Re: Essay RFC delayed.
Ean R . Schuessler [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Frankly Richard, I agree. You should be more of a sport. Think of the benefits you would recieve. Look at all your other colleagues that grew rich while you were splitting these philosophical hairs. Its not too late! If you "play ball" the establishment can probably still arrange for a retainer of some type, or maybe even an equity position in some hot "Open Source" IPO! Stop torturing yourself with these troublesome ideological positions! What if a few companies get rich at the expense of the people? It's inevitable anyway. Capitalize on your "brand name recognition" before its hopelessly marginalized. Maybe Eric could be your agent! He has certainly proven himself an adept promoter. Just look at what he has done for his own reputation. Why, he invented "Open Source"! Right. I take it you would have preferred to live in a ghetto for another twenty years, watching the likes of Microsoft gradually smother the net until there was no space left for people like RMS at all? I've been watching our tribe lose, and lose, and lose again since around the time you were learning not to drool milk on your bib. I got lucky enough to be in a position to do something about it, and I did. RMS is going to live to see a world of almost entirely ``free'' software. And he's going to get it because Linus Torvalds is better at managing developers than he is and because *I* figured out exactly how to sweet-talk the suits into buying the freedom. We two are the best allies RMS has ever had -- and even if *you* never grow up enough to realize it, I suspect RMS has got that figured out by now. And yes, I have stock in Red Hat and options in VA. It pleases me that I'm going to be wealthy; only idiots think wearing a hair-shirt is a form of virtue. But only a bigger idiot could observe my behavior and ever dream it was motivated by money. I doubt you're that stupid, though I admit you seem to be working hard at it above. The bottom line is that *I want to win*. I want to win for our tribe and for all the users out there who get shafted by crappy closed software every single goddamn day and for every programmer who has ever woken up in the middle of the night hating his job because all his tools and platforms suck so bad. I want to win more than you do and more than RMS ever did. Neither of you, precious idealists that you are, ever wanted victory enough. Neither of you ever had enough desire to get down in the mud and do what was *necessary*, even if it meant becoming a travelling media whore and learning suit-speak and giving up your life and your privacy and your hacking time. *I* did. And I'm glad I did. And I'll stay glad I did no matter how many jerks sneer at me for it. The price is high, but the prize is worth it. *Despite* you. -- a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr"Eric S. Raymond/a All governments are more or less combinations against the people. . .and as rulers have no more virtue than the ruled. . . the power of government can only be kept within its constituted bounds by the display of a power equal to itself, the collected sentiment of the people. -- Benjamin Franklin Bache, in a Phildelphia Aurora editorial 1794
Re: RFC soon on essay Does Free Software Production in a Bazaarobey the Law of Diminishing Returns?
A complete free operating system *of sufficiently high quality* (not the highest possible quality, but better than Windows, anyway). Otherwise, any old hack would have done the job. I agree it helps a lot to have high-quality software. But even a somewhat unreliable operating system is a lot better than no operating system. In 1984, there was no operating system which respected our freedom. To have at least one which does is a big step forward for freedom. The fact that it has pretty good quality is a nice bonus ;-).
Re: Essay RFC delayed.
Come on Eric, laugh at yourself a little. I'm just yanking your chain because you make yourself such an easy target. E ps. Thats quite a check you are writing when you say you want *win* more than RMS _ever_ has. pps. I'll give you $20 if you'll stop saying "tribe". On Fri, Aug 20, 1999 at 03:37:14AM -0400, Eric S. Raymond wrote: Right. I take it you would have preferred to live in a ghetto for another twenty years, watching the likes of Microsoft gradually smother the net until there was no space left for people like RMS at all? [ assorted self-rightous swaggerings ] And I'll stay glad I did no matter how many jerks sneer at me for it. The price is high, but the prize is worth it. *Despite* you. -- ___ Ean Schuessler An oderless programmer work-a-like Novare International Inc. Silent and motionless *** WARNING: This signature may contain jokes.
Re: Essay RFC delayed.
Ean R . Schuessler wrote: Come on Eric, laugh at yourself a little. I'm just yanking your chain because you make yourself such an easy target. I agree. That last tirade against Richard was just a little bit much. I think Eric deserves praise for all his work, and also believe that it helpful to all of us (in sum). But for someone who is tolerant enough of others viewpoints to become a "media-whore", I find it quite confusing that he would criticize Richard for simply not wanting to be associated with a group whose ideals are not his own (yet portrayed in the media as being the same, which can cause confusion). [snip] pps. I'll give you $20 if you'll stop saying "tribe". I would like to add another $20 to the anti-tribe fund. :) On Fri, Aug 20, 1999 at 03:37:14AM -0400, Eric S. Raymond wrote: Right. I take it you would have preferred to live in a ghetto for another twenty years, watching the likes of Microsoft gradually smother the net until there was no space left for people like RMS at all? [ assorted self-rightous swaggerings ] And I'll stay glad I did no matter how many jerks sneer at me for it. The price is high, but the prize is worth it. *Despite* you. -Mitch -- The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.
Re: Essay RFC delayed.
Ean R . Schuessler [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Come on Eric, laugh at yourself a little. I'm just yanking your chain because you make yourself such an easy target. Yeah. Well, when you pull my chain, don't complain because I bite. ps. Thats quite a check you are writing when you say you want *win* more than RMS _ever_ has. I've known Richard since 1977. He's very smart. If he had ever wanted to win badly enough to face up to what was required and *do* it, I could have stayed a semi-obscure hacker happily coding away at home. I would have preferred that outcome. Turns out I'm *very* good at this bullshit; good enough that high-powered professional PR types call me a "natural" and I've seen at least one serious semiotic study of my propaganda technique (in Feed magazine late last year). I've got the right cortical wiring, I guess -- but I don't *want* it. Truly, I would have been a hell of a lot happier *not* discovering that I really am the kind of guy who can smile, and smile, and smile, and hand out soundbites carefully tuned for journalists with the attention span and IQ of toe fungus, and shake hands with fat-assed corporate predators who never had an original idea in their lives. Dammit, all that shit should have been RMS's job. I shouldn't have had to do it at all. So when anybody sounds like they're accusing me of selling out, I do tend to get a little testy. Cope with it. -- a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr"Eric S. Raymond/a "Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom." -- John F. Kennedy
Re: RFC soon on essay Does Free Software Production in a Bazaar obey the Law of Diminishing Returns?
On Fri, 20 Aug 1999, Miguel de Icaza wrote: I agree with Richard that GNOME should be classified of part of the Free Software movement. I'm glad you said something -- I almost jumped in, but I'm not involved with Gnome. We are not working on GNOME because it is "economically" a good idea, nor for any of the allegedly development benefits of open source, but because of the freedom issues involved in this. I think this is somewhat secondary, if my understanding of Open Source is correct. I am much more concerned about the fact that Open Source accepts an increasing variety of licenses, thus polluting the pool of free software to include software that allows you to look at it, mess with it, but not necessarily stick it in the communal library of previous code. And that loss of community code is a serious problem, and something that can let proprietary software can sneak its way back in. They do not enable me to reuse code between different projects. The crazy idea of cut-and-pasting is no longer possible between these projects. There is a nice study of this here: http://pmitros.mit.edu/patchwork.html Although that is definitely (IMO) a very significant concern, that article only addresses licenses that restrict modifications to patches (such as the QPL, or perhaps an earlier revision of the QPL). There are more licenses that allow you to wholesale change things, but still make it difficult to cut and paste. Matthew Weigel Programmer/Sysadmin [EMAIL PROTECTED] Operating Systems Advocate http://www.pitt.edu/~weigel
Re: Essay RFC delayed.
RMS wrote: How do Open Source projects differ from the above? In two very important ways. Firstly, OSPs have no time-bound. That is, there is no deadline whereby the next version of GNOME has to be delivered, "or I agree entirely with your argument, but the words raise a background issue so important I have to make a correction. GNOME is part of the GNU Project, and we are part of the Free Software movement, not the Open Source movement. We and they do similar things, and we can work together in practice, but our philosophical reasons are as different as could be. While some may criticise Richard his ideological bent, I do feel that the ideological *and* pragmatic aspects of this kind of open/freedomware have advanced it. I tend not to think that either is the *real* reason. To snipe at ideology is, in my view, as irrational as the worst excesses of ideologies themselves. Reference rabid McCarthyism for this kind of madness. I agree that democracy is a rationally better system; but the dogged, fanatical pursuit of communism and communists was just that - fanatical. Irrational. Could you kindly cite GNOME as an example of the Free Software movement, not one of the Open Source movement? Please don't spread the idea that the latter one includes all of us. My first personal formulation of Open Source was that it formed a useful relabelling of the thing at hand. I felt that neatly dealt with the ambiguity of 'free'. However, as the FSF and the OSI have continued to follow their own lines of canon, I come to believe that they are different. Out of the fact that GNOME is a part of the GNU project, and out of respect for the wishes of Richard, GNOME will be a Free Software project. Indeed, in most of my drafting I prefer to stick to the moniker "Free Software", simply to avoid inflaming this kind of nastiness. I will *not* however, be choosing to label it "Free Software" to stop spreading "wrong thought". That, Richard, is your fight - you can fight it for yourself, thankyou. I do admire the core principle of Stallmanism: freedom is paramount. I have, however, aired various criticisms of the philosophy from within the license-discuss forum; the "Freedom without Choice" issue being a principle one. Perhaps in a fashion that was a little too strawmanesque, I likened the GPL's forcible freedom to liberation at the hands of the Red Army: yes, you are now Freed, but forced to be Free under *our* terms. To be honest, I do not think it matters to the code. All these factions are grandstanding over something that will be the same in a hundred years time. The audience, less and less, is the hackers: the audience is more and more a more mainstream press rabidly wanting to know of dissension and bickering. The true strength of free/openware will not come from its selling point. It will come from the freedom. Even after every ideology has come and gone, the code is protected and will remain. And *that*, gentlemen, is what *I* see as the greatest strength. Apologies for what has been a wide divergence off the topic at hand. JC.
