Re: GNAT GPL is not shareware

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

I said:
...
> So one could say that Free Software most likely will lead directly to the 
> destruction of human civilization. :-)

I think I best explain this smiley in case someone misinterprets what I 
think here.

I certainly don't believe that Free Software (specifically the GPL) is the 
sole cause of this result, or even the most important cause. It contributes, 
but clearly Twitter and similar systems are much more to blame. (Not to pick 
on Twitter too much, it's just a platform. Someone else would have done it 
if they didn't. It's the mentality of Twitter, the idea that anything 
valuable can be communicated in dribs-and-drabs, that's the problem. All 
that one can communicate in 140 characters are irrelevancies and 
distortions -- because that's all that will fit. Not to mention the frequent 
outright lies.) That instant gratification mentality leads directly to 
trial-and-error software, because people don't think they have the time to 
do it right (they're usually wrong, but the mentality of getting something 
up in 12 hours leads to trying to do too much too quick in some instant 
gratification platform and results in at best unmaintainable junk).

For a lot of people, computers will *have* to run their lives, because they 
won't be capable of anything else. (The recent studies on brain changes 
shows a clear loss of connected thinking in smartphone users.) For them, the 
ultimate result won't matter, so perhaps no one will even notice the loss of 
any valuable civilization.

Has anyone ever wondered why we've never been visited by other intelligent 
life, given that statistically there must be hundreds of thousands of such 
civilizations in our galaxy? One possibility is that intelligent life is 
effectively self-limiting, and we right now are at the peak of possible 
development -- at some point all such life gets so much technology that they 
lose the ability to grow anymore -- and we're right at that point now. (This 
is one of the rare cases that I hope I'm wrong about...)

                              Randy.