Open Source on NPR?

anhinga asks: "I have recently talked my way into an assitant producer's position with the national public radio show 'City Visions,' a talk show on political issues from the s.f. bay area's perspective. For my first show, the producer i'm working with and i are putting together a show on the Open Source movement, working title: 'The Politics of Nerd.' The question is: which vocal, intelligent, bay area and vicinity OS insiders should be on the show?"

Comments

Which movement are you focusing on?

[jbn-o]

Your title is odd, bordering on insulting. As for the content of your report, I wonder which movement you are focusing on—the older, ethics-based Free Software movement that speaks to all computer users, or the freedom-dismissing, development methodology-centered Open Source movement which speaks primarily to businesses? Were you aware of the difference between the two movements? Some people use the term "Open Source" without understanding the ramifications of that term. You simply cannot understand what's going on with the Open Source movement until you first understand what drove RMS to make the Free Software movement and what the Free Software movement advocates.

The question is: which vocal, intelligent, [San Francisco] bay area and vicinity OS insiders should be on the show?

A better question to ask is "Who can speak well on the topic we're looking to make our radio show about?" without limiting it to a particular region. There is so much valuable insight to be had from everywhere, it seems silly to limit it to just the SF bay area. A cursory analysis of the Free Software community (which is the same community you're referring to as "Open Source") shows that where people are physically located is irrelevant. RMS would be a good person to include on a discussion of Free Software since he founded the movement (which predates all work done on the Open Source movement by roughly 13 years) and (as far as I know) he lives in or near Boston. If you asked him he might be willing to talk to you.

If you haven't already, please read Congressman Villanueva's letter to Microsoft for some guidance about what you should be talking about on this program (including terminology—notice he talks only of Free Software because that is the movement that jibes with his ethical approach to making sure the government doesn't force its citizens into a single-source software provider by the data formats it chooses). The same issues affect the USA. His analysis is a brilliant denial of Microsoft's lies, so well-worded many have noted it should be required reading. Congressman Villanueva is from Peru. Again I stress: there are all sorts of people all over the world you need to talk to and learn from in order to really understand the Free Software community enough to do a good report.

Have you also considered that many people who talk about "Open Source" don't understand what that means? If you think it's all about seeing the source code, you're wrong. Some of the licenses the Open Source movement advocates support allow proprietary derivatives to be made. This is a major issue for the two movements. But members of the two movements get along too: they work on software projects together and the Open Source movement proponents create a lot of valuable software that are genuinely worthwhile Free Software contributions.

Your post doesn't indicate how much research you've done to understand what's going on, so forgive me if this seems like a repeat of what you already know. I hope you understand the community of developers and users that started in 1984 has more to say than just "don't believe everything Microsoft tells you".