this is at once the best thing i've ever read by esr, and also a perfect explanation of how open source's image will always remain on top of free software's.
the second part didn't occur to me until i read through it again, but esr himself has been putting rms and (much less appropriately) anyone that sees value in his perspective in an anti-theistic kafkatrap, an especially damning and potent snare considering that both esr and rms are atheists. that kind of diabolical abuse has soured me on esr forever, but i admire how brilliantly he explains it.
social pressure can be incredibly effective, especially when you can make people feel like the world is empty without the impact the "inside group" you think you belong to is making.
they make people think their only choice is remain "accepted" or be cast out among filth. mormons are good at it, but the catholic church perfected it centuries before, and it isn't limited to christianity or even to religion. heck, political parties do it, too-- no law making you join a party.
i realize that copyleft proponents and permissive license proponents tend to have different views, but painting everyone that disagrees with you as "zealots" and taking cheap pot shots like the ones you see increasingly on hn is pretty intellectually dishonest.
everyone knows that open source has successfully overshadowed free software. no need to continue to marginalize them more than has already been done, you win. they'll try forever to be taken seriously, and everyone will try very hard to miss the point.
also, while a lot of people on hn seem to think that permissive licensing is the only way to do it, most copyleft proponents do think there is a place for permissive licensing. so pretending it's the people calling for more than one solution "zealots" is especially silly.
tl;dr but as long as you outnumber them, you can tell everyone they're the zealots, and as long as you outnumber them you can win the argument (the accusation) by popular support. 100 million open source advocates can't be wrong, (and even if they were, who cares?)
it's not a double standard, it's two very arguably different issues that people frequently confuse as the same. the zynga issue is closer to plagiarism, and copying is not the same thing.
people get really upset about plagiarism and see it as dishonesty or fraud, as well as theft. history is rife with good (or at least gray) works of plagiarism that people would miss, such as "make em' laugh" in "singin' in the rain," which is a complete ripoff of "be a clown" by cole porter. not a parody, a ripoff with no attribution. (porter never complained.)
still, you find a larger portion of humanity is pissed off by plagiarism, where more people think copies are copies are copies, at least they help make the author famous or rich as a kind of advertising if attribution stays intact.
plagiarism is less likely to help the author of the original, but it can sometimes. for example, i hadn't heard anything about joe satriani for about a decade until coldplay allegedly plagiarized some guitar riffs from him. i've listened to both and apparently you need to be a musician to tell. at least i couldn't tell.
i like that riffs get reused sometimes, and so i don't think it's always easy to have a black and white view about plagiarism. i've neither defended zynga nor joined in condemnation.
the second part didn't occur to me until i read through it again, but esr himself has been putting rms and (much less appropriately) anyone that sees value in his perspective in an anti-theistic kafkatrap, an especially damning and potent snare considering that both esr and rms are atheists. that kind of diabolical abuse has soured me on esr forever, but i admire how brilliantly he explains it.