Kris: I agree with you that one of the benefits of Wordpress is the huge library of freely available themes and plugins. It's true that "premium" theme developers and plugin developers may be in violation of Wordpress' licensing scheme, which may prohibit commercial distribution of derivative works such as plugins and modules based on the community's skeleton themes or plugins. Very cool that you managed to make this point without simply accusing the guys at Ithemes of a violation of Wordpress' licensing.

One of the other reasons I appreciate Wordpress is the somewhat relaxed approach to interpreting and enforcing the GPL in regards to premium developers. This allows people who would like to develop full-time or more heavily to obtain the resources to do so and the result has been some awesome themes and plugins. Builder, for instance, has one or two full-time coders and new versions are released just about daily. Also, in fairness to Builder's developers, I should point out that the theme is licensed under GPL and the source is open in the sense that it isn't encrypted or ioncubed. It's also free in the sense that derivative works are permitted and encouraged. Currently, the developers are running contests to encourage development of free child themes based on Builder. The Wordpress community should be able to check out the source for Builder and integrate core features and ideas into the new default theme for Wordpress 3.0 if they so choose (although, I prefer simple skeleton like default themes for the learning purposes discussed in the post above.) Here's the link to Ithemes sorta-GPL commitment: <a href="http://ithemes.com/ithemes-is-going-gpl/" target="_blank">http://ithemes.com/ithemes-is-going-gpl/

Having said all that, Builder isn't free in the pricetag sense and I acknowledge that some "open source" communities seem to have too few developers working under the more pure open source model and too many trying sell premium mods to each other. Joomla may be an example of this. Drupal is an example of the opposite. In my experience, Drupal's community is viciously anti-profit and the CMS just doesn't serve huge segments of the designer community as a result.

Agreed!Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Great. I'll update the post with the new video.Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Thanks for reading Daily Uprising, Kris! Usually, "keeping patients in control" means allowing patients to make informed decisions in consultation with medical experts like doctors, but without an additional layer of government control interfering with those decisions.

You ask, "Does anyone really promote taking decision-making power away from patients?" I think a better way of understanding the Left's motivation might be that while they do promote legislation that will probably lead to rationing or interference with patient decision-making, they do so in order to provide "tens of thousands of uninsured Americans" with some kind of choice. They see it as increasing choice, really. A liberal might argue that if someone cannot afford insurance their choice as a patient is completely compromised by their inability to pay. Ultimately, there's a scarcity problem because there simply aren't enough resources (not even close to enough doctors) for everyone, so there's really only two ways of providing the care to those who can't afford it: (1) limiting the freedom of those who have money to buy up all the health care or (2) bleeding money from some other area and reducing standards. Most liberals like to think they are only advocating (2), but ultimately, they almost always argue for (1), albeit often indirectly.

Your comments about individual freedom and "predictable irrationality" are really more interesting than the health care debate, so I'll address them in a full post when I have a moment.

I've begun reading these. It may take awhile because of time constraints, but this is great work and certainly deserves a review. Interestingly enough, I've been told that I'd enjoy the Sparrowhawk series by a friend, but he didn't mention that his recommendation made sense given my politics. Great stuff!

Melissa, I'm not sure if you're spamming or not, but the information is copyrighted. Upon request, I may allow others to repost information and fair use is always acceptable.

Agreed, Dan. This is one of the reasons why the American media is spending much of its time reporting on its own economic suffering. Why buy a paper if you know they aren't going to be reporting on the stories that your community is discussing...

Thanks, Charlotte. I *am* looking forward to the radio show... but vacation sounds nice, too. Hope you have a good time.

Thanks for commenting Greg. We hope you'll feel free to keep us up to date on Melissa and all that she accomplishes. I don't know anything about Darla's district, but I hope she runs and brings Melissa with her as a legislative aide. I thoroughly enjoyed working in D.C. and I did learn a little something in between kickball games on the mall, too. It might be saying too much, but all candidates should bring at least one true believer with them in a significant staff position... just so that they have to face looks of disappointment if they learn to compromise too easily.

Mas:

We love the new blog! You just keep getting better.

-- Brandon