There's been an interesting reaction on Twitter over my public outcry about Instacast's unethical software update that I made yesterday. For now decades people consider me an "Apple fan", but I never considered myself to be a fanatic, really. While there were great many things I could "admire" from what they produced over the years, it didn't prevent me from greatly appreciate quality products from its competitors, be it Windows 7, Sun's Solaris (before the Oracle acquisition), Debian GNU/Linux and even Amiga. For I like to share my enthusiasm about great things, and at times complain bitterly about not-so-great ones, especially since computing, no matter its great importance in my professional life, is something that could be placed aside from the important things in life.
So, why would you attach your identity and vehemently defend things that you would buy, especially software? I was greatly frustrated that people couldn't see beyond the simple visual design of Instacast and how its author did such an unethical thing. This is what's important: to value ethics of respecting paid customers rather than seeing it as an opportunity to scam them for more money.
I find it telling that such flame wars rarely exist between the various free / open source operating systems, especially considering the unusual amount of effort and investment needed to develop and customize them. We often joke about the "wars" between EMACS and Vim, but I've never seen those arguments dip into the level of bile and hatred seen between phone brands and now even between phone apps. By making those devices even more personal and accessible to people even more removed from any understanding of how they work, we see more people attaching their branding and customization to their identity. While this is not a problem per se, it does create an allegiance that blinds them from objectivity and ethics for the cause of defending whatever they attached themselves to. Like the "religious wars" between Mac and PCs, but worse.
That's going to teach me from trying to have a rational conversation outside of Slashdot and Reddit...
Published on May 8, 2012 at 21:20 EDT
Older post: Instacast's Extortion
Newer post: Updating to Ubuntu 12.04