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[News] Op-ed: Free Software Aligns with Taoism

  • Subject: [News] Op-ed: Free Software Aligns with Taoism
  • From: Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2007 03:07:02 +0100
  • Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
  • Organization: Netscape / schestowitz.com
  • User-agent: KNode/0.10.4
Taoism of open source

,----[ Quote ]
| Open source is such a soft power. "Soft power is like water," Lao-tzu 
| explained in his book, Tao Te Ching. A single water drop is powerless, but 
| numerous water drops are torrential. Likewise, a single open source 
| participant counts for little, but numerous participants make the open source 
| community strong. Traditional software, on the other hand, is a hard power, 
| like teeth. One big tooth can be strong (take Microsoft, for example), but 
| teeth fall out as time goes by.      
|
| [...]
|
| In "The GNU Operating System and the Free Software Movement", Richard 
| Stallman explained why he didn't go to the temple of closed source software. 
| He said, "The easy choice was to join the proprietary software world, signing 
| nondisclosure agreements and promising not to help my fellow hacker.... I 
| could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I 
| knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building 
| walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse  
| place."      
| 
| This is the spirit of open source that I like.
`----

http://www.linux.com/feature/119429


Related:

Open Source and the Art of War

,----[ Quote ]
| Ask most people who have made the switch to a libre software product 
| like Linux or BSD and they'll tell you that we're in a fight with 
| Microsoft and everything that the closed-source world represents. It's 
| not just us - Microsoft certainly thinks we're in a battle as well.
| 
| Senior Microsoft leadership are actively engaged in spreading Fear, 
| Uncertainty and Doubt to undermine the public confidence in Linux. 
| Lawsuits have been filed over "stolen code" in the Linux kernel.
| 
| Thinly-veiled "IP infringement" threats have been made to businesses 
| running Linux. Massive marketing campaigns are being waged to confuse 
| the true Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of Windows and Linux products'
`----

http://www.openaddict.com/applying_the_art_of_war_to_open_source.html

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