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Open Source Advocate Has Yet To Rebut Craig Mundie

Jeff Parns considers himself a model for free software advocacy: helping out at installfests, answering questions on the Central Kansas Free Unix User's Group mailing list, working in his spare time on a user-friendly graphical interface to cron. Why, then, has he yet to write a long-winded essay rebutting Microsoft exec Craig Mundie's recent remarks about open source?

Our crack interviewing team cornerned Parns in his home, where he was conspicuously not combing through the text of Mundie's remarks, just as he had not been in attendance at NYU's Stern School of Business on May 3 to hear Mundie speak. What justified this weird behavior?

"I really think there are enough rebuttals already, " said Parns. "I mean, have you even read all those things? "

Eric S. Raymond, whose two preemptive rebuttals sparked the craze, was pessimistic about the chances for a Parns rebuttal in the future. "Obviously, we can't force him to write a rebuttal to Mundie's wrong-headed remarks about open source," said Raymond. "However, it's possible that my new paper, 'How I Rebutted Craig Mundie's Wrong-Headed Remarks About Open Source In Copious Detail--And How You Can Too' will give him some ideas. In fact, there's sort of a little form rebuttal in Appendix C which he can sign his name to and get it linked from Linux Today."

"As a full-time programmer, my day is pretty busy," said Brian Behlendorf of the Apache Software Foundation, whose anti-Mundie remarks were picked up by Infoworld. "Yet even I managed to stop by Mundie's speech and make a few remarks to the press. I don't think this Parns is even trying. I mean, even Steve Ballmer published a 3000-word Mundie rebuttal. Sic transit gloria Mundie, I guess."

Even Parns' neighbors have begun to notice this gap in the open source ranks. "The way he helped me with my Red Hat install, I was sure he was some sort of hot-shot free software advocate," said Millie Leman, a local dominatrix and mother of two. "But I haven't heard one word from him about this Mundie thing. It makes a person wonder."

"Look, it's spring, my son's about to graduate from junior high, I'm trying to get KCron to 1.0," said Parns, shooing this reporter out his front door. "Just leave me alone."

Will Parns rebut? Already, rebuttals with his name on them have begun showing up, though he denies authorship. Watch for the rebuttal signed with Parns' Gnu Privacy Guard key, and keep reading Segfault.org for complete coverage of every Mundie rebuttal ever written.

Tomorrow: An in-depth look at the rebuttal that Mark Billings of London saved to ~mark/mundie.txt, but never showed to anybody.

(This 'story' was first shown at Segfault.org here, and was written by Leonard Richardson)

A related sidenote...looks like Linus Torvalds is in full agreement with this position regarding innovation, at least according to this.

At the article detailing Linus' response, I noticed this particular passage:

When Mundie wants you to think about all the work that companies have done in order to get patents, he also wants you to forget about all the work done by people like Einstein, Rutherford, Bohr, Leonardo da Vinci and a lot of other people who have done a lot more for humanity than most companies have ever done.

There is a huge difference between an observation of the laws of the universe (such as observing the composition of an atom or speculating that E=mc^2) and creating practical utilizations of those realities. It's a rather silly comparison.

In practical terms understanding the human body should not be patentable (i.e. like the absurd gene arguments that have gone on), yet if from that knowledge a drug company creates a chemical manipulator that cures cancer, that SHOULD be patentable. As always those against IP have the luxury of living in a society with all of the benefits of IP while superimposing their beliefs. (In other words a large number of you IP fanatics would never have been born as your ancestors would be dead if it weren't for the IP carrot at the end of the drug research stick)

For those who don't regularly read "Good Morning Silicon Valley," there is an [interview] with several of the BountyQuest bigwigs.

I'm discouraged by their answers. I asked what I considered a fairly hard-hitting question, basically accusing them of pandering to lazy lawyers for lazy companies that want to saddle their competition with research and development costs, by stealing their patents.

Naturally, the boys blew sunshine and roses up our collective asses, completely ignoring the potential consequences of discouraging companies from doing their own research and development.

In all honesty, I think BountyQuest is just as sleazy as the grubbing patent lawyers. They're using the geek (chem geek, electronic geek, bio geek, etc) communities as dupes for lawyers. Shameless!

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