10-Year Anniversary of Open Source

Bruce Perens writes "Saturday is the 10-Year Anniversary of Open Source, the initiative to promote Free Software to business. Obviously, it's been incredibly successful. I've submitted a State of Open Source message discussing the anniversary of Open Source, its successes, and the challenges it will face in the upcoming decade."

Surprised by Wealth!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I have a LinuxCare Visa Card! [geekz.co.uk]

Re:Surprised by Wealth!

[Bruce Perens]

Surprised by Wealth was Eric Raymond, not me. I wouldn't ever have written that, and Eric claims he lost all the money because he never sold the stock. Holy toledo. My biggest IPO was Pixar. I made a little money on various friends-and-family things from Linux companies. Wasn't involved in LinuxCare. :-)

Re:

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I didn't mean to attach the specifics to you, Bruce. I just remember the general "boom" mentality that happened around LinuxWorld in 1999.

By 2001?

I miss the old Technocrat. Thanks for that... Have you another, like project in the wings?

Re:Surprised by Wealth!

[Bruce Perens]

How can you look at Zimbra and MySQL and think the boom mentality was then?

Technocrat.net has been back for a while. If you did know that and don't like its current editorial content, I could really use some better article submissions. I've got to take most anything people submit right now because it's slim pickings. But not over here at Slashdot, darn it.

New projects in the wings: a start-up company called Kiloboot. Product not announced yet. An American version of FFII.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Zimbra may - briefly - make MS the biggest open source vendor in the world! ;-)

I wasn't aware the "new" Technocrat was still associated with you - after dropping the old slashcode. I have some pals there - and still drop a post occasionally.

Re:

[Bruce Perens]

Technocrat.net is still mine, although I actually lost the domain once and some nice folks rescued it for me. Wow. Anyway, I take the adsense revenue and pay Zogger with it. I can't always be there to run articles, and he's there much more frequently.

Bruce

Re:

[unlametheweak]

I have an account with Technocrat.net (under a different nick). I rarely go their however because I spend most of my Internet time on Slashdot (old habits die hard). I think that is the way with a lot of people.

If it were a bit more lively it would be more enticing. People like me are ensured to get lots of feedback from Slashdot for example, either through replies or the moderation system, and even through the Friend and Foe functions.

The impression (a person like me gets) while at Technocrat.net is that n

Re:

[Chapter80]

Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond. Same thing. Two industry icons that I'm unlikely to ever communicate with.

Re:

[Bruce Perens]

Think again :-)

I think you mean "Open Source"

[Filter]

Not open source.

Re:

[eln]

More accurately the "Open Source Initiative", which is the effort to water down the Free Software philosophy until it appeals to business types.

Re:

[dgatwood]

Yeah. This definitely isn't the 10th anniversary of open source. OSI, maybe, but not open source. I was using NetBSD-mac68k more than ten years ago, and it was and still is open source. Ditto for MkLinux.

I'll raise a glass to that!

[Fuzzypig]

Making the software world a more friendly place to work and play! Here's to many more years!

Re:

[gotzero]

I got permission in 2007 to install some open source software at work after using it head to head with some of the programs from big players that I found absolutely intolerable. Hopefully initiatives like this one help whoever makes those decisions come around! Here's to another 10 years of increased adoption and collaboration (at work and then at home)!

Misleading use of capital letters

[davidwr]

It's too bad English requires titles to have initial-capital letters in almost every word. It leads to confusion.

While this may be the 10th anniversary of Open Source, it is not the 10th anniversary of open s.

Open-source computer code has been around about as long as computers, and the equivalent to open source in other areas such as blueprints have been around since time immemorial.

corrected

[davidwr]

It's too bad English requires titles to have initial-capital letters in almost every word. It leads to confusion.

While this may be the 10th anniversary of Open Source, it is not the 10th anniversary of open source.

Open-source computer code has been around about as long as computers, and the equivalent to open source in other areas such as blueprints have been around since time immemorial.
--
That'll teach me not to use Preview.

Re:

[Curtman]

It's too bad English requires titles to have initial-capital letters in almost every word. It leads to confusion.

In contrast to other languages which insist that inanimate objects should be classified as masculine or feminine, capitalizing names of things isn't very confusing at all. ;)

Re:

[Intron]

When I first started writing code in the 70's there were still serious arguments about whether code could even be protected by copyrights. It wasn't until the "Pineapple" [cornell.edu] case in the early 80's that it was settled. The Pineapple contained Apple's ROM code and their claim was that you couldn't copyright binary data. They lost, of course.

Re:

[that this is not und]

It's sad how few people identify Apple Computer as one of the chief villains and 'trailblazers' in the rise of legally-restricted software. Apple also nearly closed off the GUI concept to own it for themselves. If you search around you can find firebrand essays from RMS condeming Apple's 'Look and Feel' lawsuit against Microsoft. Essentially Apple 'delivered' the GUI to Microsoft and Windows, by suing all the other GUI developers in the competing market of GUI layers for MS-DOS. Everybody but Microsoft

Re:

[Trogre]

I like it how Jon "Mad Dog" Hall put it:

(paraphrasing)

Of course we had free software back in the '60s. But back then it was called "software".

Re:

[drinkypoo]

While this may be the 10th anniversary of Open Source, it is not the 10th anniversary of open s.

It's definitely not the 10th anniversary of Open Source. I refer slashdotters to my slashdot journal entry of June 27, 2007 entitled "Who invented the term 'Open Source'? [slashdot.org]" As per the entry, the earliest documented use of the phrase I could dig up was September 10, 1996, in a Caldera press release. No matter how you slice the facts, the tenth anniversary of Open Source has definitely come and gone.

I've asked Mr. Perens for clarification before, but he wasn't listening. Perhaps this time?

Anyway, I have t

Re:

[Bruce Perens]

I see some, thin and far between, references to "open source" before the announcement of the Open Source Definition. But IMO they didn't mean the same thing. They might have been referring to source code that was disclosed, but were not referring to the assurance that the software gave you a particular set of rights.

The date that I am talking about today is the anniversary of a campaign.

Bruce

Re:

[MBGMorden]

Yep. I remember dissecting the QBASIC code for Gorillas and Nibbles back when I got my first PC (486SX 20Mhz, 2MB Ram, 80MB Hard Drive, DOS 5.1 + Windows 3.1). It was quite educational. A lot of the old programs for my Commodore 64 were just distributed as source on disks too.

As a matter of fact, WAY back in the day it was common to buy simple computer games not in disk form (those were hard to spread), but in the form of a magazine or book. They'd have a collection of simple games' source printed in t

Re:

[dedazo]

In the beginning (around 10,000 BC or so), software was nothing more than a commodity that helped drive hideously expensive computers. Source code was shared freely among everyone (government agencies, universities and companies that actually used computers) and got adapted and improved for whatever task they wanted to accomplish with what little shared time they were getting on their Big Iron du jour. Companies like IBM, DEC and Wang made a killing on the hardware and support, and software was an afterthou

Re:

[cromar]

This is the accepted standard in English. Some style books will have different rules as to when/if a, the, on, in, etc. should be capitalized, but it's standard English to capitalize titles.

10 years - not hardly

[Mycroft_514]

The first open source project I participated in was from around 1985-1996. The prject itself pre-dated that even.

Try to get over yourselves people.

Re:10 years - not hardly

[QuantumG]

He's talking about Open Source, not open source.

Re:10 years - not hardly

[Bruce Perens]

I know. I made a point, really early in the article, of going over Free Software, Richard Stallman, and the fact that he started in the early 80's. FYI, my first Free Software program, Electric Fence was published from Pixar in 1987.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:

[unitron]

Those were the good old days, when I could have a sig that self-deprecatingly satirized Bruce's sig.

Now all I can do is bitch about MS. (not the disease, the other disease)

Open Source has already changed the world...

[MindPrison]

...and will continue to do so, and even accelerate into the future.

I've been using Open Source all the way since the start, heck...I've even contributed to it by writing Open Documents and Wikis to help guide the everyday user how to use the various applications.

I am proud of what we have achieved, I remember when people at work mocked us as "nerdy" or "hippie" for constantly advocating alternative solutions to software and hardware solutions, but after being known for solving issues that the commercial world just couldn't this is no longer the case.

Thanks to distributors like "Ubuntu" that puts community effort together in functional packages for the "everyday man" - Linux has become both friendly and usable for everyone, not to mention the efforts of the Wine team that has made it entirely possible to run your favorite apps. under Linux with ease and little "under-the-hood" work at all.

Fantastic efforts, and an even better future. Personally I think the future for OS have never looked this good.

Scarcity

[XanC]

With an absence of scarcity. A lot of economic rules (not all, but a lot) simply don't apply to software in the age of the Internet.

Re:

[msuarezalvarez]

But, see, therein lies the difference.

The free software movement and the open source movements propose to do that and at the same time work in order to preserve their ability to do so. That pleasurable sharing that you speak about was nice, but as we can very much see nowadays, did not sustain itself: it is now gone, a precious memory no doubt, but no less gone for that. Why is it gone?: precisely because those that practiced that sharing always disregarded the fact that they were not doing anything to pre

Re:

[msuarezalvarez]

Well, apart from OSS printer drivers they are mostly unfixable by this "you" you keep talking about ;-)

Correction: free software is the success

[argoff]

Open Source is a trademark group, but the real success has been free (an in GPL) software. Economic forces alone have pushed growth in this area up way above 20% per year in many areas, but the Open Source movement was sort of drug along by the coat tales. I'm not saying it's hasn't accomplished a lot, but pure economic forces would have forced this growth anyhow even if the Open Source group never formed.

Re:Correction: free software is the success

[Bruce Perens]

Agreed. Stallman sees deeper than any of us and he should get much more credit than he does. Of course, he'd do without the credit and be happy if you'd just think about the importance of your freedom.

That said, I remember just how little buy-in we had with business people then, because Richard was the wrong guy to promote to them. He doesn't have any empathy with them, this rapidly becomes clear if you discuss it with him. Yes, if we didn't do it, someone else would have. The world really was ready for it, that was clear in how fast it caught on.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:

[Rich]

I disagree. I've written an awful lot of open source software (which just happens to also be 'free software' according to Stallman's definition. The ideals expressed in the open source definition ring much truer to me than those espoused by the FSF. The problem I have is that I disagree with the premise that closed-source software is morally wrong, I don't believe it is. For me, the big win of 'open source' has been that provides a framework for describing what I'm doing without having to sign up to a moral

Re:

[Bruce Perens]

That's fine. I hope you realize that your right to describe what your doing so freely is a rather delicate thing that needs protection.

Re:

[Rich]

Certainly, free speech is something I will happily defend, freedom of movement etc. too. I just don't feel that having the source code to all software you use is a moral issue.

Re:

[unlametheweak]

I wonder how much RMS's stance is more rhetorical than real.

I think he is viewing (and projecting his views) of the attitudes of the types of people who deal in closed source software, rather than the software itself. For example, in his early days at MIT he quickly realized that companies were unwilling to share the source code with him so that he could improve the software. He would also be upset over software that had inherent flaws that he couldn't fix because the source was closed. Dealing with stubbor

Re:

[syousef]

When presenting a radical or new idea you need someone stable, rational and personable to do so, otherwise people become hostile to the idea, and it takes a long time for it to be accepted.

I've met Stallman. My initial impression: He's rude, argumentative, defensive eccentric and comes across as not quite mentally stable. (Using props like a halo and robe and calling yourself the patron saint of free software?! Please!!!) He's also got the charisma and style of a smelly hippy. (I will give him one positive

Re:

[Bruce Perens]

So, I agree that Richard is the wrong person to promote to business people. But having attended a number of St. iGNUtious performances, it's been really clear that his audience gets the joke. Although he has at times gotten food in his beard, there is no lack of bathing and no smell. I can't speak for how he was in 1982 at MIT, I was at another lab hundreds of miles away then.

IMO, for Richard the source of his genius is also an affliction. He can't help the way he is.

Bruce

Re:

[syousef]

But having attended a number of St. iGNUtious performances, it's been really clear that his audience gets the joke.

Perhaps. If he didn't drag it out for so long it might even be funny. For those that don't get it, it's very very off-putting and what most non-techies see is a strange hippy with a long beard and food in it rambling about something or other. They're likely to pay as much attention to the homeless man that begs for money on the way to work.

Although he has at times gotten food in his beard, ther

Re:

[Brandybuck]

That said, I remember just how little buy-in we had with business people then, because Richard was the wrong guy to promote to them.

Precisely. "Open Source" was about the marketing. Despite RMS protestations to the contrary, there is no practical difference between Open Source and Free Software. The difference is in the marketing. One is a near religion requiring adherence to a specific philosophy, the other merely a licensing model.

Re:

[Russ Nelson]

RMS would be a better advocate for freedom if he wasn't such a hideous leftist. He should read _The Road to Serfdom_, but as far as I know, he never read the copy of _Economics in One Lesson_ that I sent him.

Re:

[Bruce Perens]

There are lots of leftists who are successful advocates of their causes. And of course rightists and centrists too. The problem is more one of being able to put yourself in the shoes of your audience and then build a bridge from there to where you are. RMS can't do this for people who are very different from him.

Re:

[Russ Nelson]

Just pointing out that RMS believes in leaving people free to run their lives the way he wants to -- not the way they want to. But you're right about RMS being non-compromising -- it has effects that limit the dispersion of his ideals.

Big deal

[gwern]

I could care less about "Open Source"; it has done dubious good for us. Now, Free Software's anniversary I would care about quite a bit!

Re:

[Bruce Perens]

We just have to figure out which anniversary of the three stated below to celebrate :-)

In 1983, Richard Stallman launched the GNU project after becoming frustrated with the effects of the change in culture of the computer industry and users. Software development for the GNU operating system began in January 1984, and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) was founded in October 1985. He introduced a free software definition and "copyleft", designed to ensure software freedom for all.

- Wikipedia.

Celebrate them all

[SST-206]

Silver Jubilee!

• 2008 is 25 years since 1983, when Richard Stallman launched the GNU project.
• 2009 is 25 years since 1984, when software development for the GNU operating system began.
• 2010 is 25 years since 1985, when the Free Software Foundation (FSF) was founded in October.

Who's going to write the press releases?

Re:

[Bruce Perens]

Talk with Peter Brown. FSF has a publicist who can help.

Re:

[RobBebop]

The important thing here are the ideas and goals, and not so much the tools created to acheive the goals

Ideas are valuable all of a sudden? Then why is "Imaginary Property" always decried? No... the real value is in the implementation, and that began with Stallman's Compiler [gcc] and has grown from it. So yes, the tools are important. If there had been nobody capable or willing to write GCC or Apache for free, the technological world would not be what it is today.

That being said... the idea of Freedom is still king. And there is this quote from one of America's founding documents [ushistory.org] that brings that ho

Re:

[Kjella]

Oh come on, BSD/MIT licensed code is available for Free Software to use so how could it possibly be "dubious"? It may not have the same appeal as the GPL, but there's enough to build an entire OS out of it which anyone can borrow from. Even if you make this a open vs closed source thing, I would without a doubt wager that the Free Software community has benefitted more from open source than closed source companies have. While the GPL community stands quite well on its own, there's no reason to get disrespec

prior art

[rossdee]

The concept of open source has been aroud for much longer than 10 years, I remember open source software on Fish disks for thte amiga in the mid eighties...

What?

[brass1]

Ignoring for a moment that Bruce is clearly Slashvertizing his blog. Again.

10 years, huh? I wonder what Bruce's friends from UC Berkeley [wikipedia.org] would say. Sure seems like they had open source long before Bruce decided to get his name in the papers. Parens' and Raymond's instance on taking credit for free software is disgusting.

Re:What?

[Bruce Perens]

No, my blog is technocrat.net . The link is to perens.com, a site with no ads.

Yes, BSD had the source code and licensing, but no campaign to drive others to create such things. Stallman started that. I canonized the definition of what was, and what was not, Open Source. Raymond and I evangelized to business. Everybody in this picture is standing on other folks shoulders. I'd be the last to deny that.

Bruce

Not 10 years: thank ESR for the lies

[wiredlogic]

This has long been a sore point with me. The term "Open Source" has been in use for more than 10 years. The first software related occurence on Usenet occured in the early 90's [google.com]. This co-opting of the true history of the term has been orchestrated by ESR with his self-biased jargon file. He likes to demurr by saying that the foundation of OSI represents a true beginning but this is just a buch of phony chest thumping to make himself seem relevant.

Re:Not 10 years: thank ESR for the lies

[Bruce Perens]

We certainly had Free Software before then, and whatever BSD made. But as far as I'm aware, the coining of the term Open Source as another name for Free Software was by Christine Petersen (then-wife of nanotechnology guru Eric Drexler) on one of the first days of February 1998. I think it might have been February 1, and Eric called me the day after the meeting where that happened.

Of course, the words "Open Source" could have been used that way before then, but we can't find any record. Since Open Source Definition only got done (as the Debian Free Software Guidelines) in July 1997, whatever was referred to before then wasn't quite what we know as Open Source today.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:

[nojomofo]

Of course, the words "Open Source" could have been used that way before then, but we can't find any record

Not to rain on your parade, Bruce, but the comment that you're replying to shows documentation of the term being used in 1990. I know that this isn't news to you, but this "I own the term Open Source" game that you play really turns a lot of people (who would otherwise be very sympathetic) away from your message.

Re:Not 10 years: thank ESR for the lies

[Bruce Perens]

This is sort of moot, because IMO the Open Source Definition was the big deal, and the fact that we had a campaign rather than just a term was a big deal too. Stallman had not bothered to set a Free Software Definition in writing at that time, he actually wrote and told me that what I had written was a good definiton of Free Software.

The references you point out refer to the presence of source code, not the presence of licensing that assures the right to redistribute, modify, and use. BSD did provide that sort of licensing, but it was just called BSD licensing. The only campaign for developers to provide those things at the time was called Free Software.

Actually, there was a regular use of the term open source at that time, to refer to a form of military intelligence.

But I really did invent the term "nojomofo" Bwahh haha ha! :-)

Re:

[dreamchaser]

I think the point you are trying to make is that open source existed prior to that, but not Open Source(tm). Yes it was just a 'name', but it did help drive what is now a thriving industry.

Re:

[Brandybuck]

We certainly had Free Software before then, and whatever BSD made.

What the BSDs made was also Free Software, exactly meeting the FSF's definition. You of all people should know that. There were some unfree AT&T bits early on (which were actively being eliminated), but by the time of FreeBSD and NetBSD, it was completely free. And still is.

Re:

[Bruce Perens]

The Berkeley System Distribution (BSD) had a long history before its derivatives NetBSD, FreeBSD, etc. I started with BSD in 1981 or 1982 at the NYIT Computer Graphics Lab, which was a predecessor of Pixar. Our lab had the first VAX 780 released outside of DEC. We put 4.0 BSD on it. At that time, you had to show UC a copy of your ATT Unix license before you could get a copy of BSD.

Bruce

Re:

[Brandybuck]

Yes, but I thought we were talking about the early 90s.

Re:

[bmsleight]

phony chest thumping to make himself seem relevant.

Yep its not like Bruce Perens has done anything relevant.

"10 years" - bogus.

[Animats]

"Open source" goes back to the 1960s. [wikipedia.org] The Free Software Foundation was established in 1985. The first major Linux release was in 1992. These new guys from the late 1990s are just mouthing off.

I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus!

[mlwmohawk]

I'm sorry but the "Open Source" movement is a bogus attempt to water down the original purpose of GNU and the Free Software movement.

I've been in the industry for about 25 years and RMS was a visionary. While we we focused on software and what it could do and how to do it, he also focused on the dangers that our own creativity would bring to us and how to protect us from it.

Make no mistake, RIAA, MPIAA, SCO, et. al. are *ALL* apparitions RMS saw over a decade or so ago. The Open Source movement is nothing more than a selfish group of little people with a narrow scope and no plan. RMS has had a plan all along, and while he may seem to be an extremist and might not have been right 100% of the time, in retrospect, he has been right pretty darn close and his extremism seems less and less unwarranted over time.

The truth is both a blessing and a curse. It takes a lot of work to realize the truth and most people will not challenge themselves. Once you learn the truth, however, you are cursed with trying to explain it to others.

Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus!

[Bruce Perens]

Here's Richard Stallman's statement on the issue, which he made during a joint speech we did in Italy:

Free software and Open Source seem quite similar, if you look only at their software development practices. At the philosophical level, the difference is extreme. The Free Software Movement is a social movement for computer users' freedom. The Open Source philosophy cites practical, economic benefits. A deeper difference cannot be imagined.

The origin of Open Source lies in a practice that could have come from Dale Carnegie: if you seek to persuade someone, present the case in terms of his values and desires. For persuading business executives, citing practical, economic advantages can be effective. By all means do so, if it feels right to you, when speaking privately to executives.

Talking to the public is something else entirely. When we talk to the public, we promote whatever values we cite. If we cite only practical, economic advantages, and not freedom, we encourage people to value practical advantages and not value freedom.

Those values make our community weak. People who prefer a state of freedom only for the secondary practical and economic advantages it brings do not appreciate freedom itself, and they will not fight to defend it.

This is the reason I stated, in my joint speech with Bruce Perens, for not supporting the practice of presenting Free Software in public in the limited economic terms of Open Source.

Now, obviously, I think that Open Source evangelists like me have a role in talking with business people that Richard can't fill. His brain wiring isn't built for it. The a priori arguments he makes are not the way to start selling these concepts to business people, but hopefully they will eventually come to appreciate Richard's arguments after they enter through Open Source. Obviously, I don't want to erode the goals of the Free Software campaign at all. I'm out to help people understand Free Software with a gentle introduction. I tried to make that clear in the article.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:

[mlwmohawk]

I'm out to help people understand Free Software with a gentle introduction. I tried to make that clear in the article.

I'm sorry, and while I greatly respect your individual contributions and I think you're probably a pretty honorable guy, history has shown repeatedly that expedience in the form of subjugating ideals for gain is always a long term error.

I don't think the the "Open Source" movement has done anything constructive. The whole ESR Cathedral blather is an embarrassment, in most professional circle

Re:

[Bruce Perens]

The whole ESR Cathedral blather is an embarrassment, in most professional circles it is an hysterical joke.

It's obsolete. ESR wrote it before IBM stepped into the picture, etc. I invite you to read The Emerging Economic Paradigm of Open Source [perens.com]. At least one now-professional has based his thesis on this paper.

I think the major difference in objectives between Open Source and Free Software evangelists is that the Free Software folks say that proprietary software does not have a right to exist. Unfortunately,

Re:

[mlwmohawk]

I think the major difference in objectives between Open Source and Free Software evangelists is that the Free Software folks say that proprietary software does not have a right to exist. Unfortunately, I can't say that and win the argument where it's important to win. You have to sound fair to everybody to win with politicians, if you ask to disenfranchise someone else you generally won't get very far.

Ahh, so you admit, you are not bound by "free software," but promote "open source" which is not necessarily

Re:

[Bruce Perens]

I think a good way to describe what I'm doing would be to say that I don't ask for everything that I want, becuase I wouldn't get much of it at all if I did. This does not mean that I've compromised any ideals.

Re:

[mlwmohawk]

I think a good way to describe what I'm doing would be to say that I don't ask for everything that I want, because I wouldn't get much of it at all if I did. This does not mean that I've compromised any ideals.

Like I said in an earlier response, I respect your contributions and believe that you are probably an honorable guy. Its obvious you are passionate and believe you are doing what you are doing for noble reasons. I don't think I'm arguing that.

I think you have put the objective before the means and hav

Re:

[cbart387]

I think you have put the objective before the means and have thus harmed the objective.

Correct me if I'm wrong Bruce, but that's the point that Bruce is trying to make. FSF has a different objective then Open Source movement. FSF is focused on freedom of software for the users. Open Source is focused on the idea that open source leads to better software for the users . The better software is only secondary in the FSF way of thinking, but is the core of Open Source. Ultimately it comes down to your belief, which one can't argue with (especially on an online forum).

Re:

[Bruce Perens]

You and I don't have to choose between freedom of software and better software for users. It's OK to want both. It will sometimes be necessary to choose which of those we start the conversation with when approaching a prospective convert, and which one we leave for when we've won the argument about the first.

This is not so much about compromising ideals as it is about style of evangelism.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus!

[replicant108]

The Open Source movement is nothing more than a selfish group of little people with a narrow scope and no plan.

In my experience, Open Source people are mostly Free Software advocates who have modified their terminology in order to make their sales pitch more effective.

Their are typically very community-minded, and un-selfish (by the standards of most people).

They are more interested in driving adoption than RMS, who prefers to focus on promoting an understanding of the principles of Software Freedom.

Generally speaking, Open Source folks have the same goal as the Free Software community, but differ in their preferred means.

Re:

[JoeBuck]

In my experience, Open Source people are mostly Free Software advocates who have modified their terminology in order to make their sales pitch more effective. That would describe Bruce Perens' motivation, but it would not describe Eric Raymond's motivation.

Re:

[mlwmohawk]

Generally speaking, Open Source folks have the same goal as the Free Software community, but differ in their preferred means.

The Open Source community has a lot of differences with the free software community. And while the differences may be subtle, they are crucial.

Re:

[Brandybuck]

Bob: You're an evil anarcho-syndicalist!

Fred: Well at least I'm not a anarcho-socialist sellout!

Re:

[mlwmohawk]

As a primarily Linux user, I have to acknowledge what RMS has done for the free software movement and I do have some admiration for a man who is obviously driven by his beliefs and not by the accumulation of wealth.

Well, don't saint him just yet, he does all right.

But the fact is that his views that all software needs to be free are at the opposite end of, but as extreme as, Microsoft's (and other commercial vendors') views that all software needs to be profitable.

He doesn't say that "all software," he mere

Re:

[Bill_the_Engineer]

And this is one thing that I have a problem with Linus about. Those who ignore politics will be done in by politics.

Et tu RMS?

Seriously, RMS is outspoken enough for others to put the Free Software Movement into practice. Linus has done just as much for GNU by managing an open source project that attracted the attention of the computing powerhouses, as RMS has done by dueling windmills. Linus is the Yin, to RMS's Yang. Without a concrete demonstration of a successful open source project, RMS would be nothi

Re:

[mlwmohawk]

Seriously, RMS is outspoken enough for others to put the Free Software Movement into practice. Linus has done just as much for GNU by managing an open source project that attracted the attention of the computing powerhouses, as RMS has done by dueling windmills. Linus is the Yin, to RMS's Yang. Without a concrete demonstration of a successful open source project, RMS would be nothing more than an obscure footnote in MIT history. Without RMS' vision and passion about GNU, Linus' project would be just anothe

Re:

[msuarezalvarez]

In my view, I have far more admiration for Linus Torvalds than I do for RMS - at least Linus pretty much refuses to get involved in all the political arguing and just seems to get on and make decisions about what is ***TECHNICALLY*** the best thing to do with Linux.

Well, your view is based on the idea that technology is able to support itself, and that there is no need for political action in order to guarantee that its advances are sustainable, of consequence and accessible. It is rooted in the childish belief that there is no battle for the preservation of the social, economical and political conditions which allow the free development of technology and its free application.

It is an age-old strategy of people wanting preserve the status quo: to minimize and hide

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[msuarezalvarez]

"stop with the political bullshit" is precisely what I was talking about.

I have read a couple of books by Marx. I guess from your comment that you haven't. Your loss, really. I guess from your comment, also, that you view reading a book by Marx as somewhat disqualifying. Your loss, again. I wonder what you do read... (In particular, what do you read in order to know what Marx writes about!)

Re:

[LingNoi]

Two mothers arguing over how children should be raised is very similar if not more vicious. Of course you would not call either side religious because of the methods they promote.

I assume your point was to try and discredit the side of the argument you don't like in a vain attempt to get people to agree with you because you don't actually have any points of your own to make.

SO it's a good time to remember

[geekoid]

that no matter how much you may not like it, how you dress, present yourself and speak is how other people will judge what you do.

So when talking about Linux, look neat, don't stink, and don't talk like a raving maniac.

"Open Source" is a lame catch phrase

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Wake me up in a year, when it's the 10th anniversary of Bruce Perens' mailing list post: It's Time to Talk About Free Software Again [debian.org].

The term "open source" was coined to avoid talking about freedom, under the rather stupid assumption that business people don't want to hear about it. Here's the thing: business owners are some of the most vehement seekers of their own freedom, so if you talk to a business owner who is frustrated with vendor lock-in [slashdot.org] and tell him that he can have the freedom to do away with

Re:

[Bruce Perens]

We need to talk more about "free as in free markets".

Did you read my economic paper? [perens.com] I really do make a point of talking about it in terms of free markets.

Bruce

Re:

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Did you read my economic paper? I really do make a point of talking about it in terms of free markets.

No, I didn't, and neither have most people who talk about "open source". That's the problem; The term "open source" diverts attention away from its greatest strengths.

The other problem is that people focus on getting vendors to release "open source Linux drivers" for hardware, instead of on getting the documentation that gives everyone the freedom to write and improve drivers for any platform.

I don't mean to belittle your other contributions, but in my view, the term "open source" is a liability.

The inexorable progress of Free Software

[wall0159]

It's interesting, these days, to hear someone say something like "Oh, Linux is no good - it doesn't even have a good multi-track music recording program. Linux will never replace [closed source platform]".

Remarks about Audacity and Ardour aside, it's come a hell of a long way in 10 years, when priorities were things like drivers, windowing systems and text editors.

Go Free Software!

Constructive Criticism

[earlymon]

From TFA:

In contrast, we have not yet achieved the penetration that we might have desired on user desktop systems, at least if you don't count the fact that Free Software provides a large part of Apple's MacOS today, and critical elements of Microsoft Windows as well. Both companies have been forced to develop strategies to live with us, some of them less comfortable than others.

I had about 80 different complaints each of the three times I read TFA. The lines above stood out as a way to crystalize two complaints, which I very much intend as constructive criticism. I'm not trying to fix you personally - the end goal is successful promotion (or on-going success, or improved success, if you prefer) of Open Source.

1. You state that both companies were forced to develop strategies to live with us. Is that really true or accurate? It may be, but it doesn't ring true. Apple

Re:

[Bruce Perens]

Some of the strategies are less comfortable (for us, for the companies that have the strategies, or for everyone in general) than others. Perhaps I should get a poor grade in grammar and the writer's control of tone. I didn't have much time to write this one, it got posted with little editing. I just came back from Europe on Wednesday. and of course much of my time since then has been spent on my 7-year-old.

About Apple: when I was leaving Pixar, I walked in to Steve's office and said "you still don't believ

Bruce, this is almost completely off-topic, but...

[unitron]

I don't remember seeing a post from you when everybody got into a discussion of who got an account here when and what user id number ranges co-incide with what dates, so, do you by chance remember (about) when you got your famous 3872 id number?

regards,
unitron

Re:Bruce, this is almost completely off-topic, but

[Bruce Perens]

I don't remember, but it was probably while I was Debian Project Leader. The archive doesn't go back that far. I do remember that I knew about Slashdot for months before I got a login. The 3872 number is only well-known because of the period when there were fake Bruces, more than one, on Slashdot. Tio Paco, uh, I mean Cmdr Taco was his usual unhelpful self. I had to make a point of telling folks that the "Real Bruce Perens" had that specific ID. This led to the Eminem parody.

Re:

[unitron]

The 3872 number is only well-known because of the period when there were fake Bruces, more than one, on Slashdot...I had to make a point of telling folks that the "Real Bruce Perens" had that specific ID. This led to the Eminem parody.

That Eminem thing must have been something I passed on due to only being on dial-up 'cause I don't remember it, but I do remember changing my sig to something like "the real unitron is user 5733, but doesn't rate an imposter" (and naturally soon thereafter someone registered something like un1tron :-)

I do remember registering sometime soon after getting here just as the Halloween Papers scandal broke.

My 10th Year Anniversary...

[njdube]

...using Linux. I'm not certain when I started using Linux, only that I started with Red Hat 5.2. After a quick Wiki [wikipedia.org] search I found that it came out in November of 1998. I can't believe it's been 10 years all ready. Jesus! So I decided because this November is the 10 year anniversary of the release of the first distro I started with I'll celebrate with cake. :-)

Re:

[tjstork]

However, its creator, God, forgot to document it

I think he gave up when, after explaining the importance of solar energy to life on earth, people started throwing chopping virgins to people to appease the Sun God.

Re:

[dilvish_the_damned]

Sorry, the universe is not in human readable code and must be reverse engineered, so no open source designation for it.

Re:

[postbigbang]

You've been trapped by vendor lock-in. Your PDA and/or cellphone use proprietary skunkware to lock you in. You didn't think about caldav, or other synchronization APIs before you bought them, did you? If you want to replace Outlook, you have to break the whole chain, not just pieces of it. You could use MacOS, which is a bit open-sourcey (except those that must protect precious DRM bits).

Otherwise, break the chain. You can do it. Tell others how. Set yourself free.

Re:

[Intron]

Excuse me, the song Happy Birthday [snopes.com] is still under copyright. You now owe a licensing fee for a public performance.