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

Open Systems Interconnection? 7 Layer model?

[kneecap]

Isn't OSI, the network layer model everyone had too learn in their networking class?

Re:Open Systems Interconnection? 7 Layer model?

[xaxa]

Someone I know went for a job interview with (I think) Vodafone. Their open-plan office was set out according to the OSI model -- physical layer people at the end, application people at the other end, and everyone in order in between!

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.

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.

Re:Irony?

[Bruce Perens]

It's an overstatement to say he's no longer associated with OSI. He's listed on their site as an advisor and board observer.

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.

ESR and political crap reduction

[yankpop]

I'm glad that ESR sees at least one of his goals as being to reduce the amount of political crap flying around in the community

After he'd already equated Free Software with moralizing and conducting ideological warfare, you could be forgiven for thinking he was more interested in spreading bullshit that containing it.

yp.

Oh come on

[Bruce Perens]

I have seen Richard do the St. iGNUtius thing many times, whenever we're both on the speaking program of a conference. It's always very clear that the audience realizes it's a joke. There's nobody in the audience not getting it and going Doh! I'm scared by this guy even if they've never seen him before.

I don't know if you are that humor-impaired, but I think you're wrong to expect that other folks would be.

Bruce

Re:Oh come on

[Bruce Perens]

It generally seems to be a point of relaxation in his speech: Richard lays down a pretty heavy political message, and then he gets to the point where he shows that he doesn't take himself so seriously that he can't put on a funny outfit and make some jokes. Not taking yourself too seriously is generally appreciated in a leader.