tends to slower but linear one (features=0.1*version_number)

Coefficient 0.1 is just an ideal example number, I want to show that from the begining the feature development can be even by order higher in commercial than FOSS one, but in the long horizon the crossing point of FOSS over comercial is inevitable. This is (managerialy said) due to novelty premium every comercial subject is eager to gain. Once the project lives longer time, money are redirected to other, more novelty projects. In opposite, FOSS development is real user needs driven, so no need for such redirections, trade mark changes, sudden "buy newer product line from scratch" proposals etc.

This I feel value for itself, however I agree, that FOSS is not automatically better for short horizon targeting companies. However, I would not like to work for (or even be employed in) short horizon targeting company ;-).

This would be enough evidence for me to leave such a church. Simply as that can not be the enlightened one ;-D_

I have read one nice argument on forums some time ago and I use it since: for the reliability (and security) of the OSS software in general - what other solution (than OSS) allows you to check YOURSELF that it does not contain some backdoors selling your precious data to your competitors?

And for the FOSS esspecially: what other company could pay literrary tens of thousands mutually independent (as worldwide homed) software auditors (as there are involved in any bigger FOSS project, as every sniffer wants to show himself by finding some flaw)?

I use to quote sir Winston Churchil in this context, who said (not sure if word by word, but for sure about this) "I never believe any statistics except of that I did falsified myself". Next I ask the question of the second paragraph and this really makes people at least to reconsider.

The short answer is "too late". The long answer I do not know, obviously ;-P

Absolutely agree. My very first reaction was: if such a PR market is getting unclaimed, I have to speak with leaders of my favoured politic party - they gain PR potential and I can get some money for IT contract ;-)

Regarding the single-issue political parties look at life-cycle of the "green movement" wave since 80th of last century. I can not speak for outside EU, but in the European area they started as single-issue political parties and, even recognizing several unlucky excesses, they grow into mature "full hearted" political parties. After bringing the issue into top politics and getting the worse problems and threats solved parliamentarian way, the social push on the issue faded and the same faded the share of green parties in the parliaments. I thing this is fair and beneficiary to all.

Actually I see big parallel of the pirate movement with the green movement. Just think about these similarities:

* Parties established by "non-professional" politics, as the "last resort" to save the really big troubles ahead, which importance part of society oversees and the other does not believe is avoidable due to politicians. And politicians, pushed by big money interests, taking decisions which moves all closer and closer to some hardly reversible cataclysm (yes, the big nature disasters (greens tried to avoid) and big public riots (pirates tries to avoid) are similarly deadly in my opinion).

* Laughed at the beginning due its told naivety and inadequate program.

* Surprisingly flooding parliaments in the above-single-state areas once society realizes the issue seriousness and gets believe in the possibility of change.

However there is one major (positive) difference, which should be noted:
About a half of European pirate parties has "opened government" (meaning absolute and uncensored access not only to outputs, but to any internal background information for any government decision for all citizens) and "direct democracy" (meaning replacement of the old parliamentary government system, necessary when all decision makers had to confer at the same point in space and when fastest transport were horse riding, by some system allowing more direct and unbiased participation of everybody's opinion on the decisions taken, based on modern technical means) in their programs. I hope this point will spread into the whole pirate movement and in such case I forecast even longer life-cycle and bigger importance to pirate movement than the green one had.

Absolutely agreed. Just i would like to present "closer scale" look into the pirate party, Czech Pirate Party this case (preparing for its first parliament votes this June).

I myself was part of the "silent majority", voting different parties, not loyalty based but program and party history based. I was never (and still I am not) member of any politician party. However I proudly became "registered supporter" of the CPP once I noticed, they have this status along to the full regular party membership. This status requires same member fees as the full membership and grants you full access to all internal forums and meetings, however your votes are counted separately and are treated just as recommendations. However this sense of detail shows, what I think is typical for pirates movement: technocratic, sophisticated and theory of systems based ruling mechanisms. Why I like this status is, that it allows you to judge the party before eventually becoming full member and as such to have your name forever associated with it some way.

However I can say from my experience (and I did get access to internal forums of several, various oriented, politic parties before) the "spirit" and insight of various topics is dramatically different from anything I have seen before - in the positive way. And the topics discussed and decision-indications resulting from discussions are really impressive to me. They either cover surprisingly large range of issues but either do them properly prioritize and the decisions looks all-way-right to me, what I would never say to our actual parliament (and many previous as well) decisions.

Not, that it is so surprising to me myself, but it is important to me, that what I expected is not corrupted any way (so far).
Why is this I see in the fact, what is the typical members platform of the party:
* Technical (especially IT) specialists, thus intelligent, mostly graduate people.
* Technical, almost technocratic, thinking ones, with insight into theory of control.
* Independent enough to say "emperor has no cloths" if he loose them, even against much bigger audience saying other.
* Brave and self-ironical enough not only to let others call you "a pirate" but to take the gauntlet and make it your very flag.
Against general (and even my) opinion the members base average age is not below 20 but around 45, what is nice to see. And the potential of voter base below 20 is not compromised by this.

So I will for sure vote CPP in the upcoming elections and I will proudly switch to full membership once I will feel I can do more for the party than casual discussion on the forums. And this is the very first party which made me to believe in this much.

Why not? This is just application of the more general rule: Windows Operating system is causing IT gadgets to fail. :D

Now thinking twice, there should be obligatory warning note on the Windows distribution boxes, similar to the tobacco ones: Windows Operating system can damage and/or spy your software and hardware, expose you to criminal prosecutions and open your system to hackers and viruses. That would maybe do (and maybe not, many users are unteachable).