Questioning the Linux Foundation's Credentials

nadamsieee writes "Neil McAllister has posted a provocative article titled Questioning the Linux Foundation's credentials. He questions the motivations behind the newly formed organization. Quoting: 'But wouldn't it make more sense to call the merged organization the Open Source and Standards Lab, or the Free Software and Standards Group? Why did they have to go and call it the Linux Foundation?' McAllister then goes on to explain why he believes that 'the Linux Foundation isn't any kind of philanthropic foundation at all[,] it's an industry trade organization.'"

Comments

because

[President_Camacho]

Why did they have to go and call it the Linux Foundation?

Because if they called it the BSD Foundation, all you'd ever hear is about how it's dying.

Wrong way round!

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

The author says:

What do you get if you cross an open source development consortium with an organisation that promotes free standards? Answer: You get a Linux advocacy group. Or so it seems.

ODSL & FSG were misnamed - ODSL employees worked on linux and the FSG worked on the linux standard base.

It's natural for the union between them to be called "the linux something".

Sure it is.

[inode_buddha]

Sure its an industry trade organization. What's wrong with that? After all, we also have the BSA, the RIAA, and a plethora of standards bodies and "think tanks", "focus groups", ad nauseum and et cetera.

So, what's the issue?

Re:Phht

[cperciva]

Replacing the letter 's' with 'z' is a North American corruption.

No, they got this one right. "Organisation" is a British corruption which never caught on in America -- you'll also find the correct spelling ("organization") used in Oxford and other fora which use Oxford spelling (e.g., Nature, WHO, UNESCO, ISO, ITU).

Re:Not news ...

[CyberGarp]

Since when did Linux equal Philanthropic? Linus did it for fun and is still having fun. As long as they play by the license, trade organizations are natural part of business.

It could fool the European Commission

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

When the European Commission want to consult the industry about something, they usually try to find a diverse cross sample. So they'll talk to BSA, some union, some Linux representative, etc. One possible choice for the "Linux representative" would be FSFE. FSFE would say "software patents are incompatible with the goals of the community we support". Another choice for the "Linux representative" now will be Linux Foundation (which is IBM and friends by a new name), and they'll say "software patents are grand, there are a few glitches that let unenforceable patents through, but we'll harness the community to fix these problems for us and everything will be fine". So the European Commission will publish a dreadful recommendation and will say "we even consulted the Linux free software crowd".