🚀 go-pugleaf

Jacob Gore writes:
>All LPF members and supporters are (or at least should be)
>calling for the boycott.  (They should certainly all be participating in
>the boycott.)

This is beginning to sound like a party line, an attitude which I find distasteful.

I support just about everything in the LPF charter; for this reason, I have been 
considering joining.  However, if participating in this boycott has become in effect 
a condition for membership, I cannot in good conscience join the LPF.  As much as
I agree with most of their goals, I do not agree that the boycott (as I understand it)
is an appropriate way to achieve them.

I am most certainly biased--until quite recently I made my living writing software for
the Macintosh, and I think they make d*mn fine machines and software.  Even so, my
reasons for opposing the boycott are mainly pragmatic.  I do not believe that, put
bluntly, a bunch of altruists refusing to buy or port software to Apple's machines
is going to make any difference in Apple's legal stance.  Their market is just too big
for the LPF to make much of a dent.  I think that people's energy can be far better 
spent on efforts that provide more leverage, such as:

 - Providing expert testimony in the numerous stupid lawsuits.
 - Lobbying Congress and state legislatures to overhaul software copyright law.
 - Mounting publicity campaigns, such as editorial material and outright
   advertisement.

A boycott just makes us look silly.  So do shrill declamations of what is and is not
"Politically Correct."  So far, I have been much more impressed with the approach of
the EFF, to be honest.


Amanda Walker
Visix Software Inc.