Slashdot Mirror
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."
How is that a troll? RMS may have some good ideas, and without him the FSF wouldn't exist. You could also argue that he's been a major driving force behind "free" software. But the way he presents himself is likely to make a lot of people think he's a looney. I saw him giving a presentation in Melbourne where he held an old twelve-inch hard disk platter above his head as a halo and declared that he was "Saint iGNUtius of the Divine Church of EMACS". That kind of thing makes him a liability. Geeks might think it's funny, but if someone who didn't know about the FSF and RMS walked in, they'd just think, "Who is this tosser?"