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."

Comments

Misleading use of capital letters

[davidwr]

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.

Open Source has already changed the world...

[MindPrison]

...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.

Correction: free software is the success

[argoff]

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.

Re:Correction: free software is the success

[Bruce Perens]

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

Big deal

[gwern]

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!

Not 10 years: thank ESR for the lies

[wiredlogic]

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.

Re:Not 10 years: thank ESR for the lies

[Bruce Perens]

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

Re:Not 10 years: thank ESR for the lies

[Bruce Perens]

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! :-)

Re:Surprised by Wealth!

[Bruce Perens]

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. :-)

I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus!

[mlwmohawk]

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.

Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus!

[Bruce Perens]

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

Re:I'm so sick of "Open Source" it's bogus!

[replicant108]

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.

Re:Surprised by Wealth!

[Bruce Perens]

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

Scarcity

[XanC]

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.

Re:What?

[Bruce Perens]

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