Quote: "These people used to be called pirates. Now they're open source enthusiasts."
What is that supposed to mean? The issue is way more complex than that, and how can you paint all the legitimate open source companies with a big red "pirate" brush like that? That doesn't even make sense! The issues are connected, sure, but not the same! It's because of insipid stuff like this that I quit reading Coding Horror.
His preceding sentence explains it: "It's tempting to ascribe this to the "cult of no-pay", programmers and users who simply won't pay for software no matter how good it is, or how inexpensive it may be."
He's saying that if you were asked to guess -- Family Feud-style -- a name for a person who won't pay for software, the obvious term was once "pirate", whereas today the obvious term would be "open source enthusiast". I don't think he means that these terms describe the same person, although it's easy to see how this could be misconstrued as such -- it was my first reaction as well.
What is that supposed to mean? The issue is way more complex than that, and how can you paint all the legitimate open source companies with a big red "pirate" brush like that? That doesn't even make sense! The issues are connected, sure, but not the same! It's because of insipid stuff like this that I quit reading Coding Horror.