ESR Responds to Sun's Claims of Being a Better Bazaar
UnixSphere writes "Sun has been quoted to have said, 'Sun's Java is developed more in the mode of the bazaar than Linux is,' which has prompted OSI President Eric Raymond to correct Sun's view of what open source really is."
I think it's time to put to rest this idea that because you wrote some obscure piece of software that you have some sort of cachet with the community. The biggest abuser of this myth is ESR. After writing Sendmail, perhaps the biggest security threat to Unix-systems evar, he tries to take advantage of his notoriety by making bland proclamations which disturb no one at all.
The fact of the matter is that only those companies with real money backing them are making serious contributions to large open source projects. Yes, there are a million and one open source "Hello World" projects on Sourceforge, but there is only one Linux, only one Apache. The companies behind those two projects are flush with cash and not staffed by "open source volunteers".
ESR needs to cash in his worthless stock and buy himself some coffee. He has long since faded into irrelevance and his current blatherings show more the bad side of the Open Source movement (the zealots, the true believers, etc) and does nothing to help the good side (realists).