InfoWorld columnist and legendary consumer advocate Ed Foster died over the weekend. Ed was a tireless crusader for consumer rights in the digital age, and he will certainly be missed. For many years Ed has authored GripeLine (http://weblog.infoworld.com/gripeline/), where he called companies and politicians to task for abusive anti-consumer practices.
I’ve written before about how Ed exposed and publicised shamefully lopsided software license agreements (http://www.gripe2ed.com/scoop/section/Eula), including Autodesk’s and Adobe’s. Recently, Ed commented about the May, 2008 Vernor decision (http://weblog.infoworld.com/gripeline/archives/2008/05/you_can_book_a.html) (see my CAD/Court web site (http://www.cadcourt.com/) for more information about the Vernor case).
It will be no easy task to fill Ed’s shoes. We can be certain, though, that his work must go on.