E-Dribble

Alexey Leonidovich Pazhitnov is the gent that developed Tetris. In the past, I pictured the creator of the game as a kindly soul, wanting to share his game with the world.

I was wrong.

He looks kindly enough, doesn’t he? Don’t be fooled! In a recent interview, Alexey states:

I think he might be mad that his game has been found on every electrical device known to man in the last couple of decades.

I will be the first to say that not only is free software not for everyone, but will also proclaim that there are times when FOSS can not sufficiently fill the needs that it’s commercial counterparts can.

But to say that it never should have existed? Well, that just seems a little closed minded to me. It would make as much sense for me to say that only free software should exist. Neither statement makes much sense.

I will be the first to state that I’m not much of a champion of free software. I use it because I can, but I don’t push it really. I like to let people know that alternatives exist, but feel that you should use what you want. I see most of the same detractors in the open source camp as everyone else (A whackjob as head of the GNU movement, people with the attention spans of 12 year olds ceasing development on an application because they got a new job at the local burger joint and can no longer dedicate the time necessary to keep up with the security exploits found in their WoW weapons sorting script). Add to this the fact that open source software is still an alternative. This means that you’re using something different than the defacto. Still don’t get it? You’re the minority whose applications will often see things just a little differently than anyone else. Your document in Open Office looks a little different than the other people on Win XP viewing it in office. Your pdf looks A LOT different in Evince than the rest of the world’s view.

I don’t feel that FOSS does everything well. It instead seems to excel at filling niches left by corporations that have become so big that they no longer listen to what the customer wants, instead spending billions of dollars on control groups and test centers to decipher what the customer needs.

I’m not trying to talk anyone out of free software. I use it daily and have grown quite fond of it. My point is that FOSS is about choice. This must include the choice not to use FOSS. Embrace your proprietary and closed source commercial apps if that’s your thing, man.

Unfortunately, Alexey doesn’t feel the world deserves that choice, but instead must accept what the big co’s want to spoon feed us.

I really think he’s just pissed about his game, man.