Mike seems to be engaged in a little fisking action regarding my post on Kairosnews and here, as well as Clancy's two posts, about open source software use in weblogs of copyfighters. Needless to say, I don't want to fisk back. If he wants to overstate the obvious and try to rhetorically take me to task with some "argumentative slip" reader response of his, that's fine. But it would be nice if he would engage with the larger point, reiterated in both posts, that copyfighters use of open source software could be better represented than it is. This is particularly true in light of the MT licensing scheme (do I have to keep saying that without anyone responding to what is a major issue?).

But this does not mean that I am not concerned about Mike's derogatory labeling of the open source movement as "radical." Sort of disturbing to hear from someone who is interested in political action discourse. One would hope that it in gaining more mainstream acceptance that open source could lose that label. Maybe I should take the loyalty oath that Seth Finkelstein describes from listening to the DMCRA hearings. Congress and the content industries I expect this sort of attitude from, but a self-professed intellectual property scholar? Consider who's drawing unneeded lines in the sand here. Besides, open source advocates have long been advocating the use of open source software; this is not some new "politicization." Seems to have been a major tenet long before becoming "widespread," not some new sign of emerging radicalism. Maybe it's just new to Mike.

Meanwhile, I'll agree with Mike and Krista. I wouldn't label them as copyfighters in the sense that their weblogs don't resonate heavily with both outright advocacy and extensive criticism of the many IP issues currently being engaged with on the sites that I did list in my first post. Each of us has our own areas of interest that we choose to write about online. But I also don't buy the "I'm just a scholar" excuse; it implies somehow that ethos as a scholar is not also built through practice. And I especially don't buy it from Mike since his work involves literacy which so desparately needs to affect positive change through the choices we make as teachers. I don't believe that his scholarship is just an intellectual exercise for him, that he's not invested in it ideologically. Mike may choose--because we all have to make choices about how to allocate our resources--not to use open source software or engage in many of the other intellectual property practices that come out of his dissertation work, but I seriously doubt that he will refrain from advocacy or putting any of it into practice. Composition is the one field in which we always should be willing to acknowledge that we are scholars and practitioners, almost inseparably so, and how important each is to the other.

So instead, wouldn't it be just easier to say, "Hey, that's true. Open source software use should be better represented in the copyfighters' area of the blogosphere. Use provides positive example to others. Wish I could do it right now, but I can't." Sort of like Sam's reaction which was posted as a comment in Clancy's first blog in this conversation.

See, I'll admit. I'm writing from Windows right now. I've been using it exclusively for the last few months (except when in SSH). Very bad phone lines here. I've tried many different modems with Linux (even more now than in this post), none of which connect at more than about 28K (if that much); my laptop modem doesn't work at all, whether Windows or Linux. But the cheap Intel modem I have, which doesn't work on Linux at all, regularly connects at 40K. Can't wait to move in August to get back on broadband and back into Linux. But until then, I'm not going to assume some defensive posturing and say, "Well, I'm an IP scholar, so I'm not bound to practice what I research." It's just not necessary, true, or even productive to go down that line of reasoning. Instead, I'll just say I'm doing what I can and hope that I can do more in the future.