> Having missed both events, I'm naturally wondering what I missed.
> Did ESR talk about the "Magic Cauldron"? Did he say anything
> particularly insightful that isn't in one of his online essays?
No - he did not talk about his new paper. I wish he would have, it
might have been worth going to. Instead he decided to talk about
linux advocacy. (which turned into a talk on open source advocacy)
As it stands, I was quite disappointed in the topic, and not just
because I disagree with him on the topic. I feel he gave a very
(intellectually) weak talk. Most "advocacy" talks have a way of being
like that, and this was no except.
So, what was his point. His point was that open source is a success
and free software is a failure. My first gripe is that he never at
any point gave any definition for success. In fact he uses several
different definitions depending on what he was talking about.
Most of the seems to suggest that open source is a success because
it has penetrated the mainstream. Mainstream business media now know
what open source is and many big companies have announced at least
token open source projects. Therefore, open source is a success.
Since the free software movement never achieved this, it is a failure.
However, I would like to pose an alternate view of success and
challange Eric in much the same way as he challenged RMS recently -
shut up and show us the code. Eric made quite an effory to dispell
the "myth" that the Mozilla project is a failure. Since it achieved
the goals netscape had for it (of preventing a de facto monopoly on
HTTP) then it is a success.
But, where is the code? If these great market friendly open source
projects are not producing useful, quality code then how can we call
it a success. When I look at what the FSF mentality has produced, I
see lots and lots of code. But, what has open source produced so far?
Not much. Where is the success?
So, is open source a failure? No - of course not. It has not had
the time to produce as much as (for example) the GNU project has. We
are comparing 20 years of coding to 2. There is no way we can even
make a comparison.
It is premature to call open source a success or a failure at this
stage. For Eric to stand up front proclaiming that he was right and
that the movement he championed is a success is rather presumptuous.
Popularity and mass appeal do not make open source a success.
Producing code will make it a success.
So, to Eric, I give his words back to him. Shut up and show us the
code. When you have some, then maybe we can declare a victory. Right
now it is just too early.
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