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10-Year Anniversary of Open Source

Bruce Perens writes "Saturday is the 10-Year Anniversary of Open Source, the initiative to promote Free Software to business. Obviously, it's been incredibly successful. I've submitted a State of Open Source message discussing the anniversary of Open Source, its successes, and the challenges it will face in the upcoming decade."

161 comments

  1. Surprised by Wealth! by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 1
    --
    "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
    Never been known to fail..."
    1. Re:Surprised by Wealth! by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Informative

      Surprised by Wealth was Eric Raymond, not me. I wouldn't ever have written that, and Eric claims he lost all the money because he never sold the stock. Holy toledo. My biggest IPO was Pixar. I made a little money on various friends-and-family things from Linux companies. Wasn't involved in LinuxCare. :-)

    2. Re:Surprised by Wealth! by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 1

      I didn't mean to attach the specifics to you, Bruce. I just remember the general "boom" mentality that happened around LinuxWorld in 1999.

      By 2001?

      I miss the old Technocrat. Thanks for that... Have you another, like project in the wings?

      --
      "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
      Never been known to fail..."
    3. Re:Surprised by Wealth! by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Informative
      How can you look at Zimbra and MySQL and think the boom mentality was then?

      Technocrat.net has been back for a while. If you did know that and don't like its current editorial content, I could really use some better article submissions. I've got to take most anything people submit right now because it's slim pickings. But not over here at Slashdot, darn it.

      New projects in the wings: a start-up company called Kiloboot. Product not announced yet. An American version of FFII.

      Thanks

      Bruce

    4. Re:Surprised by Wealth! by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 1

      Zimbra may - briefly - make MS the biggest open source vendor in the world! ;-)

      I wasn't aware the "new" Technocrat was still associated with you - after dropping the old slashcode. I have some pals there - and still drop a post occasionally.

      --
      "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
      Never been known to fail..."
    5. Re:Surprised by Wealth! by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 2, Informative
      Technocrat.net is still mine, although I actually lost the domain once and some nice folks rescued it for me. Wow. Anyway, I take the adsense revenue and pay Zogger with it. I can't always be there to run articles, and he's there much more frequently.

      Bruce

    6. Re:Surprised by Wealth! by Chapter80 · · Score: 1

      Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond. Same thing. Two industry icons that I'm unlikely to ever communicate with.

    7. Re:Surprised by Wealth! by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 2, Funny

      Think again :-)

    8. Re:Surprised by Wealth! by unlametheweak · · Score: 1

      I have an account with Technocrat.net (under a different nick). I rarely go their however because I spend most of my Internet time on Slashdot (old habits die hard). I think that is the way with a lot of people.

      If it were a bit more lively it would be more enticing. People like me are ensured to get lots of feedback from Slashdot for example, either through replies or the moderation system, and even through the Friend and Foe functions.

      The impression (a person like me gets) while at Technocrat.net is that nobody (or very few people are there). This may not of course be accurate because the readers vs. posters is not apparent to the casual observer. I think there is a (psychological) bandwagon appeal that more established and popular sites have that is hard to acquire. Reading and posting to two different sites also takes up more time. The one thing that a smaller site like yours has is that it brings with it more of a feeling of intimacy than the heard-of-lemmings like feeling I get with Slashdot.

      I think making the site more interactive would help, like having an "I agree" or "I disagree" button for posted comments (I think you mentioned this as a possible feature before). This would be good for people who don't have anything to say but still want to feel like part of a community.

      BTW, I've spent some time writing up a few articles here for Slashdot only to find out when I press the "Submit" button that they are duplicates (which isn't always obvious). So if you need some articles, then this would definitely be an incentive.

      Regards

    9. Re:Surprised by Wealth! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond. Same thing. Two industry icons that I'm unlikely to ever communicate with.

      You're thinking of Bruce Schneier, he's the icon.

      Perens are more of a typographic symbol. :)

  2. I think you mean "Open Source" by Filter · · Score: 3, Informative

    Not open source.

    --

    "better ways of doing things eventually just replace the inferior things" - Linus Torvalds 09-08-07

    1. Re:I think you mean "Open Source" by eln · · Score: 2, Informative

      More accurately the "Open Source Initiative", which is the effort to water down the Free Software philosophy until it appeals to business types.

    2. Re:I think you mean "Open Source" by dgatwood · · Score: 1

      Yeah. This definitely isn't the 10th anniversary of open source. OSI, maybe, but not open source. I was using NetBSD-mac68k more than ten years ago, and it was and still is open source. Ditto for MkLinux.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

  3. I'll raise a glass to that! by Fuzzypig · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Making the software world a more friendly place to work and play! Here's to many more years!

    --
    Windows guys please stop pissing on everyone and the Linux guys stop pissing in the wind, hoping to hit Windows guys!
    1. Re:I'll raise a glass to that! by gotzero · · Score: 2

      I got permission in 2007 to install some open source software at work after using it head to head with some of the programs from big players that I found absolutely intolerable. Hopefully initiatives like this one help whoever makes those decisions come around! Here's to another 10 years of increased adoption and collaboration (at work and then at home)!

  4. Misleading use of capital letters by davidwr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's too bad English requires titles to have initial-capital letters in almost every word. It leads to confusion.

    While this may be the 10th anniversary of Open Source, it is not the 10th anniversary of open s.

    Open-source computer code has been around about as long as computers, and the equivalent to open source in other areas such as blueprints have been around since time immemorial.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
    1. Re:Misleading use of capital letters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, sure, very confusing. I had no idea what the hell Bruce was talking about until your comment showed up...

    2. Re:Misleading use of capital letters by palegray.net · · Score: 1

      Quite true. University students, researchers, and hobbyists have been swapping code around since the inception of computing. When I was a kid in the 80s, I used to get all sorts of neat code from bulletin board systems. I suppose this might mark the anniversary of what most people consider formalized open source licensing practices, but it's certainly not the anniversary of open code.

    3. Re:Misleading use of capital letters by Intron · · Score: 2, Informative

      When I first started writing code in the 70's there were still serious arguments about whether code could even be protected by copyrights. It wasn't until the "Pineapple" case in the early 80's that it was settled. The Pineapple contained Apple's ROM code and their claim was that you couldn't copyright binary data. They lost, of course.

      --
      Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
    4. Re:Misleading use of capital letters by toddhisattva · · Score: 1

      Open-source computer code has been around about as long as computers, and the equivalent to open source in other areas such as blueprints have been around since time immemorial. Even the phrase "open source" is itself confusing, since "open sources" are things like phone books, and a "closed" source is somebody you have to do legwork to talk to ;-)
    5. Re:Misleading use of capital letters by MBGMorden · · Score: 1

      Yep. I remember dissecting the QBASIC code for Gorillas and Nibbles back when I got my first PC (486SX 20Mhz, 2MB Ram, 80MB Hard Drive, DOS 5.1 + Windows 3.1). It was quite educational. A lot of the old programs for my Commodore 64 were just distributed as source on disks too.

      As a matter of fact, WAY back in the day it was common to buy simple computer games not in disk form (those were hard to spread), but in the form of a magazine or book. They'd have a collection of simple games' source printed in the book and you'd type the source into your computer and save it yourself. Most of them would list several different versions of the source for different computer systems (C64 Version, Apple II version, TI-99/4a version, etc).

      Dang that dredges up fond memories. I don't know if it was the variety, the "newness" of it, or just that I was a kid, but computers felt way more interesting and fun back then. Now they're a tool more than a toy. I suppose that's a good thing, but it certainly was fun to just play around back then.

      --
      "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
    6. Re:Misleading use of capital letters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > It's too bad English requires titles to have initial-capital letters in almost every word. It leads to confusion.

      Excuse me? Are you thinking of German? English only capitalises proper nouns and words at the beginning of sentences.

      It has been several hundred years since English, as German still does, required all nouns to be capitalised.

    7. Re:Misleading use of capital letters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We used to have Free software 25 years back, but back then we just called it "software"

      I'm not sure where I read this before, probably Slashdot.

    8. Re:Misleading use of capital letters by dedazo · · Score: 2, Insightful
      In the beginning (around 10,000 BC or so), software was nothing more than a commodity that helped drive hideously expensive computers. Source code was shared freely among everyone (government agencies, universities and companies that actually used computers) and got adapted and improved for whatever task they wanted to accomplish with what little shared time they were getting on their Big Iron du jour. Companies like IBM, DEC and Wang made a killing on the hardware and support, and software was an afterthought at best.

      All of this predates RMS, ESR, GNU and everything else. Availability of source code as a principal "right" became important only after the hardware itself was inevitably turned into a commodity and ceased being a shared resource.

      --
      Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
    9. Re:Misleading use of capital letters by Trogre · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I like it how Jon "Mad Dog" Hall put it:

      (paraphrasing)

      Of course we had free software back in the '60s. But back then it was called "software".

      --
      "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
    10. Re:Misleading use of capital letters by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      While this may be the 10th anniversary of Open Source, it is not the 10th anniversary of open s.

      It's definitely not the 10th anniversary of Open Source. I refer slashdotters to my slashdot journal entry of June 27, 2007 entitled "Who invented the term 'Open Source'?" As per the entry, the earliest documented use of the phrase I could dig up was September 10, 1996, in a Caldera press release. No matter how you slice the facts, the tenth anniversary of Open Source has definitely come and gone.

      I've asked Mr. Perens for clarification before, but he wasn't listening. Perhaps this time?

      Anyway, I have two questions for the general populace of Slashdot:

      1. What is the earliest reference for the use of "Open" in computing? Open Systems, Open Computing, anything like that will do.
      2. What is the earliest reference for the use of the term "Open Source"? Does anyone have a reference earlier than September 10, 1996, preferably with attribution?

      I grew up in Santa Cruz around UCSC students, and employees of SCO, Borland, Apple, Adobe, and other tech companies. I can remember around the Unix nerds that the term "Open" was kicked around quite a bit. SCO became pretty fond of it at one point, in fact :) But I don't recall quite clearly precisely when I heard it the most. SGI seemed to use it fairly often as well...

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    11. Re:Misleading use of capital letters by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1
      I see some, thin and far between, references to "open source" before the announcement of the Open Source Definition. But IMO they didn't mean the same thing. They might have been referring to source code that was disclosed, but were not referring to the assurance that the software gave you a particular set of rights.

      The date that I am talking about today is the anniversary of a campaign.

      Bruce

    12. Re:Misleading use of capital letters by that+this+is+not+und · · Score: 1

      Interestingly, on my bookcase, the 'BASIC Cookbook' (essentially a bunch of BASIC programs to type in and run) is two books down from '4.4BSD Programmers Supplimental Documents.' (and the Turbo Pascal 3.0 manual is next to the PSD volume)

    13. Re:Misleading use of capital letters by that+this+is+not+und · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's sad how few people identify Apple Computer as one of the chief villains and 'trailblazers' in the rise of legally-restricted software. Apple also nearly closed off the GUI concept to own it for themselves. If you search around you can find firebrand essays from RMS condeming Apple's 'Look and Feel' lawsuit against Microsoft. Essentially Apple 'delivered' the GUI to Microsoft and Windows, by suing all the other GUI developers in the competing market of GUI layers for MS-DOS. Everybody but Microsoft they ran out of the market with their legal muscle.

      Thanks, Apple.

    14. Re:Misleading use of capital letters by that+this+is+not+und · · Score: 1

      Also, they didn't trademark the term.

  5. 10 years - not hardly by Mycroft_514 · · Score: 1, Informative

    The first open source project I participated in was from around 1985-1996. The prject itself pre-dated that even.

    Try to get over yourselves people.

    1. Re:10 years - not hardly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Also tenth anniversary not ten years anniversary in the headline.

      (Are you all graduates of the potato university?)

    2. Re:10 years - not hardly by QuantumG · · Score: 3, Funny

      He's talking about Open Source, not open source.

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
    3. Re:10 years - not hardly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Where the hell were you years ago. This Bruce Perens guy is acting like he coined the term and started the whole thing.

      Maybe if you understood what he wrote or even anything he has said over the past 10 years you would not have made such a silly statement.

      Open Source MOVEMENT. read the whole thing before foaming at the mouth.

    4. Re:10 years - not hardly by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 3, Informative
      I know. I made a point, really early in the article, of going over Free Software, Richard Stallman, and the fact that he started in the early 80's. FYI, my first Free Software program, Electric Fence was published from Pixar in 1987.

      Thanks

      Bruce

    5. Re:10 years - not hardly by that+this+is+not+und · · Score: 1

      The main thing Bruce Perens is responsible for is the fact that from a peer-peer forum here on Slashdot, we now have a more hierarchical forum.

      Before the 'everybody is impersonating me!' crisis that Bruce had, you had to go to a user's summary page to see what their UID was. But somebody 'impersonated' Bruce with an account with a slightly different spelling. For a while he sported a frantic "I am the REAL Bruce Perens" tagline. Then the people 'in charge' here added the UID to account names in all comment headers.

      And finally it has become the norm for people to 'weigh' the value of comments on Slashdot in part by looking at that number. Some of us who've been here a long time 'rebel' against the whole hierarchy by discarding and getting new accounts fairly regularly (none of mine that I've abandoned have ever not had the +1 posting privledge when I abandoned them)

      Just some little-known Bruce Perens history for you all...

    6. Re:10 years - not hardly by unitron · · Score: 1
      Those were the good old days, when I could have a sig that self-deprecatingly satirized Bruce's sig.

      Now all I can do is bitch about MS. (not the disease, the other disease)

      --

      I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.

  6. Open Source has already changed the world... by MindPrison · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...and will continue to do so, and even accelerate into the future.

    I've been using Open Source all the way since the start, heck...I've even contributed to it by writing Open Documents and Wikis to help guide the everyday user how to use the various applications.

    I am proud of what we have achieved, I remember when people at work mocked us as "nerdy" or "hippie" for constantly advocating alternative solutions to software and hardware solutions, but after being known for solving issues that the commercial world just couldn't this is no longer the case.

    Thanks to distributors like "Ubuntu" that puts community effort together in functional packages for the "everyday man" - Linux has become both friendly and usable for everyone, not to mention the efforts of the Wine team that has made it entirely possible to run your favorite apps. under Linux with ease and little "under-the-hood" work at all.

    Fantastic efforts, and an even better future. Personally I think the future for OS have never looked this good.

    --
    What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
    1. Re:Open Source has already changed the world... by sundarvenkata · · Score: 1

      So tell me how exactly does Open source plan to counter the fact that "Utopian societies do not work in large scale".

    2. Re:Open Source has already changed the world... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So tell me how exactly does proprietary software plan to counter the fact that "Capitalist societies do not work in large scale".

    3. Re:Open Source has already changed the world... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i hate to tell you but you're fooling yourself. you guys who really think that open source is a 1990s phenomenon weren't around to see all the open source that happened in decades past without the need of a little mascot or zealotry. at the time we just did what we enjoyed and we shared because the intellectual returns were worth it.

      open source is not new. it's been around before linus was even thought of.

    4. Re:Open Source has already changed the world... by msuarezalvarez · · Score: 1

      But, see, therein lies the difference.

      The free software movement and the open source movements propose to do that and at the same time work in order to preserve their ability to do so. That pleasurable sharing that you speak about was nice, but as we can very much see nowadays, did not sustain itself: it is now gone, a precious memory no doubt, but no less gone for that. Why is it gone?: precisely because those that practiced that sharing always disregarded the fact that they were not doing anything to preserve the possibility of sharing for them and others.

    5. Re:Open Source has already changed the world... by Mr.+Slippery · · Score: 1

      how exactly does Open source plan to counter the fact that "Utopian societies do not work in large scale".

      What do you think is "Utopian" about the Open Source and/or Free Software movements?

      --
      Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
      You cannot wash away blood with blood
    6. Re:Open Source has already changed the world... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      no, it's not gone. you just threw on a mascot and gave it a name and now act like you invented something and take up false claims.

      it would be akin to me painting my car, putting on a new name plate and claiming that my old car is gone and this is new and innovative. you fail it.

      and yes, a sharing community does exist outside of the open source movement you talk about. we don't associate ourselves with it because 90% of those who shout open source from the mountain tops have never coded a line in their life let alone produced something worth other people's time to look over. we don't want the reputation of open source. we don't want fanboism. we want to code and progress ourselves. we want to learn, not to leech.

    7. Re:Open Source has already changed the world... by msuarezalvarez · · Score: 1

      Well, apart from OSS printer drivers they are mostly unfixable by this "you" you keep talking about ;-)

    8. Re:Open Source has already changed the world... by that+this+is+not+und · · Score: 1

      Well, open source/Free Software is utopian in a way that can't be directly paralleled to the failed 19th century Utopian movements. In the physical world a 'Utopia' hasn't proven to work in the larger world scale, whereas with open source/Free software there is a convergence- since nobody has to throw it all away and start over, it converges toward perfection. There's nowhere for despots to lay boundaries and spoil things. So it's actually successful at being Utopian.

      I don't think the GP meant to say that, though.

    9. Re:Open Source has already changed the world... by that+this+is+not+und · · Score: 1

      There is a collective 'you' or maybe it should be 'us' that comes to play. Most large software projects are not the output of individuals. So the fact that 'you' cannot take the bull by the horns and 'fix' any problem you find in a piece of OSS software does render it unfixable. There is somebody, perhaps even a community of somebodies, who can tackle the problem, scratch the itch, etc. Perhaps, even, this forces us to become more social in how we deal with problems and challanges....

    10. Re:Open Source has already changed the world... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      . heck...I've even contributed to it by writing Open Documents and Wikis to help guide the everyday user how to use the various applications. Me too, but there is good reason for anybody and everybody to do so because we all forget things and sooner or later we need to do similar tasks again, and if we haven't written it down somewhere, we have to figure it out again ..and again. It really doesn't matter how difficult or easy the task is. it is always going to be new to someone.

      I guess i am trying to say if there isn't clear documentation and you figure how to do something, share that knowledge and write it down on a forum post on a wiki, in a blog even.

      It doesn't matter how experienced you are, since someone will always be more inexperienced and you can help.
    11. Re:Open Source has already changed the world... by softdevs · · Score: 0

      cheer! kanati.com.ph

  7. corrected by davidwr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's too bad English requires titles to have initial-capital letters in almost every word. It leads to confusion.

    While this may be the 10th anniversary of Open Source, it is not the 10th anniversary of open source.

    Open-source computer code has been around about as long as computers, and the equivalent to open source in other areas such as blueprints have been around since time immemorial.
    --
    That'll teach me not to use Preview.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
    1. Re:corrected by gangien · · Score: 1

      That'll teach me not to use Preview.

      Liar.

    2. Re:corrected by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Open-source computer code has been around about as long as computers

      And whining about software piracy has been around about as long as personal computers.
      And you can see his point. Had it not been for all that piracy his company might have gone on to be a success.

    3. Re:corrected by Curtman · · Score: 1

      It's too bad English requires titles to have initial-capital letters in almost every word. It leads to confusion.

      In contrast to other languages which insist that inanimate objects should be classified as masculine or feminine, capitalizing names of things isn't very confusing at all. ;)
  8. Correction: free software is the success by argoff · · Score: 4, Informative

    Open Source is a trademark group, but the real success has been free (an in GPL) software. Economic forces alone have pushed growth in this area up way above 20% per year in many areas, but the Open Source movement was sort of drug along by the coat tales. I'm not saying it's hasn't accomplished a lot, but pure economic forces would have forced this growth anyhow even if the Open Source group never formed.

    1. Re:Correction: free software is the success by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Agreed. Stallman sees deeper than any of us and he should get much more credit than he does. Of course, he'd do without the credit and be happy if you'd just think about the importance of your freedom.

      That said, I remember just how little buy-in we had with business people then, because Richard was the wrong guy to promote to them. He doesn't have any empathy with them, this rapidly becomes clear if you discuss it with him. Yes, if we didn't do it, someone else would have. The world really was ready for it, that was clear in how fast it caught on.

      Thanks

      Bruce

    2. Re:Correction: free software is the success by Rich · · Score: 1

      I disagree. I've written an awful lot of open source software (which just happens to also be 'free software' according to Stallman's definition. The ideals expressed in the open source definition ring much truer to me than those espoused by the FSF. The problem I have is that I disagree with the premise that closed-source software is morally wrong, I don't believe it is. For me, the big win of 'open source' has been that provides a framework for describing what I'm doing without having to sign up to a moral argument I think is bogus.

    3. Re:Correction: free software is the success by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1

      That's fine. I hope you realize that your right to describe what your doing so freely is a rather delicate thing that needs protection.

    4. Re:Correction: free software is the success by Rich · · Score: 1

      Certainly, free speech is something I will happily defend, freedom of movement etc. too. I just don't feel that having the source code to all software you use is a moral issue.

    5. Re:Correction: free software is the success by syousef · · Score: 1

      When presenting a radical or new idea you need someone stable, rational and personable to do so, otherwise people become hostile to the idea, and it takes a long time for it to be accepted.

      I've met Stallman. My initial impression: He's rude, argumentative, defensive eccentric and comes across as not quite mentally stable. (Using props like a halo and robe and calling yourself the patron saint of free software?! Please!!!) He's also got the charisma and style of a smelly hippy. (I will give him one positive. He was articulate. I did understand what he was saying. It's just the presentation that was really really bad).

      His message happens to be a good, valid and important message. Too bad he's decided to present these ideas himself.

      Hint: Never meet the guy wearing a suit. He'll assume you're a greedy corporate type. (I'm not but I had just come from a job that requires me to wear a suit).

      --
      These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
    6. Re:Correction: free software is the success by unlametheweak · · Score: 1

      I wonder how much RMS's stance is more rhetorical than real.

      I think he is viewing (and projecting his views) of the attitudes of the types of people who deal in closed source software, rather than the software itself. For example, in his early days at MIT he quickly realized that companies were unwilling to share the source code with him so that he could improve the software. He would also be upset over software that had inherent flaws that he couldn't fix because the source was closed. Dealing with stubborn companies or selfish programmers willing to share their knowledge was and is frustrating for him. It's more the ideas and attitudes behind (the people and companies who create) closed source software that he is against.

      I don't take his rhetoric literally. RMS even stated that DRM is OK if it is breakable (without Trusted Computing hardware hampering debugging/reverse engineering for example).

      I propose that there may be more rhetoric to his madness than people assume.

    7. Re:Correction: free software is the success by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1
      So, I agree that Richard is the wrong person to promote to business people. But having attended a number of St. iGNUtious performances, it's been really clear that his audience gets the joke. Although he has at times gotten food in his beard, there is no lack of bathing and no smell. I can't speak for how he was in 1982 at MIT, I was at another lab hundreds of miles away then.

      IMO, for Richard the source of his genius is also an affliction. He can't help the way he is.

      Bruce

    8. Re:Correction: free software is the success by syousef · · Score: 1

      But having attended a number of St. iGNUtious performances, it's been really clear that his audience gets the joke.

      Perhaps. If he didn't drag it out for so long it might even be funny. For those that don't get it, it's very very off-putting and what most non-techies see is a strange hippy with a long beard and food in it rambling about something or other. They're likely to pay as much attention to the homeless man that begs for money on the way to work.

      Although he has at times gotten food in his beard, there is no lack of bathing and no smell.

      I can't comment on his actual smell. I never got close enough. The death rays shooting out of his eyes because the one bloke at the meeting in a suit dared to ask a question prevented it.

      Even imitating poor hygiene is a bad idea when trying to get an extreme point of view across.

      IMO, for Richard the source of his genius is also an affliction. He can't help the way he is.

      I haven't walked in his shoes so I don't know if that's true or not. Regardless he does damage to the very cause he has devoted his life to. It's unfortunate.

      Anyway some of his code is brilliant, but he hasn't coded for so long. All I see is a sad old man who may have been great once but has lost his marbles. What a waste.

      --
      These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
    9. Re:Correction: free software is the success by Brandybuck · · Score: 1

      That said, I remember just how little buy-in we had with business people then, because Richard was the wrong guy to promote to them.

      Precisely. "Open Source" was about the marketing. Despite RMS protestations to the contrary, there is no practical difference between Open Source and Free Software. The difference is in the marketing. One is a near religion requiring adherence to a specific philosophy, the other merely a licensing model.

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    10. Re:Correction: free software is the success by Russ+Nelson · · Score: 2, Informative

      RMS would be a better advocate for freedom if he wasn't such a hideous leftist. He should read _The Road to Serfdom_, but as far as I know, he never read the copy of _Economics in One Lesson_ that I sent him.

      --
      Don't piss off The Angry Economist
    11. Re:Correction: free software is the success by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1

      There are lots of leftists who are successful advocates of their causes. And of course rightists and centrists too. The problem is more one of being able to put yourself in the shoes of your audience and then build a bridge from there to where you are. RMS can't do this for people who are very different from him.

    12. Re:Correction: free software is the success by Russ+Nelson · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Just pointing out that RMS believes in leaving people free to run their lives the way he wants to -- not the way they want to. But you're right about RMS being non-compromising -- it has effects that limit the dispersion of his ideals.

      --
      Don't piss off The Angry Economist
  9. Big deal by gwern · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I could care less about "Open Source"; it has done dubious good for us. Now, Free Software's anniversary I would care about quite a bit!

    1. Re:Big deal by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 2, Insightful
      We just have to figure out which anniversary of the three stated below to celebrate :-)

      In 1983, Richard Stallman launched the GNU project after becoming frustrated with the effects of the change in culture of the computer industry and users. Software development for the GNU operating system began in January 1984, and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) was founded in October 1985. He introduced a free software definition and "copyleft", designed to ensure software freedom for all.
      - Wikipedia.
    2. Re:Big deal by Kjella · · Score: 1

      Oh come on, BSD/MIT licensed code is available for Free Software to use so how could it possibly be "dubious"? It may not have the same appeal as the GPL, but there's enough to build an entire OS out of it which anyone can borrow from. Even if you make this a open vs closed source thing, I would without a doubt wager that the Free Software community has benefitted more from open source than closed source companies have. While the GPL community stands quite well on its own, there's no reason to get disrespectful towards all the other permissive licenses that have gotten the Free Software community off the ground.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    3. Re:Big deal by themelv · · Score: 0

      So you care about "Open Source" and like to use quotation marks.

    4. Re:Big deal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I could care less about "Open Source"


      Good to know you care about it. We do too.
    5. Re:Big deal by gwern · · Score: 1

      I would go with the first; the OS (read: the Hurd) is pretty much vaporware/a failure, and the foundation was only created to further the GNU goals. The important thing here are the ideas and goals, and not so much the tools created to acheive the goals (which is not to say the FSF hasn't done a lot of good - it has - just that that is irrelevant here). After that, I think the publishing of the Manifesto, or the first publication of the GPL are the most sensible dates.

    6. Re:Big deal by gwern · · Score: 1

      I don't think you quite follow. Free Software follows the 4 Freedoms http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html BSD and MIT stuff is as perfectly Free as something under the GPL - the difference is that they can be unFreed, while public GPL stuff must remain GPL. Open Source is a superset of Free Software. Everything Free is Open Source, but not vice versa; to repeat, Open Source can be less Free than Free. This is why I describe it as dubious, because a corporation can easily open source their stuff in a useless way and thereby mislead people into thinking they support Free stuff. To quote Wikipedia again in this thread: "An open source license is a copyright license for computer software that makes the source code available under terms that allow for modification and redistribution without having to pay the original author. Such licenses may have additional restrictions such as a requirement to preserve the name of the authors and the copyright statement within the code." https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Open_source_license So, it can have all sorts of noxious terms (did you hear the one about the license which forbade military use? or the one like MAME's that "forbids commercial use and redistribution"?), and still be open source. Open Source is less Free than Free Software.

    7. Re:Big deal by RobBebop · · Score: 1

      The important thing here are the ideas and goals, and not so much the tools created to acheive the goals

      Ideas are valuable all of a sudden? Then why is "Imaginary Property" always decried? No... the real value is in the implementation, and that began with Stallman's Compiler [gcc] and has grown from it. So yes, the tools are important. If there had been nobody capable or willing to write GCC or Apache for free, the technological world would not be what it is today.

      That being said... the idea of Freedom is still king. And there is this quote from one of America's founding documents that brings that home better than anything else.

      Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz. Freedom and security.

      The scary part is that we need to fight so hard against corporations and governments to maintain the freedom and security that they are there to protect.

      --
      Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
    8. Re:Big deal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All three of them! More parties, yay! I hope the beer is free... ;-)

    9. Re:Big deal by gwern · · Score: 1

      Please don't put words into my mouth. When I said valuable, I did not mean valuable as in RMS could've trademarked, patented and copyrighted the hell out of Free Software and been RICH, RICH I TELLS YA! through the miracle of 'intellectual property'. Even Googling 'define:valuable' tells you that that a definition of valuable is 'having worth or merit or value; "a valuable friend"; "a good and worthful man"'. The tools are important, certainly. And your last point is what I see as RMS's true genius. I'm sure there have been other coders of his caliber who have sought to advance the cause of Free-as-in-Freedom - the BSD evolutionary line alone must have several such - but he's the one who managed to start a culture/project/system which could survive the corporate and governmental onslaughts, and even thrive a little. Was it just the GPL and steadfast adherence copyleft and other Free principles? Was it dogged persistence combined with the Linux kernel? I don't really know, but the man did something right.

    10. Re:Big deal by that+this+is+not+und · · Score: 1

      Open Source is less Free than Free Software.

      Unfortunately, to win that argument (in fact, for your comment to even parse properly) you have to at a miniumum capitalize the word Free, and in a legal sense you'd have to make a trademark out of it. Otherwise you're mouthing tautologies.

      Free Software is certainly a proper noun the way you're using it.

  10. prior art by rossdee · · Score: 1

    The concept of open source has been aroud for much longer than 10 years, I remember open source software on Fish disks for thte amiga in the mid eighties...

  11. Wrong title by jrothwell97 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    The first open-source software was created around 13,700,000,000 years ago, and remains so stable that it runs to this day, and is expected to do so indefinitely. However, its creator, God, forgot to document it. Therefore we have to write universe-HOWTO.html ourselves.

    --
    Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
    1. Re:Wrong title by tjstork · · Score: 2, Funny

      However, its creator, God, forgot to document it

      I think he gave up when, after explaining the importance of solar energy to life on earth, people started throwing chopping virgins to people to appease the Sun God.

      --
      This is my sig.
    2. Re:Wrong title by dilvish_the_damned · · Score: 1

      Sorry, the universe is not in human readable code and must be reverse engineered, so no open source designation for it.

      --
      I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
  12. This by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is actually just a 10 year dupe. Nothing to see here please move along.

  13. Let's sing! by harry666t · · Score: 1

    Haaaappy biiirthdaaay toooo youuuuu....

    1. Re:Let's sing! by Intron · · Score: 1

      Excuse me, the song Happy Birthday is still under copyright. You now owe a licensing fee for a public performance.

      --
      Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
  14. Great summary and things I didn't know by VampireByte · · Score: 1
    I didn't know about the two SCO suicides and the train throttle case. This was a very quick and informative read.


    Thanks for the recognition to RMS, within the last 10 years there were certainly times it seemed like he was being pushed aside by Open Source.


    Open Source & Free Software are going to be crucial in another way in the coming years, and that's for the development of talent. So few companies seem willing to grow talent internally and outsource entry level programming duties. It's soon going to be the case that the only opportunity to obtain development skills will be through participation in Open Source and Free Software projects. If software patents get in the way of this, it will be another step in the U.S. killing itself for corporate greed.

    --

    Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.

  15. What? by brass1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Ignoring for a moment that Bruce is clearly Slashvertizing his blog. Again.

    10 years, huh? I wonder what Bruce's friends from UC Berkeley would say. Sure seems like they had open source long before Bruce decided to get his name in the papers. Parens' and Raymond's instance on taking credit for free software is disgusting.

    1. Re:What? by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Insightful
      No, my blog is technocrat.net . The link is to perens.com, a site with no ads.

      Yes, BSD had the source code and licensing, but no campaign to drive others to create such things. Stallman started that. I canonized the definition of what was, and what was not, Open Source. Raymond and I evangelized to business. Everybody in this picture is standing on other folks shoulders. I'd be the last to deny that.

      Bruce

    2. Re:What? by krack · · Score: 1

      That is the sound of pwnd.

      --
      Just because you are not paranoid does not mean they are not out to get you.
    3. Re:What? by INowRegretThesePosts · · Score: 1

      Bruce, don't lose your valuable time answering that kind of thing. It is hard to think the grandparent didn't already know what you stated above. Not to mention he seems to be a troll. Don't feed trolls.

      By the way, I can only wish most sites were formatted like yours: black text on a white background, on a single page-wide column (by today standards, it is a surprise that it occupies more than half of the page). Maybe you could found a "Readable Text Movement" :)

      Thank you for your work,
        Jorge Peixoto, from Brasil

  16. Not 10 years: thank ESR for the lies by wiredlogic · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This has long been a sore point with me. The term "Open Source" has been in use for more than 10 years. The first software related occurence on Usenet occured in the early 90's. This co-opting of the true history of the term has been orchestrated by ESR with his self-biased jargon file. He likes to demurr by saying that the foundation of OSI represents a true beginning but this is just a buch of phony chest thumping to make himself seem relevant.

    --
    I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
    1. Re:Not 10 years: thank ESR for the lies by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Informative
      We certainly had Free Software before then, and whatever BSD made. But as far as I'm aware, the coining of the term Open Source as another name for Free Software was by Christine Petersen (then-wife of nanotechnology guru Eric Drexler) on one of the first days of February 1998. I think it might have been February 1, and Eric called me the day after the meeting where that happened.

      Of course, the words "Open Source" could have been used that way before then, but we can't find any record. Since Open Source Definition only got done (as the Debian Free Software Guidelines) in July 1997, whatever was referred to before then wasn't quite what we know as Open Source today.

      Thanks

      Bruce

    2. Re:Not 10 years: thank ESR for the lies by dedazo · · Score: 1

      He likes to demurr by saying that the foundation of OSI represents a true beginning but this is just a buch of phony chest thumping to make himself seem relevant.

      So? Free sharing of source code for computers existed before Richard Stallman created the GNU project as well.

      --
      Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
    3. Re:Not 10 years: thank ESR for the lies by nojomofo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Of course, the words "Open Source" could have been used that way before then, but we can't find any record

      Not to rain on your parade, Bruce, but the comment that you're replying to shows documentation of the term being used in 1990. I know that this isn't news to you, but this "I own the term Open Source" game that you play really turns a lot of people (who would otherwise be very sympathetic) away from your message.

    4. Re:Not 10 years: thank ESR for the lies by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Informative
      This is sort of moot, because IMO the Open Source Definition was the big deal, and the fact that we had a campaign rather than just a term was a big deal too. Stallman had not bothered to set a Free Software Definition in writing at that time, he actually wrote and told me that what I had written was a good definiton of Free Software.

      The references you point out refer to the presence of source code, not the presence of licensing that assures the right to redistribute, modify, and use. BSD did provide that sort of licensing, but it was just called BSD licensing. The only campaign for developers to provide those things at the time was called Free Software.

      Actually, there was a regular use of the term open source at that time, to refer to a form of military intelligence.

      But I really did invent the term "nojomofo" Bwahh haha ha! :-)

    5. Re:Not 10 years: thank ESR for the lies by bmsleight · · Score: 1

      phony chest thumping to make himself seem relevant.
      Yep its not like Bruce Perens has done anything relevant.
    6. Re:Not 10 years: thank ESR for the lies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ESR has stated countless times that he'd gladly step aside and give his full backing to anybody else who wanted the position of open-source advocate.

      I find it hilarious that the people accusing him of self-aggrandizement are themselves creating the revisionist history.

    7. Re:Not 10 years: thank ESR for the lies by dreamchaser · · Score: 1

      I think the point you are trying to make is that open source existed prior to that, but not Open Source(tm). Yes it was just a 'name', but it did help drive what is now a thriving industry.

    8. Re:Not 10 years: thank ESR for the lies by fat_mike · · Score: 0, Troll

      Yes, you are the man! Open Source is yours.

      I got a question though...what have you done lately other than be a mouth. And your Wikipedia article makes it sound like your shit don't stink.

      I've been around a long time also, and I remember when people would roll their eyes and distance themselves from you. You pop your head up when your name is fading and throw things like, "I canonized" or "When Richard and I were in Italy" like that somehow makes you relevant anymore.

      Also I love the whole "my blog is a mature Slashdot" reference.

      Go away.

    9. Re:Not 10 years: thank ESR for the lies by Brandybuck · · Score: 1

      We certainly had Free Software before then, and whatever BSD made.

      What the BSDs made was also Free Software, exactly meeting the FSF's definition. You of all people should know that. There were some unfree AT&T bits early on (which were actively being eliminated), but by the time of FreeBSD and NetBSD, it was completely free. And still is.

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    10. Re:Not 10 years: thank ESR for the lies by that+this+is+not+und · · Score: 1

      but it did help drive what is now a thriving industry.

      Or at a minimum, it helped package it.

      "A Quarter Century of UNIX" is a really cool book. I doubt if there will ever be a similar book for Open Source even remotely as interesting to read.

    11. Re:Not 10 years: thank ESR for the lies by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1
      The Berkeley System Distribution (BSD) had a long history before its derivatives NetBSD, FreeBSD, etc. I started with BSD in 1981 or 1982 at the NYIT Computer Graphics Lab, which was a predecessor of Pixar. Our lab had the first VAX 780 released outside of DEC. We put 4.0 BSD on it. At that time, you had to show UC a copy of your ATT Unix license before you could get a copy of BSD.

      Bruce

    12. Re:Not 10 years: thank ESR for the lies by Brandybuck · · Score: 1

      Yes, but I thought we were talking about the early 90s.

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    13. Re:Not 10 years: thank ESR for the lies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Of course, the words "Open Source" could have been used that way before then, but we can't find any record.

      I didn't have much trouble finding open source software. I'm too lazy to look for more, but this one predates your campaign.

  17. "10 years" - bogus. by Animats · · Score: 1

    "Open source" goes back to the 1960s. The Free Software Foundation was established in 1985. The first major Linux release was in 1992. These new guys from the late 1990s are just mouthing off.

  18. Still No Viable Replacement for Outlook by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm a heavy user of Outlook and still haven't found a usable OS replacement for it, and one thing I absolutely require is full sync capability with my PDA and cellphone. Thunderbird/Sunbird don't cut it and it looks like Chandler's not going anywhere. I've long ago come to the conclusion that OS is a dead end for non-sexy and thorny apps.

    1. Re:Still No Viable Replacement for Outlook by postbigbang · · Score: 1

      You've been trapped by vendor lock-in. Your PDA and/or cellphone use proprietary skunkware to lock you in. You didn't think about caldav, or other synchronization APIs before you bought them, did you? If you want to replace Outlook, you have to break the whole chain, not just pieces of it. You could use MacOS, which is a bit open-sourcey (except those that must protect precious DRM bits).

      Otherwise, break the chain. You can do it. Tell others how. Set yourself free.

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
    2. Re:Still No Viable Replacement for Outlook by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm looking forward to seeing what happens with OpenMoko and Android that might clobber the PDA/cell lock-in angle of things.

  19. oPEN sOURCE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This seems like as good a time as any to announce the creation of oPEN sOURCE software. I will be trademarking the term and will be having my army of followers begin flaming anyone who doesn't spell or use the term exactly how I proscribe on forums all over the Net from now on.

    Anyone who claims there ever there was such a thing as 'open source' or 'Open Source' in the past are nothing more than liars or trolls. Please mod down anyone in the future who makes such inane claims.

    The oPEN sOURCE trademark combined with my personal nutty ideas about software creation and intellectual property is the oNE tRUE wAY.

  20. I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by mlwmohawk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm sorry but the "Open Source" movement is a bogus attempt to water down the original purpose of GNU and the Free Software movement.

    I've been in the industry for about 25 years and RMS was a visionary. While we we focused on software and what it could do and how to do it, he also focused on the dangers that our own creativity would bring to us and how to protect us from it.

    Make no mistake, RIAA, MPIAA, SCO, et. al. are *ALL* apparitions RMS saw over a decade or so ago. The Open Source movement is nothing more than a selfish group of little people with a narrow scope and no plan. RMS has had a plan all along, and while he may seem to be an extremist and might not have been right 100% of the time, in retrospect, he has been right pretty darn close and his extremism seems less and less unwarranted over time.

    The truth is both a blessing and a curse. It takes a lot of work to realize the truth and most people will not challenge themselves. Once you learn the truth, however, you are cursed with trying to explain it to others.

    1. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Informative
      Here's Richard Stallman's statement on the issue, which he made during a joint speech we did in Italy:

      Free software and Open Source seem quite similar, if you look only at their software development practices. At the philosophical level, the difference is extreme. The Free Software Movement is a social movement for computer users' freedom. The Open Source philosophy cites practical, economic benefits. A deeper difference cannot be imagined.

      The origin of Open Source lies in a practice that could have come from Dale Carnegie: if you seek to persuade someone, present the case in terms of his values and desires. For persuading business executives, citing practical, economic advantages can be effective. By all means do so, if it feels right to you, when speaking privately to executives.

      Talking to the public is something else entirely. When we talk to the public, we promote whatever values we cite. If we cite only practical, economic advantages, and not freedom, we encourage people to value practical advantages and not value freedom.

      Those values make our community weak. People who prefer a state of freedom only for the secondary practical and economic advantages it brings do not appreciate freedom itself, and they will not fight to defend it.

      This is the reason I stated, in my joint speech with Bruce Perens, for not supporting the practice of presenting Free Software in public in the limited economic terms of Open Source.

      Now, obviously, I think that Open Source evangelists like me have a role in talking with business people that Richard can't fill. His brain wiring isn't built for it. The a priori arguments he makes are not the way to start selling these concepts to business people, but hopefully they will eventually come to appreciate Richard's arguments after they enter through Open Source. Obviously, I don't want to erode the goals of the Free Software campaign at all. I'm out to help people understand Free Software with a gentle introduction. I tried to make that clear in the article.

      Thanks

      Bruce

    2. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Some people can turn anything into a religion.

    3. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by replicant108 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The Open Source movement is nothing more than a selfish group of little people with a narrow scope and no plan.

      In my experience, Open Source people are mostly Free Software advocates who have modified their terminology in order to make their sales pitch more effective.

      Their are typically very community-minded, and un-selfish (by the standards of most people).

      They are more interested in driving adoption than RMS, who prefers to focus on promoting an understanding of the principles of Software Freedom.

      Generally speaking, Open Source folks have the same goal as the Free Software community, but differ in their preferred means.

    4. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by pandrijeczko · · Score: 1
      I call "rubbish".

      As a primarily Linux user, I have to acknowledge what RMS has done for the free software movement and I do have some admiration for a man who is obviously driven by his beliefs and not by the accumulation of wealth.

      But the fact is that his views that all software needs to be free are at the opposite end of, but as extreme as, Microsoft's (and other commercial vendors') views that all software needs to be profitable.

      In reality, so far, the free software movement, be it Open Source, GNU, whatever, has not met the demands of some computer users who want (what they see as) easy-to-use but specialised software - heavy duty video editing is a classic example.

      That means, in my view, that there is room for both commercial and free software to work side-by-side and that the main problem with this situation today is simply that far too many standards are closed. Force all commercial vendors to make all of their standards open and then, potentially, any free operating system or application can integrate easily with any commercial one.

      In my view, I have far more admiration for Linus Torvalds than I do for RMS - at least Linus pretty much refuses to get involved in all the political arguing and just seems to get on and make decisions about what is ***TECHNICALLY*** the best thing to do with Linux.

      The best thing the free software movement **AS A WHOLE** can do is keep pushing home the point that closed standards are **BAD**, end of story.

      --
      Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
    5. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by JoeBuck · · Score: 1

      In my experience, Open Source people are mostly Free Software advocates who have modified their terminology in order to make their sales pitch more effective. That would describe Bruce Perens' motivation, but it would not describe Eric Raymond's motivation.

    6. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by mlwmohawk · · Score: 1

      I'm out to help people understand Free Software with a gentle introduction. I tried to make that clear in the article.

      I'm sorry, and while I greatly respect your individual contributions and I think you're probably a pretty honorable guy, history has shown repeatedly that expedience in the form of subjugating ideals for gain is always a long term error.

      I don't think the the "Open Source" movement has done anything constructive. The whole ESR Cathedral blather is an embarrassment, in most professional circles it is an hysterical joke. "Open Source" does not imply freedom of any kind, and the very words you have used are so meaningless they have been co opted by those with which the free software movement would compete.

      The success that Linux and free software has had has been for mostly economic reasons, I will grant you, but the freedom is a drug that IT shops love once they have a taste.

      No body cares about "Open Source," developers care about free (as in freedom which includes source) software and IT cares about TCO. Open Source is a distraction, and even worse, be it intentional or not, the open source movement confuses the public about the differences between "Open Source" and "Free (as in freedom) Software." Your own article that you reference plays up a lot about being aligned with the free software movement, but the "Open Source" movement is NOT the free software movement as they have very different objectives, and I find it pretty disingenuous to say the least.

    7. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by mlwmohawk · · Score: 1

      Generally speaking, Open Source folks have the same goal as the Free Software community, but differ in their preferred means.

      The Open Source community has a lot of differences with the free software community. And while the differences may be subtle, they are crucial.

    8. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 2, Informative

      The whole ESR Cathedral blather is an embarrassment, in most professional circles it is an hysterical joke.

      It's obsolete. ESR wrote it before IBM stepped into the picture, etc. I invite you to read The Emerging Economic Paradigm of Open Source. At least one now-professional has based his thesis on this paper.

      I think the major difference in objectives between Open Source and Free Software evangelists is that the Free Software folks say that proprietary software does not have a right to exist. Unfortunately, I can't say that and win the argument where it's important to win. You have to sound fair to everybody to win with politicians, if you ask to disenfranchise someone else you generally won't get very far.

      Sorry if you don't buy that, and we'll have to agree to disagree.

      Thanks

      Bruce

    9. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by msuarezalvarez · · Score: 0

      In reality, so far, the free software movement, be it Open Source, GNU, whatever, has not met the demands of some computer users who want (what they see as) easy-to-use but specialised software - heavy duty video editing is a classic example.

      When you say this, you are deep into the very mistaken idea that free software means having someone else write the apps you need. No, it does not. It is competely unrelated to that.

      If these masses who seem to be in need of heavy duty video editing software are really serious, they should either write the apps themselves, or arrange so that someone writes them, possibly by paying them. The itch must not be that strong, for otherwise it would have been scratched.

      If the I-need-a-heavy-duty-editing-app masses are waiting for someone to provide it for them without their doing anything, well, they can very well wait till the end of times for all I care.

      (Not that there are not projects out there writing video editing software. But the people behind them are precisely those who understood that free software is not having someone else write the apps you need)

    10. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by mlwmohawk · · Score: 1

      As a primarily Linux user, I have to acknowledge what RMS has done for the free software movement and I do have some admiration for a man who is obviously driven by his beliefs and not by the accumulation of wealth.

      Well, don't saint him just yet, he does all right.

      But the fact is that his views that all software needs to be free are at the opposite end of, but as extreme as, Microsoft's (and other commercial vendors') views that all software needs to be profitable.

      He doesn't say that "all software," he merely states that proprietary software should not be required and that you give up a lot when you do purchase proprietary software.

      That means, in my view, that there is room for both commercial and free software to work side-by-side and that the main problem with this situation today is simply that far too many standards are closed. Force all commercial vendors to make all of their standards open and then, potentially, any free operating system or application can integrate easily with any commercial one.

      I'm not sure how this fits in the open source vs free software debate.

      In my view, I have far more admiration for Linus Torvalds than I do for RMS - at least Linus pretty much refuses to get involved in all the political arguing and just seems to get on and make decisions about what is ***TECHNICALLY*** the best thing to do with Linux.

      And this is one thing that I have a problem with Linus about. Those who ignore politics will be done in by politics.

    11. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by mlwmohawk · · Score: 1

      I think the major difference in objectives between Open Source and Free Software evangelists is that the Free Software folks say that proprietary software does not have a right to exist. Unfortunately, I can't say that and win the argument where it's important to win. You have to sound fair to everybody to win with politicians, if you ask to disenfranchise someone else you generally won't get very far.

      Ahh, so you admit, you are not bound by "free software," but promote "open source" which is not necessarily free. You created a new movement because the previous movement was to strict for you. You benefit off the free software movement but moderate or obfuscate its objectives. You should make that clear in your articles and posts.

      Ideals are a funny thing, they are never 100% applicable as there are always exceptions. The same goes with free software. That being said, it is often against one's objective to compromise their ideals too readily. I think the "Open Source" movement is too readily compromising and clouds the real and present dangers associated with non-free software.

    12. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by msuarezalvarez · · Score: 1

      In my view, I have far more admiration for Linus Torvalds than I do for RMS - at least Linus pretty much refuses to get involved in all the political arguing and just seems to get on and make decisions about what is ***TECHNICALLY*** the best thing to do with Linux.

      Well, your view is based on the idea that technology is able to support itself, and that there is no need for political action in order to guarantee that its advances are sustainable, of consequence and accessible. It is rooted in the childish belief that there is no battle for the preservation of the social, economical and political conditions which allow the free development of technology and its free application.

      It is an age-old strategy of people wanting preserve the status quo: to minimize and hide the political aspect of any endeavor involving a community. It has worked so well that by now the communities in question, in an amazing display of unawareness, have appropriated the idea and incomprehendablely present it as a mark of independece and rebellion.

      To argue that licensing issues, for example, are irrelevant in regards to Linux and its existence is absurd, and to pretend that the discussion of licensing terms for a project like Linux is senseless `political argument' which can be ignored in preference to `technical' decisions is self-defeating. For no other reason, if you want, that the problem which those licensing issues attempt to solve and which is the point of that political argumentation is not a technical problem.

    13. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1

      I think a good way to describe what I'm doing would be to say that I don't ask for everything that I want, becuase I wouldn't get much of it at all if I did. This does not mean that I've compromised any ideals.

    14. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by Bill_the_Engineer · · Score: 1

      And this is one thing that I have a problem with Linus about. Those who ignore politics will be done in by politics.

      Et tu RMS?

      Seriously, RMS is outspoken enough for others to put the Free Software Movement into practice. Linus has done just as much for GNU by managing an open source project that attracted the attention of the computing powerhouses, as RMS has done by dueling windmills. Linus is the Yin, to RMS's Yang. Without a concrete demonstration of a successful open source project, RMS would be nothing more than an obscure footnote in MIT history. Without RMS' vision and passion about GNU, Linus' project would be just another free implementation of a unix like operating system.

      Before anyone gets too offended, RMS started GNU in 1983 and GNU really didn't become a "household word" until people had a product to identify with it. Evidently a nice editor, compiler, debugger, and some unix command replacements weren't enough. Lucky for us, Linus chose to license his work as GPL.

      --
      These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
    15. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by mlwmohawk · · Score: 1

      I think a good way to describe what I'm doing would be to say that I don't ask for everything that I want, because I wouldn't get much of it at all if I did. This does not mean that I've compromised any ideals.

      Like I said in an earlier response, I respect your contributions and believe that you are probably an honorable guy. Its obvious you are passionate and believe you are doing what you are doing for noble reasons. I don't think I'm arguing that.

      I think you have put the objective before the means and have thus harmed the objective.

    16. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by LingNoi · · Score: 1

      Two mothers arguing over how children should be raised is very similar if not more vicious. Of course you would not call either side religious because of the methods they promote.

      I assume your point was to try and discredit the side of the argument you don't like in a vain attempt to get people to agree with you because you don't actually have any points of your own to make.

    17. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by mlwmohawk · · Score: 1

      Seriously, RMS is outspoken enough for others to put the Free Software Movement into practice. Linus has done just as much for GNU by managing an open source project that attracted the attention of the computing powerhouses, as RMS has done by dueling windmills. Linus is the Yin, to RMS's Yang. Without a concrete demonstration of a successful open source project, RMS would be nothing more than an obscure footnote in MIT history. Without RMS' vision and passion about GNU, Linus' project would be just another free implementation of a unix like operating system.

      I would argue that the BSD kernel, which was free in 1992, would have been used instead of Linus' kernel. In fact, one could say that a GNU system based on a unencumbered BSD kernel in 1992 would have been superior to Linux in 1992.

      Before anyone gets too offended, RMS started GNU in 1983 and GNU really didn't become a "household word" until people had a product to identify with it. Evidently a nice editor, compiler, debugger, and some unix command replacements weren't enough. Lucky for us, Linus chose to license his work as GPL.

      It is hard to give historical commentary without offending people. Yes, Linus was a good guy and he GPL's his kernel. It was, however, a right place at the right time sort of deal. If it were not for AT&T making BSD poison, Linux would have had no reason for anyone to use it. If Tannenbaum was a little more open with *HIS* MINIX system people would have used it instead.

      Any viable that came along would have worked. The Linux kernel of today has so very little in common with the original that it is hard to even track the similarities. In the mean time, Linus has done a very good job at managing and contributing to the Linux kernel and he should be recognized for that.

    18. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by cbart387 · · Score: 1

      I think you have put the objective before the means and have thus harmed the objective. Correct me if I'm wrong Bruce, but that's the point that Bruce is trying to make. FSF has a different objective then Open Source movement. FSF is focused on freedom of software for the users. Open Source is focused on the idea that open source leads to better software for the users . The better software is only secondary in the FSF way of thinking, but is the core of Open Source. Ultimately it comes down to your belief, which one can't argue with (especially on an online forum).
      --
      Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
    19. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 2, Insightful
      You and I don't have to choose between freedom of software and better software for users. It's OK to want both. It will sometimes be necessary to choose which of those we start the conversation with when approaching a prospective convert, and which one we leave for when we've won the argument about the first.

      This is not so much about compromising ideals as it is about style of evangelism.

      Thanks

      Bruce

    20. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by drseuk · · Score: 1

      So "Open Source" / Bruce et al. are the front-end and "Free Software" / Richard et al. are the back-end in "our" business "presentations". No big deal here.

      "To confuse labels with things, that is belief" - John Paul Sartre

      P.S., Bruce, good article btw. thanks.

    21. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by Brandybuck · · Score: 1

      Bob: You're an evil anarcho-syndicalist!

      Fred: Well at least I'm not a anarcho-socialist sellout!

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    22. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by pandrijeczko · · Score: 1
      With all respect, it is JUST SOFTWARE!!!

      So please stop with the political bullshit, you're beginning to sound like someone reading from a book by Karl Marx.

      I like GOOD SOFTWARE using OPEN STANDARDS - end of story.

      --
      Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
    23. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by msuarezalvarez · · Score: 1

      "stop with the political bullshit" is precisely what I was talking about.

      I have read a couple of books by Marx. I guess from your comment that you haven't. Your loss, really. I guess from your comment, also, that you view reading a book by Marx as somewhat disqualifying. Your loss, again. I wonder what you do read... (In particular, what do you read in order to know what Marx writes about!)

    24. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by pinky0x51 · · Score: 1

      Now, obviously, I think that Open Source evangelists like me have a role in talking with business people that Richard can't fill. His brain wiring isn't built for it. The a priori arguments he makes are not the way to start selling these concepts to business people, but hopefully they will eventually come to appreciate Richard's arguments after they enter through Open Source.

      I think it is OK to talk to business people about practical and economic advantages and leave freedom aside. But i think it is wrong to do this in the name of "Open Source". You can use the term "Free Software" and talk only about practical and economic advantages. This way you will take care that the business people will at least see the freedom in the name and _this_ will eventually lead them to appreciate Richard's arguments after they enter. But if you put them on the "Open Source" track they will probably never find the connection to Free Software, Richard, GNU, etc.

      Choosing the right arguments for the right audience: YES!
      Rename the Free Software movement: NO!

      --
      Support Free Software! Join FSFE's Fellowship: http://fellowship.fsfe.org
    25. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by pandrijeczko · · Score: 1
      No, I read lots of O'Reilly books about programming - that's because I like good software.

      And for your information, I am half-Ukrainian and, as you may already be aware, the Ukraine has a long political history with Russia. Therefore, any Russian/Marx books I choose to either read or to not read are as a result of whether I deem them worthwhile or not.

      And to counter any potential further accusations from you, my political leanings are slightly to the left - but that is irrelevant here because I just like good software.

      --
      Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
    26. Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus! by msuarezalvarez · · Score: 1

      I am not accusing you on anything. Your nationality has nothing to do with anything.

      That you like good software is just as relevant as the fact that I like strawberries. Free software is not a proposal to solve a software engineering problem: it obviously proposes to a political problem. Judging it as an engineering technique leads to absurd conclusions.

  21. SO it's a good time to remember by geekoid · · Score: 1

    that no matter how much you may not like it, how you dress, present yourself and speak is how other people will judge what you do.

    So when talking about Linux, look neat, don't stink, and don't talk like a raving maniac.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  22. Re:I think you mean "Open Source" - actually Free. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I think he actually means "Free"; if you read the article he's very careful to be clear that Open Source should be little more than a rebranding of Richard Stallman's ideas and ideals but wearing a sharp tailored suit. It's an excellent document. The only mistake is the implication that companies bigger than 1000 are not at risk from patents. As a person in an engineering company with more than 50k employees, I can really tell you that's not true. Patents are a form of war on those who produce by those who steal.

  23. Scarcity by XanC · · Score: 4, Insightful

    With an absence of scarcity. A lot of economic rules (not all, but a lot) simply don't apply to software in the age of the Internet.

    1. Re:Scarcity by fast+penguin · · Score: 1

      There is scarcity, people need software to cover their use case, some feature implemented, some bug fixed... Copyright is a way to offset and mitigate it at distribution. That is obviously not the only finance software development however, and Open Source shows that to an extent -- it should be noted though, that a lot of open source projects derivate from years of closed source developments, and, software being mostly labor based, volunteers with a lot of time in their hands play a major role. Most open source projects however, arrange ways to offset the production to a subset of users -- Qt through dual-licensing (of course, dependent on closed source for their revenue), others through enhanced services, documentation or whatever (depending on the exact model, I'm not sure this plays well with division of labor because you don't want other people competing against your base product).

      --
      My worst enemy gave me a copy of Windows for Christmas.
  24. Meaningful Discussion by marnues · · Score: 1

    Its wonderful to see all the meaningful discussion Slashdot can bring to one of its most cherished enterprises. Clearly people are RTFA because otherwise they might not be able to get over the fact that open source is not the same as Open Source. We all know that sharing code goes back to the computer labs of the 70s, but that the current movement known as Open Source is something different than that. Thank the gods we can all stick to discussion of the article at hand.

  25. "Open Source" is a lame catch phrase by Schraegstrichpunkt · · Score: 1

    Wake me up in a year, when it's the 10th anniversary of Bruce Perens' mailing list post: It's Time to Talk About Free Software Again.

    The term "open source" was coined to avoid talking about freedom, under the rather stupid assumption that business people don't want to hear about it. Here's the thing: business owners are some of the most vehement seekers of their own freedom, so if you talk to a business owner who is frustrated with vendor lock-in and tell him that he can have the freedom to do away with this crap once and for all, he'll listen. Perhaps some short-sighted middle managers will resist the idea, but if you convince the people at the top, those middle managers will be irrelevant.

    I've heard plenty of stories I've heard about companies who "open sourced" their products, expecting to cut their development costs and improve their product quality by using the free labour of volunteers (like ESR observed in The Cathedral and the Bazaar), only to later give up because there are a finite number of volunteers, and their product just wasn't interesting enough. We shouldn't be promoting "open source" to software suppliers; What we should do is teach software consumers that they can demand freedom, and software developers will have no choice but to supply it.

    We need to talk more about "free as in free markets". "Open source" just represents a preoccupation with technical details (source code) that business owners ultimately don't care about, and serves more as a buzzword and a source of unrealistic expectations than as a long-term promotional tool.

    1. Re:"Open Source" is a lame catch phrase by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1

      We need to talk more about "free as in free markets".

      Did you read my economic paper? I really do make a point of talking about it in terms of free markets.

      Bruce

    2. Re:"Open Source" is a lame catch phrase by Schraegstrichpunkt · · Score: 1

      Did you read my economic paper? I really do make a point of talking about it in terms of free markets.

      No, I didn't, and neither have most people who talk about "open source". That's the problem; The term "open source" diverts attention away from its greatest strengths.

      The other problem is that people focus on getting vendors to release "open source Linux drivers" for hardware, instead of on getting the documentation that gives everyone the freedom to write and improve drivers for any platform.

      I don't mean to belittle your other contributions, but in my view, the term "open source" is a liability.

  26. The inexorable progress of Free Software by wall0159 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's interesting, these days, to hear someone say something like "Oh, Linux is no good - it doesn't even have a good multi-track music recording program. Linux will never replace [closed source platform]".

    Remarks about Audacity and Ardour aside, it's come a hell of a long way in 10 years, when priorities were things like drivers, windowing systems and text editors.

    Go Free Software!

  27. New Wave by Incster · · Score: 1

    The transition from Free Software to Open Source was like the transition from Punk to New Wave. Let's figure out how we can make some money off of this thing.

  28. Book and article titles by davidwr · · Score: 1

    Some English style guides say titles of books, articles, and other items should capitalize every word except "a," "an," and "the."

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
    1. Re:Book and article titles by cromar · · Score: 1

      This is the accepted standard in English. Some style books will have different rules as to when/if a, the, on, in, etc. should be capitalized, but it's standard English to capitalize titles.

  29. right. by eclectist · · Score: 1

    10 years? Right. The next real anniversary will be 2012-2013, the 20th anniversary of the founding of Slackware/Debian.

  30. Constructive Criticism by earlymon · · Score: 1
    From TFA:

    In contrast, we have not yet achieved the penetration that we might have desired on user desktop systems, at least if you don't count the fact that Free Software provides a large part of Apple's MacOS today, and critical elements of Microsoft Windows as well. Both companies have been forced to develop strategies to live with us, some of them less comfortable than others. I had about 80 different complaints each of the three times I read TFA. The lines above stood out as a way to crystalize two complaints, which I very much intend as constructive criticism. I'm not trying to fix you personally - the end goal is successful promotion (or on-going success, or improved success, if you prefer) of Open Source.

    1. You state that both companies were forced to develop strategies to live with us. Is that really true or accurate? It may be, but it doesn't ring true. Apple was going down the tubes because of Apple. I thought they embraced Open Source in Darwin as a survival mechanism - in fact, I'm rather certain of it. I think there's a difference between embracing FOSS as a survival strategy and being saved as opposed to developing a strategy to live with FOSS. Also, as I recall, didn't we complain that MS had essentially ripped off FOSS for its TCP/IP stuff before finally coming clean without coming really clean? (I'm not sure of the detail, it was a lot of years ago, but it seems to have truthiness.) Are you referring to back-handed abuse of FOSS for profit as a strategy to live with FOSS? If so, I'd guess that is grammatically and therefore technically accurate - but is it accurate to the picture advertised - "develop strategies to live with us," or is accurate to the picture, "developed strategies to exploit us?"

    2. You state that there are two companies to which you refer, but some of those companies are less comfortable than others. The words some and others imply plurality. When you divide two, you get two ones. Two units. You don't get two pluralities. This forces a cognitive dissonance that encourages hyper-criticality. Not good for promotion. It makes one wonder what you really mean to say, at the kindest.

    If I missed your point(s) that I focused on in the example, then please understand from my feedback how others may be missing it, too, in their own ways.

    Hope this helps.
    --
    Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
    1. Re:Constructive Criticism by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1
      Some of the strategies are less comfortable (for us, for the companies that have the strategies, or for everyone in general) than others. Perhaps I should get a poor grade in grammar and the writer's control of tone. I didn't have much time to write this one, it got posted with little editing. I just came back from Europe on Wednesday. and of course much of my time since then has been spent on my 7-year-old.

      About Apple: when I was leaving Pixar, I walked in to Steve's office and said "you still don't believe in this Linux thing?" He said "I've had a lot to do with two of the world's three great operating systems, and they each took a billion-dollar research lab to make." He meant NeXTStep and MacOS, which are now merged, and counted MS Windows as the third. He didn't think we'd be able to make a good GUI.

      A couple of years later, Steve stood on the stage at MacWorld in front of a slide that said "Open Source: We Love It", as he introduced Safari, which of course was based on a KDE component. I won that argument.

      Bruce

  31. Celebrate them all by SST-206 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Silver Jubilee!

    • 2008 is 25 years since 1983, when Richard Stallman launched the GNU project.
    • 2009 is 25 years since 1984, when software development for the GNU operating system began.
    • 2010 is 25 years since 1985, when the Free Software Foundation (FSF) was founded in October.

    Who's going to write the press releases?

    --
    Co-operation beats competition
    1. Re:Celebrate them all by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 2, Informative

      Talk with Peter Brown. FSF has a publicist who can help.

  32. My 10th Year Anniversary... by njdube · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...using Linux. I'm not certain when I started using Linux, only that I started with Red Hat 5.2. After a quick Wiki search I found that it came out in November of 1998. I can't believe it's been 10 years all ready. Jesus! So I decided because this November is the 10 year anniversary of the release of the first distro I started with I'll celebrate with cake. :-)

  33. Open vs. Close by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Open source software promotes Competition.
    Closed source software promotes Collusion.

  34. Bruce, this is almost completely off-topic, but... by unitron · · Score: 1

    I don't remember seeing a post from you when everybody got into a discussion of who got an account here when and what user id number ranges co-incide with what dates, so, do you by chance remember (about) when you got your famous 3872 id number?

    regards,
    unitron

    --

    I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.

  35. Re:Bruce, this is almost completely off-topic, but by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1

    I don't remember, but it was probably while I was Debian Project Leader. The archive doesn't go back that far. I do remember that I knew about Slashdot for months before I got a login. The 3872 number is only well-known because of the period when there were fake Bruces, more than one, on Slashdot. Tio Paco, uh, I mean Cmdr Taco was his usual unhelpful self. I had to make a point of telling folks that the "Real Bruce Perens" had that specific ID. This led to the Eminem parody.

  36. Re:Bruce, this is almost completely off-topic, but by unitron · · Score: 1

    The 3872 number is only well-known because of the period when there were fake Bruces, more than one, on Slashdot...I had to make a point of telling folks that the "Real Bruce Perens" had that specific ID. This led to the Eminem parody.

    That Eminem thing must have been something I passed on due to only being on dial-up 'cause I don't remember it, but I do remember changing my sig to something like "the real unitron is user 5733, but doesn't rate an imposter" (and naturally soon thereafter someone registered something like un1tron :-)

    I do remember registering sometime soon after getting here just as the Halloween Papers scandal broke.

    --

    I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.