I caught the talk today by Chuck Collins and William H. Gates, Sr. for their book about why repealing the estate tax is not a good thing. The basic concept of the argument is that it is appropriate to give back when one dies. Fundamentally to get rich you are using the system that society and the government create, hence it not hard to swallow the idea it’s appropriate to pay back at a time when it’s the easiest. It’s also interesting to see how politics was played to make an issue that affects 2% of those who die each year sound like a big deal. The first trick was naming is something catchy, in this case the “Death Tax”. The second was to find a way to make it look like it’s an unjust law that cripples the small business/farm owner. In order to pull off the second, those who favor abolishment had to force an all(repeal) or nothing approach to trump the natural impulse to just fix the minor hurts of the law that occur as inflation makes an old limit lower then it used to be. The next step is to make claims that families lost their farms because of the estate tax. The truth is that the pro-repeal groups haven’t been able to find anyone who has lost their farm because of the estate tax. There is more information at their pretty good anti-fud myth fact site.
11:59:39 PM    comments ==

One of the names from the meeting tonight was Miguel de Icaza. I’ve always been impressed with Miguel de Icaza approach to open source; he is not afraid to call something (even from Microsoft) cool, and embrace it for his own. His pragmatic approach is often a breath of fresh air in a community that has been defining itself on religion. I guess with that personality trait that I should not have been surprised to find out that Mono's licensing was not the semi-typical “burn the commercial bridges” approach with the GPL, but the “good stuff from both worlds” usage. The core/CLI piece of the mono project is owned by Ximian and released under the GPL but is also available under a (pay for) proprietary license. The rest of the project is under less problematic licenses.

I’m quite envious of his passion and energy towards what he works on. It's time for to figure out how much more of my life I intend to stay in test.
11:24:23 PM    comments ==

I'm back from the bloggers dinner at crossroads. I really wish I had brought a camera to the meeting, but I'm probably pretty safe with collecting other people's photos. When I got there, there was only a handful of people, including Sam Ruby and Miguel de Icaza. Ted Leung has a photo from a few miuntes before I got there. Joshua Allen was also there tonight but I didn't realize it at the time. I've got a business card from Roland Tanglao who drove down from Vancouver. I talked a bit with Anita Rowland (who unfortunatly doesn't have rss). Anita has the list of attendees up with some photos. Which tells me the name of the engaged couple I talked a bit to, Eric Soross and Rose Horner. Earlier I talked to Adam Vandeberg.
10:40:37 PM    comments ==

Tonight involves two things, turning in my 20/20 form, and going to the weblogging get together at Crossroads.
4:22:58 PM    comments ==