A Look Back At 10 Years of OSI

blackbearnh notes that this week marks the 10th anniversary of the Open Source Initiative. He points us to O'Reilly's ONLamp site, where Federico Biancuzzi (who frequently interviews notables in the Open Source community for O'Reilly) has a collection of interviews with some of the founders of the OSI, including Bruce Perens and Eric Raymond. "Eric Raymond: There is a pattern that one sees over and over again in failed political and religious reform movements. A charismatic founder launches the movement, attracts followers, and enjoys significant successes; then he dies or leaves or attempts to name a successor, and the movement disintegrates rapidly. One of the classic, much-studied cases is that of John Humphrey Noyes and the Oneida Community, 1848-1881. It was especially clear in that case that its succession crisis and eventual collapse was due to over-reliance on Noyes's personal leadership. At the time I co-founded OSI in 1998 I judged that FSF would very likely undergo a similar crackup if it lost RMS, and was determined to avoid that if possible for OSI."

Comments

Irony?

[CSMatt]

At the time I co-founded OSI in 1998 I judged that FSF would very likely undergo a similar crackup if it lost RMS, and was determined to avoid that if possible for OSI. How ironic that the person who said this is no longer associated with the OSI.

Of course it was doomed to failure.

[Blaede]

Once Steve Austin and Oscar Goldman left the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI), it was all downhill from there. Shit, even the Bionic Dog would have been a better leader than the current hacks running this death ship.

Re:Open Systems Interconnection? 7 Layer model?

[justinlindh]

You've got this all wrong. The OSI is basically an offshoot of the FSF as created by RMS, FFS. OSI and FSF did pull together in support of GNU against SCO. OTOH, the OSI you mention was created by ISO along with ITU-T, included FTAM and CNLP, and pissed off the IETF and TCP/IP replaced it (though SONET still uses TARP (which uses IS-IS and CNLP)).

I'm glad we had this talk.

Re:Open Systems Interconnection? 7 Layer model?

[Bruce Perens]

I haven't seen that many TLAs in ALT.