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Salon Tries Online Book About Free Software
suix was the first person to write about Salon's new section. They are calling it the "The Free Software Project", which apparently is also the title of Andrew Leonard [?] 's new book. From what I can tell the section is simply a collection of the Free Software articles published on Salon, most of which are by Leonard, with a couple other people thrown in there. I dunno - it just like it's an archive to me, but hey, it does get its own section name now. *grin*Update: 03/06 03:39 by H :Thanks to Salon for pointing the new sections that are online - I sit corrected.
...if you read what Salon's saying, this is a book about the free software movement being written. It'll probably be drawing on what Leonard's already written, because that's what columnists generally do. Only one chapter is online so far, though, so it's rather disingenous of the Slashdottian editors to call it an archive--although it's probably misunderstanding borne of a too-quick look at the site.
The interesting thing is that it's being "made visible" throughout the writing process with the idea of being subject to peer review--not identical to free software, but in terms of book writing, perhaps analagous. This seems to me to be a fairly neat approach to a book on this subject, and one that future journalists quite likely won't take. (If Jon Katz was writing about the movement, would he invite the community to comment on drafts in progress, or would he be more interested in giving us 100% unadulterated Katz?)
No matter how many I may hurt with what I am saying please consider that my words are not badly intentioned.
In my opinion every movement needs its prophets, its legends, odes and history. Or at least that's what has happened with all other movements (either religious, ethical or anything that was based on principles).
For now we have some "prophets" (Mr. Stallmann, Mr Torvalds, Mr Cox - and I wrote Mr because I respect them and what they are doing, although it sounds a bit unusual to use this particle), we have legends (how many of you havent't heard about the quick patches of Alan Cox ?) - I agree they may be real (I haven't seen that though) and even if they aren't there must be something true about them.
Now with this book we have an "ode" to the free software movement and from what I read it looks really good. Not to mention that it is accessible to the most computer illiterated human being.
As you can see there is only one thing to be said : all the things written in that book, and that happened lately will make history. And this sounds really great.
Oh, yes : and the picture of billy - really cool !!!!!
'Whateve [sic] they were running on before the switch' did not work perfectly fine. That there was even an illusion that it did is a testamant to the people who were breaking their asses to make it appear so. How do I know this? Because I was the architect of the migration. The difference can be summed up in two words: manual versus automated. We, the admins, were the primary instigators behind sending out press releases for that, as a way of spreading the word that Linux could successfully replace NT. It was not a trivial migration, but a rousing success when all is said and done.
Salon was still pre-IPO when that took place and the announcements were made, so how could that possibly bump the stock?
Anyway, just correcting some of the facts.
-jjr
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