(Cool, there have been some truly excellent posts on Advogato lately. For a while, I thought that it was heading to the dogs, but thankfully, most of the really bright people decided to stick around. Rock on.)

movement: a fair reply. I'm a big fan of Firebird, and the small-browser concept, and I think that more software should be factored the way Thunderbird and Firebird have been instead of the Emacs approach of Seamonkey. Each program is a specific task to do and does it well, and extra functionality may be snapped-on via extensions.

Has anybody suggested, say, taking the "Stuff They Left Out" Extension including the extra SSL UI, but put it in a standard extension bundled with Firebird but disabled by default? That sounds like a nice compromise.

berend: Good to see people are not shirking their duty to stand up to government for bad and unfair decisionmaking. The Communism comparison is still drawing a long bow though, I think. You simply can't compare a city council foreclosing on some little old ladies because of back-rates, and say, students being mown down by tanks and guns (as my grandmother and her family witnessed in Budapest), or forced collectivisation, mass starvation, pogroms, disappearances... sorry, you just cannot compare them. http://hipcat.hungary.org/users/hipcat/1956.htm

As an aside, I'm skeptical that user-pays is as good as people make out. There are certain things that cost money (like clean air, law and order to protect property rights etc) that are very hard to meter, but everyone needs. It costs money to protect property rights. It costs money to keep the air, water and soil clean. It costs money to keep the system fair, and prevent the strong from preying on the weak, or the multitide of the weak overwhelming the strong and taking all their stuff. Freedom costs money, and freedom has limits.

Governments exist for a reason, and they don't simply exist despite not being needed. If this were the case, Africa and South America would be richer than shit. I, for one, am not interested in living in a jungle.