I thought this was a joke at first: License Agreement for the GPS TrackMaker(R) Program
LICENSE GRANT
The author grants a non-exclusive license to use the program, free of charge, if the user:
– Does not use the program for illegal purposes;
– does not practice activities that destroy or degrade the environment;
– does not practice polluting activities;
– does not throw trash on the ground or through the car?s windows;
– when going to the beach and creeks takes his trash back until finding a trash collector;
– does not practice any activities that hurt animals, like hunting, out-of-season fishing, pigeon shooting, dog fighting, etc.;
– does not buy wild animals that, by law, may not be taken out of their natural environment;
– has an ecological conscience and protects nature.People that for any reason do not fit the conditions above, are expressly forbidden to use the program.
Let me get this straight: if I engage in any activity which has an adverse effect on the environment, I am “expressly forbidden” to use this guy’s software? By what standard? And what magnitude of offense triggers the prohibition on use?
I drive a car, which burns gasoline, emitting carbon dioxide and water vapor (which we are told are two of the big greenhouse gases), therefore I practice a polluting activity.
I breathe, which likewise emits carbon dioxide and water vapor, so I am again practicing a polluting activity.
For that matter, the software’s author himself used electricity to power the computer on which he wrote it, and electricity powers the servers and other network hardware through which he makes it available to the public. Every last electron of that electricity comes from a source which involves a “polluting activity” in some form, whether direct (in the case of combustion sources) or indirect (in the waste streams generated by the manufacture of hardware used to capture solar, wind, and other ostensibly “clean energy”).
And even giving “clean energy” sources a pass on their manufacturing-related pollution, they each have related tradeoffs which can be considered as “destroying or degrading the environment”. Just ask the Kennedy clan about the unsightliness of wind farms. Or the rare and endangered animals (or the 10,000 families) displaced by the construction of the Itaipu Dam about the “destructive environmental effects” of hydroelectric power.
The funny thing in dealing in ill-conceived absolutes like this guy does is that it is so easy to end up looking like a hypocrite.
In addition to the problems with definitions and degrees, the license displays some problems with basic sense. How, for instance, does fishing out of season hurt animals while fishing in season does not? I also fail to understand (whenever I run across people who are opposed to hunting) how an animal being pounced on by one of its fellow woodland creatures and then clawed, bitten, and bled to death in a lingering agony of pain and terror is somehow more humane than being quickly dispatched by a well-placed bullet.
Some of this I can agree with (e.g. not littering). But the rest is just mushy-headed, feelings based moral posturing, the sort of environmental activism often engaged in by people whose view of the natural world derives from Disney cartoons and whose approach to understanding it has more in common with Oprah than with intellection.
But hey, if it makes the guy feel good about himself that he’s doing his part to protect the “circle of life” from human interference, I guess that’s what’s really important. (Personally, I think it makes him look like a pretentious nitwit.)
ADDENDUM: This particular verbiage from the website doesn’t appear in the license agreement embedded in the software itself. I knew it was odd that I didn’t notice it when I installed the software.