RE: Bertrand Meyer challenges some open-source assumptions.
From: Stephen Frost [mailto:sfrost@ns.snowman.net]
>
> It is ad homminum (sp?). It's dealing in personalities instead of
> the issues, it's very poor writing because of this. It also evades the
> question, and seeing as how this person has a specific monetary gain
> from the fall of GPL'd software his comments are of very questionable
> validity.
I showed Meyer's article to a friend of mine who's training is in Sociology,
and we were uncertain as to what was wrong with Meyer's position.
We both agreed that his comments wrt Stallman were most likely
"strawman fallacy" (attacking a position that your opponent does
not hold; specifically arguing that Stallman opposes making money
from software), but we could not decide if his comments wrt to
Raymond were ad hominem fallacy (discussing the merits of the person
holding the opposing position, rather than the merits of their position;
specifically arguing that since Raymond is a "gun nut", he has no sense of
ethics, and as such his comments concerning the ethics of Free Software
have no validity, whatever they might be) or "red herring fallacy" (bringing
up an issue completely unrelated to the issue at hand, and attacking it;
specifically the ethics of guns rather than the ethics of free software).
In any event, both of us ended up questioning his bias, his ability to make
a coherent argument, and I also ended up questioning the objectivity of the
magazine whose editorial staff decided to publish his article.
>
> Stephen
>
>
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