ESR steps down from OSI

Hope Thelps writes "According to an article on news.com.com, Eric Raymond is stepping down from his role as president of the OSI. His replacement will be our very own Russ Nelson. "

Comments

More info on Russ Nelson

[xmas2003]

The submissions mentioned Russ's Slashdot Page, but a lot more info about him can be found at his home page and/or his company Crynwr.

Re:[tt] You could see this one coming

[blahtree]

Fidel Castro did not get rid of Che. Che was given several high ranking posts in the government but he chose to leave in order to fight for other oppressed people.

Poor example.

Not entirely true

[FreeUser]

Is that a fault of Russians or a "dreamer" like Marx? I think a dictatoral state is the end result of any system that advocates "from each according his ability, to each according to his needs." You need a ruling class to start handing out rations as no one has a right to private property.

Not any more than you need a ruling class for capitalism to work (someone owns the land, someone works for someone else).

There has been at least one working communist system that was inherently democratic ... the communal communes of Spain in the early 20th century. The country as a whole was a dual system, half capitalist, half communist. The local communists were very democratic and outcompeted their capitalist competitors (Note: communism != centrally planned).

Both Washington and Moscow had strong interest in undermining this particular example of communism. Washington because it showed communism could outcompete capitalism under the right circumstances (small, democratic, self-organized communes and cooperatives trading with one another) and Moscow because it undermined their argument that communism required authoritarianism to work (this was particularly troublesome as the Spanish democratic variant was working far better than stalinism ever did).

The Spanish government coopted the communists into their system legally, then modified the laws to make them uncompetative and ultimately illegal. Kind of like what is happening to the internet vis-a-vis the expanded copyright laws today.