* Erik Funkenbusch peremptorily fired off this memo:
> Open Source, Closed Minds
>
> "Sure, I used to have the ŽMicrosoft is bad and Bill Gates must die¡
> mentality in my early 20s. But, my Orwellian rant faded over time and I
> began to have a more balanced perspective on the world and the technology
> which fuels it. Perhaps this is a natural byproduct of the pragmatism which
> piggybacks the aging process. Perhaps this is a natural byproduct of having
> to pay rent."
>
> http://www.trixbox.com/about-us/blog/open-source-closed-minds
>
> I wonder when you'll have to pay rent, Roy?
A non sequitur.
Anyway, you should have read further. The author explains that the
term "open source"
... was consciously crafted in a huddled hotel room in the 90s by a
council of six wise men as an intentional \u201cfork\u201d from the
absolute free path of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). This
council intentionally removed the term \u201cfree\u201d from
\u201cfree software\u201d -- not in effort to make it less free, but
rather to bake in some of the fundamental tenants of capitalism as
well as steer clear of the moral bent of the FSF. Call them
pragmatic, call them sell-outs, but they foresaw a model that could
both defend the free (beer/freedom) and also allow for profit.
. . .
But, to me, Open Source made sense. It seemed that a model which
spurred capitalism would undoubtedly gain wider reach in a world
which is growing more capitalistic ...
. . .
Even with these perhaps less-lofty intentions, Open Source did manage
to retain something from free software that I loved \u2013 the
community. It is the community that is the heart of an OS project
\u2013 that from which springs up a well of brainpower, bug-fixes,
documentation, and most importantly: passion.
. . .
But, wow, this is where I have been surprised. The
"community" of Open Source has been as vitriolic as any
community I have ever witnessed...
And he goes on further to run down the badness that has come from
splitting off "open source" from "Free software" and the resultant
poisoning the the "open source community" by corporate values,
hypocrisy, selfishness, and legal wrangling.
Of course, he then comes back and says that using open source to pay the
rent is a good thing, and let's stop the "binary moralism". And let's
keep making money from "open source".
Although the blog author starts out carefully distinguishing between
"Free software" and "open source", that distinction is not part of
Erik's agenda. Instead, he uses the article inexplicably to try to tar
Roy. Actually, what Erik just did is /justify/ any money Roy makes from
pushing "open source".
And, even in Free software, money can be made, but we won't talk about
that, because with Free software we can't hide code and yet still call
it "open source".
--
Personal computing today is a rich ecosystem encompassing massive PC-based data
centers, notebook and Tablet PCs, handheld devices, and smart cell phones. It
has expanded from the desktop and the data center to wherever people need it,
at their desks, in a meeting, on the road or even in the air.
-- Bill Gates, "The PC Era Is Just Beginning" in Business Week (22 March 2005)
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