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Hall On Worldwide Open Source Movement
adamsmith_uk writes "There's an article up on ZDNet
summarizing an interesting speech from Jon "Maddog" Hall about non-US open-source, as well as protecting open-source from 'looters' - well worth a read: 'The open-source development community is an international treasure and should be protected as such, said veteran Linux advocate Jon "Maddog" Hall, in a talk in Birmingham, UK, that emphasized the role of open-source software outside the United States.'"
He was refering to companies who were trying to destroy open source software by claiming IP rights over them. They are the "looters", not OSS users.
Did anyone notice that he basically called theft of IP "stealing"? Isn't this what we've been fighting in the music area, that it's breaking copyright etc, but not stealing?
Many IT decision-makers have a herd mentality (e.g. nobody was ever fired for buying Cisco routers). Open Source use passed a critical mass a while ago and enough of the herd is heading in that direction now that the obvious advantages outweigh the fear of the unknown. It's continued acceptance is a foregone conclusion at this point.
The best protection open source can get is US legal precendents. The defeat of SCO would be a good start, then a decision upholding the GPL so that it gets taken seriously.
This would not only protect OSS, but allay the fears of fence-sitting businessfolk.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
he basically called theft of IP "stealing"? Isn't this what we've been fighting in the music area, that it's breaking copyright etc, but not stealing?
:-) ... the equivalent for SCO would be someone that takes the candle everyone was lighting off of and locks it away where no one can see it or light off it.
Something like the shard of pottery with the earliest known human writing is a treasure that belongs to everyone so the looters in Iraq were taking something that belongs to everyone and trying to make it private. In that sense the analogy with SCO is a good one.
Also, if you take Thomas Jefferson's famous analogy that "he who lights a candle from mine gains illumniation without diminishing me" (from memory so don't quote me
Isn't this what we've been fighting in the music area, that it's breaking copyright etc, but not stealing?
Yeah, and if I cheat on my taxes they can lock me up for "tax evasion"; but they d***ed well better not acuse me of stealing. That just wouldn't be fair.
I hereby move that the Open Source and Free Software movements be combined and reorganized as The Society for Pointless Debates Revolving Around Semantics and Nomenclature or SPDRASN. I think that SPDRASN should be pronounced "spud raisin" and that a spud raisin is a wrinkled potato, not a white grape. What do you think?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?