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I was shocked, amazed, and baffled that Declan McCullagh would write an article like this.
His central misconception is that political activism competes against time spent actually programming. He provides no explaination for why he thinks it is an "either/or" proposition. Indeed it is not, for several reasons.
First, political activism motivates people to do other things besides be politically active -- say things like program. Open Source has a community and every time we take a break from programming and state publicly our values, beliefs, agenda, and rights, we win if for no other reason than we attract sympathizers. We also win because programmers establish a social network by engaging in discussion.
Maybe we don't win in the sense of defeating, say, the DMCA legislatively or judicially. Of course, this isn't a disadvantage of our course of action, merely a consequence of the reality that we aren't (yet) politically powerful enough to win those battles. But this brings me to my second point: when we are vocal politically we do win in the sense of defeating something like the DMCA morally, spiritually, and practically. The last one is the most important. I ask any intelligent person to argue that the MPAA won its battle against 2600 after examing the google search results [google.com]. Would this link look the way it did if not for activism?
A third reason is that even non-technical people can relate to being "beaten down by the man". That creates an identity for us in people's minds. If your are not a programmer and you hears that Alan Cox won't come to the US for fear some law, then at least the next time they see an article about what he REALLY spends his time doing, they'll read it. Hey, maybe they'll even try it.
There is a fourth and final reason that activism is important, even critical. Maybe geeks aren't the best at politicking and lobbying and so forth. Well, who is, exactly? OK, "lawyers and stuff". How do we get them on our side exactly? Hmmm, Declan?
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