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The Open Source Evangelists Respond
EconomyGuy writes "Looks like the some big players all got together to respond to Microsoft's recent claims about the GPL. CNet is running a story about it, or you can read the response right here. If names like ESR, Linus, RMS, and Perens can all agree on something to say, then Microsoft's plan to split the community just might back fire on them."
O'Reilly: Okay, let's not be too rough with Microsoft here, I still sell a lot of books about Microsoft products.
Perens:Yes, when you're not being a parasite on the free software community.
Torvalds: Come on, guys, we're going to try to be positive here. Instead of focusing on bad things about Microsoft, let's look at good things about Linux.
Stallman: You mean, "GNU/Linux"...
This has taken a long time.
There is not much more that Microsoft can throw at this community. In the years that I've been reading slashdot. I've seen the average age drop. The amount of MS Serf spy's increase. I now have a desktop I don't have to configure with VI. I've enjoyed Oracle on Linux. I fell in love with Java on Linux. Seen Linus go from THE guy on a mailing list to Information Systems Rebel Icon. I've seen OS2 die... Then come back. ( useless interjection ).
Microsoft has accused the community of being a bunch of hackers and failed. Reported Open Source as being buggy only to have software developers around the world installing Linux looking for a stable plateform. Microsoft has givin the vibe that Open Source is not suited for security applications. When Net Admins have favored the security of Open Source for years. (BSD anyone?) Do i need to say anything about benchmarks? This is now the last real volly. We are no longer cannon fodder.
So is that it?
The Open Source sprit wins after decades of floating around?
Not really.
Now come something interesting... Can we get the implications of using open source libs in company applications. What about taking a Function out of a opensource application. Is it okay to just put "Stole from [ProjectName]"? These are the rules that need to be understood by companys. How will using opensource java classes affect my customer? With out the anwsers to these question outlined more then "free like beer" companys will stay away. Lets remember that the Homer in us thinks "Hmm Beer" for about 30 secs after hearing the word 'beer'.
Just my 2 cent's
Last one in jail is a fascist.
"If names like ESR, Linus, RMS, and Parens can all agree on something to say, then Microsoft's plan to split the community just might back fire on them."
Does anybody have links to rebuttals from the likes of Theo da Raadt or Jordan Hubbard?
I went to their websites and didn't see anything. Did they rebut Mundie, or just not think it's important?
When you say Microsoft has an intention of splitting the community. Which community are you talking about?
They certainly never intended to split the GPL community. But they did attack the Open or Free Software community, which has always had a large chasm between GPL and BSD licenses.
Seeing a number of GPL supporting noteworthies agreeing that the GPL license is good does not surprise me. On the other hand, seeing BSD camp members saying Microsoft's attack on the GPL was wrong would be news.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
What did you expect them to say? That was the proper P.R. move at this point. They were expecting us to be a lot more brash than we were.
By the way, I am brought in to talks with Fortune 100 corporations through my job, so those CIOs and CEOs are being reached - not that I agree with the assertion that they are the only important ones. IBM representatives are doing some of that CIO lobbying, as well, as are a number of the other evangelists. Maddog, ESR, and O'Reilly all make regular appearances in executive offices.
But this is not where the real battle lies. It is on the intellectual property law front that we will win or lose. P.R. efforts are important to that, but let's not let them distract us from the real goal.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Please, Bruce, explain how a license that explicitly says that others can copy your work for free is compatible with a business that sells software.
He didn't say it was. He said it is compatible with business. If the only business involving software development that you can imagine is one where you sell individual copies of your software, then that's your problem.
So yes, one type of business doesn't work very well with the GPL. So what? In the space of business models, most of them don't work for one reason or another. That doesn't mean those reasons are incompatible with business. It means you need to think of another model.
If I'm going to give it away, I'm going to give it away no strings attached.
That's your choice. I like the "so long as you keep it free, too" string to be firmly attached, myself.
The enemies of Democracy are
Wow, that's sure an impressive list of open source advocates. But, just as noticible is the lack of people from the BSD camp who have endorsed this statement. I'm curious: is this because they weren't invited or consulted? Is this because the BSD community thinks this statement is silly? Help me out here.
ObJectBridge (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
Finding God in a Dog
Oh my gosh, what a bunch of spaghetti logic. What these luminaries really should have done is all chip in for a real PR flack, because they just exposed a hand of jokers.
Seriously. The "this is the kind of dialog [paraphrased]" quote says it all. MS employs some of the brightest spin doctors in the biz. The Mundie speech was probably engineered to elicit this very response, so that the spin doctors could get inside the Open Source PR thought cycle.
Now that this watered down, weak screed from inexperienced open media warriors has laid down exactly where they're inept at a media fight, MS now knows exactly how to attack. And their media army is quite more experienced at this sort of thing.
What needs to be done is the assembly of a proficient, professional PR effort. We in no way could outspend them in an attack or a push, but we certainly could employ or at least get volunteer skilled spin people to defend and counterstrike. Part of the MS spin strategy might be to distract or otherwise deplete the heroes of our cause. A third party needs to be esatblished to insulate the media efforts from the actual operations of Open Source.
This "Old monkish coder" as PR flack will only take us so far....and if overextended....maybe painted into a corner.
The points brought up in the article are all very good ones that needed to be expressed. Their delivery, however, was wholly incompetent. We need somebody on this who knows how to craft rhetoric to it's full potential and impact. Something that an 8th grader could read and understand, and bring out the Henry Flemming in all of us.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
How often to parents and children fight?
:)
What about siblings?
Cousins?
Now... what happens when someone picks a serious fight with a member of the family?
I think we all agree (at least on some high essoteric level), we just prefer to fight with family
"No one can push your buttons like a family member. Of course thats because they installed them!" --unknown
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You will never get away from it. Even if you bring together 20 people who have the exact same thoughts and ideas they will somehow, someway, form groups that not everyone will fit into.
All that happened here was that each of those listed above forgot their special group (linux, OpenSource, GPL, etc) and formed a new group to attack a common enemy. When that enemy is beaten or destroyed they will quickly fall back into their respective groups to wildly hack about at everyone and everything.
A more concise version would be "Dangerous, my ass!" -- but that would be either redundant or inaccurate, depending on where the tattoo goes.
...when faced by a common enemy? Whether as hackers banding against the evil forces trying to quash open source, one city's sports fans against another, nations, or multinational alliances, it seems we can only get over ourselves enough to cooperate when we're threatened. Make no mistake, I support every word of this statement and am amazed by the signatures on it - the policies and strategies espoused by Microsoft are a threat to us all and need to be taken seriously. I just wish we could get together more often on things that weren't as directly threatening, with less venom and bile directed at each other (Perl vs Python, Emacs vs Vi, Gnome vs KDE, Red Hat vs. Just About Anybody, ad nauseum), instead of waiting for Big Evil Threats from Outside to remind us that we're all in the same camp.
TomatoMan
-- http://frobnosticate.com
This post initially angered me, but on thinking about it, I think it's a fair post that deserves a fair response.
...
The open-sourse crowd as a whole really, truly does not want to destroy software companies. Maybe Stallman does; certainly the original GNU Manifesto was rather hostile toward the whole idea of making money in the software biz, though I think even he has mellowed over the years. But the rest of the signers have no desire to see software companies go out of business en masse.
What they do want is for software companies to play fair, and to respect other people's ideas of how intellectual property should be disposed of (e.g., the GPL) even when it conflicts with the established business model. Ultimately, the blame for failing software companies doesn't lie with the GPL: it lies with a) anti-competitive business practices from giant companies like Sun, Oracle, and (especially) Microsoft that quite naturally crush small companies before they crush large ones, because small companies are more vulnerable, and b) mindless VC's (who are hardly ever techies themselves) who are much more interested in cashing in on whatever they perceive as the Next Big Thing than they are in really understanding how the software industry works.
A) is too well documented to require further discussion, IMO. B) is not so well understood. The problem is that the Next Big Thing usually turns out to be a Not Quite So Big Thing, and even when there's still money to be made, the sheeplike mentality of the VC's requires them to drop their investments and find Another Next Big Thing to pin their hopes on. A lot of dead "dot-bomb" companies were actually on the verge of profitability when the VC's panicked. Meanwhile, the likes of Microsoft keep going through sheer inertia, no matter how lousy their products, because the VC's and other business droids all use Windows and Office
In short: it's not the GPL that hurts programmers. It's morons in suits.
I urge you not to get out of the software business. It's still one of the biggest, most stable, and most important industries in the world, and will remain so for a very long time. Suits, VC's and all, it's still a better place to work than 99 44/100 % of everything else.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Red Hat 7.1 Standard Edition: $39.95
Micro$oft Windows ME: $162.85
RMS, ESR, and Linus agreeing: Priceless
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
[ . . . ] when Jim Allchin attacks Linux, he's not going after Linus and the kernel people. He's trying to reach about a hundred CIO/CTO's who can force their company to use Win2K servers on their boxes. All of MS's anti-Linux speeches are designed to get a very small audience to hold the line on Linux growth within the corporation. Of course it pisses you off, but that isn't the point
There is a lot more to it as well in the following paragraphs.
Point Being, the attack and response should not be against each others egos, but for the hearts and minds of the people who really count, who make the high power decisions. I note that
Late Tuesday, Microsoft responded to the open letter. "We appreciate the dialog on this issue--it's exactly the type of discussion Craig was hoping to foster," the company said in a statement.
Somehow it feels like MS is trying to try to trip up the evangistas into being too brash, by seeming to be so reasonable.
And utterly un-repentant.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
What they really meant to say was:
"Microsoft it's time for you to grow up and stop being a bunch of whiney bitches. All we hear from you is: 'Our product is better, linux sux'. You don't hear people from the Linux community bashing Windows do you?"
p.s. linux 0wnz m$
I am currently not obliged to divulge that information as it might compromise the agents in the field
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?...
Honestly, these Microsoft speeches are really a windfall for open-source advocacy windbags. They're so utterly foolish that responding is like shooting fish in a barrel. (I'm talking about the "Open source destroys intellectual property!" stuff, not the part about it making for a lousy business model, which happens to be entirely true.) The Eric Raymond / Bruce Perens line went over as long as nobody had actually put their theories to the test, but it must be a tough sell to convince companies to follow Netscape* and Eazel into oblivion.
* Yes, Mozilla is _vastly_ better in the 0.9 release. I know that. But in the meantime, the company has still seen it's market share go from nearly half to zero.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
Please note that your name is not the one mentioned in the writeup.
Poser.
Dancin Santa
I'm curious to see which if any "mainstream" news carriers pick up this story. Craig's letter got coverage in the NYTimes. Will this letter appear beyond CNet, /.,and ZDTV? Maybe with AoL/TW weighing in against M$ CNN might pick it up.
This is what saddens me in the FUD war. When computer science visionaries speak, geeks listen. When M$ speaks, everyone hears.
"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
--Benjamin Franklin, at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.
I am personally very impressed with the professional representation that has been made within this letter. What we need to do, as open source software users, is to band together and to work towards opening the eyes of our companies CTOs and CIOs.
This does not mean bashing the products that many of us are forced to use in our daily work days. This means to carefully offer up solutions to problems using Linux/BSD in a professional manner. Simply put, advocating the use of open source and free, as in liberty, software requires calm and rational reasoning.
One great avenue of advocating Linux/BSD is to form a users group in your area. While it is not an easy thing to do it can be used to greatly open the eyes of the people that attend because they have an inkling of interest. You would be surprised at the number of, "WOW! Linux can do that?!" that are prevalent at a LUG meeting.
If you choose to start a LUG be professional about it. Plan meeting times and agendas, put together thought out plans of action. Impress your members and they will mention it at their offices. The more your LUG is mentioned around their offices, the more likely that someone with decision making powers will show up.
The most important thing is to stop with the bashing. So what if Windows crashes, everyone already knows that. So what if Windows has security issues, people are already used to that. Show people that Linux has fewer security issues, when configured properly. Show people that Linux does not require regular reboots. Stop doing this by exclaiming the shortcomings of Windows. Do this by showing the strengths of Linux.
As users of solid, open source software we should work from a common vision. One of growth through education and hard work. Instead of the rabble-rousing vitriole that many of us spit out today.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?