A Contrarian View of Open Source

Bruce Sterling's OSCON speech is now online - fun, light reading. And a reminder: the Global Civil Society design contest (which we mentioned before) is ending soon.

Comments

Not a great Sterling rap... here's a better one:

[doom]

I'm a big fan of Bruce Sterling, I'm even a big fan of his free-wheeling public speaking gigs like this, but this is just not that great a Sterling rap. He just doesn't know enough about what he's talking about, and -- a rare event, for Sterling -- hasn't suceeded in coming up with any unusual insights into the subject.

By all means, read it for fun... e.g. note Sterling's attempt at categorizing proprietary software company strategies as relationship headgames, where Linux comes in as this weird hippie chick that likes doing geeky guys... just don't expect too much of it.

Sometimes I think Slashdot may have painted itself into a corner... they ended up running a link to *this* Sterling rap, because it's about the sterotypic concerns of slashdot, not because it's a particularly interesting one. Try this one: Without Vision, The People Perish. There's at least a chance that he's on to something there.