The "term" Open Source was a marketing campaign, promulgated by Eric
Raymond, to make Free Software "safe for business", and cloak himself
in glory...
That goal seems to have been reached, though not in the way that "the
community" might have liked. MSFT has now "co-opted" "Open Source"
for its own ends.
Embrace and Extend anyone?
As you know, Raymond later claimed that 'we no longer need the GPL".
I suggest that the opposite is true, and that we've never needed it
more.
(Note that the BSD license is a "Free Software" license, as is the X
license.)
On Nov 21, 2006, at 12:06 PM, Dave Burns wrote:
Did this make sense in context? I have no idea what they are trying
to say.
Why do they think "Open Source" is dead?
TDB
On 11/21/06, Jim Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/20/
eben_moglen_on_microsoft_novell/page2.html
The Novell-Microsoft deal certainly shows Redmond's desire to draw a
line between the "free"and "open" communities. In an interview on
Friday, Bill Gates was effusive in his praise for the "purity" of
Richard Stallman, the original author of the GPL.
Did the term "Open Source" mean anything, any longer?
"They're going to have to co-opt a new vocabulary," thought Moglen,
"because the old vocabulary just died on them."
"I agree with you. This was the week 'Open Source' ceased to be a
useful phrase because it denoted everything up to and including
Microsoft's attempts to destroy free. Language is subject to this
problem. Since the beginning of time uprising movements have taken
pleasure in perverting the language of criticism used against them by
the ancien regime - the 'brave beggars' of the Netherlands, and
Yankee Doodle, and the Whigs and the Tories - it's all the same terms
of dis-endearment turned into a weapon. But the game is also played
by modern propaganda in the other direction - by turning language
into the property of the guy on top: Fox News "Fair & Balanced (tm)".
"What Microsoft did to 'Open Source' was what Stallman always said
could be done to it: first you take the politics out, and when the
veal has been bleached absolutely white, you can cover it with any
sauce you like. And that's what Microsoft did, and 'Open Source'
became the sauce on top of Microsoft proprietarianism. And once that
process has been completed they have to go after the next
vocabulary."
And now?
"So now they're going to try the hard work of cracking 'Freedom'.
Free, well that means stuff you don't pay for..."
Microsoft had always been very astute in its analysis, we suggested.
While the press focused on the open, or distributed nature of the
production process, Redmond identified the fact that the GPL was
viral as the real attack. "That's right. They understood the copyleft
problem well - and understood the GPL well. But they didn't want to
talk about the enemy because of the rule in American political
campaigns that you don't say the name of your opponent in case people
remember it. They don't do that anymore. They've dropped the mask,"
he suggested.
"What's happened is that "Open Source" has died as a useful phrase -
Free Software, the GPL, the FSF - all have become major stakeholders
in the industry in Microsoft's verbiage."
"Once you're a major stakeholder you don't go back to being a minor
stakeholder unless you go bankrupt - and we can never go bankrupt
because we have no business to lose.
"So if we're a major stakeholder now we stay that way until the end
of the chapter, and that's a problem for Microsoft."
---
See also:
http://news.com.com/New+GPL+clause+to+flip+Microsoft-Novell+agreement
+on+its+head/2100-1016_3-6137486.html
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2168151/novells-opens-microsoft
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