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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. "
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From the article:
Since when? Last time I checked, "open source" was a generic descriptor, and only use of the OSI CERTIFIED mark required approval from the Open Source Initiative.
From the article:
:P These business-orientated news sites have had fucking ages to get the facts right on all this stuff and they still can't do it.
Approval from the OSI is required for all open-source licenses, which are used on thousands of products, from the Linux operating system to the Firefox Web browser.
Erm, what? I don't need anyone to "approve" my software's license
For instance, the American Revolution is a good counter-example. Not only were the original revolutionaries not "eaten" but flourished in the government that followed the revolution.
Or at least, that's the way the eaters wrote the history books.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
in the echo chamber of technology news, all it takes-- as ESR did-- to get branded as a "fanatic" is to speak your mind.
The stepping aside of the "fanatics" doesn't mean anything more or less than the stepping aside of people with opinions, vision, or a desire to succeed. In the future the "open source movement" will be run like a business, like traditional charities and not-for-profits: i.e., inefficiently, carelessly and by bloated fat parasites who care about their own career, not the organization. In the future, groups like OSI will be operated not for the benefit of open source, but for the benefit of the "grown up" OSI group and its personal power. And we will hail it as the "fanatics" losing power.
Does the person taking ESR's place at OSI represent this process? Probably not. But almost certainly his successor will.
Open source isn't a revolution. This isn't Vladmir Lenin trying to convince people to take up arms and shoot people. This is software development. It is a creative endeavor. In a revolution. Revolutions are tricky because you need people who inspire at the beginning and people who are stable after the beginning. But this isn't a revolution. What is creativity without inspiration?
The American Revolution wasn't a revolution, exactly. The people who orchestrated and lead the American Revolution weren't revolutionaries in the sense we normally use that word-- they were extant local political leaders, almost all of them elected local political leaders. The American Revolution wasn't the people rising up to overthrow a system, it was two empowered groups fighting over spheres of influence. The people generally happened to be on the same side as the empowered group that eventually won-- again, in large part they'd elected this empowered group-- but I don't think that's enough to call it a revolution.
The group who took control of Britain's holdings in America in the American Revolution-- the "founding fathers"-- were already established as the people who controlled America prior to 1750, 1750 being when Britain decided to stop taking a passive, absentee-landlord stance to its American colonies and instead assume a position of active control. The 26 years after that were basically a process of Britain's empowered group going going "hmm, you know, we own you, and we have the right to determine your affairs", and America's empowered group going "you don't have the right to determine our affairs, and you know what, come to think of it, you don't own us anymore either". We call this a revolution but "war for independence" would be a far more accurate way of putting it, since the American side of the war was 13 established and self-sufficient states and their goal was autonomy, not change.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
The way i see it, it's a sign that Open Source is finally growing up. Fanatics like ESR might do good to the cause in the early stages of revolution, but in the longer run, they will always prove to be an annoyance and will be dealt with.
1. ESR is hardly a fanatic. He is much more of a pragmatist, falling somewhere between RMS and Torvalds, but much closer to Torvalds than Stallman.
2. OSI is an organization intended to promote Open Source software. As such it behooves OSI to have someone at the help that WON'T compromise the open source initiative's goals and philosophy, so arguing that his successor (who I know nothing about and wouldn't assume to be a great deal different than ESR) should be willing to change the organization's philosophy, political, or technical stance for some short term gain is very short sighted and ultimately destructive to the entire movement.
3. Having said all that, OSI has always been vulnerable to a "corporate takeover." Whether or not this is the case here (I kind of doubt it is), the position they've sought out as "mediator" between the corporate mindset and the free software movement certainly makes them vulnerable to that kind of thing.
4. I sleep much better knowing that RMS heads up the Free Software Foundation. These folks definite the stance of the movement. It isn't their job to compromise with those who oppose their philosophy, it is there job to articulate their philosophy and argue effectively for it. It is then up to the rest of us to choose our own stance, either 100% one or the other, or some middle-of-the-road mixture of the two. OSI falls somewhere in the middle, but to imply that moving toward the business end of the spectrum to the point where they become indistinguishable means the movement has "grown up" is to miss the whole point of the movement entirely.
Revolutions only eat their children when the revolution betrays its own ideals and becomes something very, very different. Contrast for example the Bolshevik/Communist revolution is Russia, which ran amok and never established communism, merely a dictatorship that called itself communist without practicing any of the economic or social advocated by Karl Marx, and the American revolution, which did remain true to its ideals for the most part and did in establish a democracy in its wake.
One became a monster with an entirely different agenda than the revolution and its revolutionaries while the other did not. One did "eat its children," while the other did not.
A more accurate statement would be to say that
"Each evoluton which betray itself and its ideals had ended uyp eating its children." In which case I can see every reason to expect the Free Software movement (and hopefull the Open Source movement with which it shares some adherents) should be different.
As a corallary, I would say that if history is any lesson, and if the Open Source (or Free Software) movmements do in fact "eat their children" we can pretty much understand that, at that point, they have betrayed themselves and everything they stand for, whith only the rhetoric remaining to gloss over an entirely different, probably very detrimental, agenda.
Luckilly I don't see any evidence of anything like that happening just yet.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I'm just frustrated with RMS. I've tried to explain differently to him for, well, for years now. He continues to contend that open source is just a development methodology whereas free software has a philosophical basis. I was just reading in Reason Magazine today that Ayn Rand didn't like libertarians because they didn't have an epistemology explaining WHY they were libertarians. Who cares why you prefer freedom? The fact of the matter is that open source is inseparable from free software. Give up the one and you lose the other. So what is RMS worried about? I don't understand.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Uh, no. As the OSI is proving by the way it handled Sun's patent-encumbered license; they clearly are separable.
Give up the one and you lose the other.
Not really. Give up Free and you lose Open; but as the OSI seems willing to point out that you can keep open and give up on Free.
So what is RMS worried about?
Exactly situations like the OSI approved Sun license - which is clearly as much a weapon used against free software as it is a contribution to open source. Either the OSI did a really sloppy job in proofreading licenses before they approve them; or their agenda is questionable.
I don't understand.Pleast try to, for all our sakes.