Open Source Foundations Coming of Age — What Next?

An article at The H makes the case that many open source foundations have successfully proven their worth and withstood the test of time as legitimate entities. This leads to the question: where do they go from here? The author suggests an umbrella foundation to provide consistent direction across many projects. Quoting; "As you might expect, the main aim of most foundations is to promote their own particular project and its associated programs. For the putative [Open Source Foundation Foundation], that would generalise into promoting open source foundations as a way of supporting open source activity. In practical terms, that might translate into establishing best practice, codifying what needs to be done in order to create an open source foundation in different jurisdictions with their differing legal requirements. That would make it far easier for smaller projects – such as Krita – to draw on that body of knowledge once they have decided to take this route. It might also encourage yet more projects to do the same, encouraged by the existence of support mechanisms that will help them to navigate safely the legal requirements, and to minimise costs by drawing on the experience of others. After all, this is precisely the way open source works, and what makes it so efficient: it tries to avoid re-inventing the wheel by sharing pre-existing solutions to problems or sub-problems."

Comments

"Centralization does not scale."

[John Hasler]

Multiple "umbrella" organizations? Sure. One single central authority? Do Not Want.

Re:"Centralization does not scale."

[Anonymous Coward]

What is structure without authority?

Sometimes more is not better.

Re:"Centralization does not scale."

[jcoy42]

No kidding. I read that summary as "Hey, we've found these systems that are really working well and so we were thinking we'd like to change that".

It's working JUST FINE- bugger off.

Re:"Centralization does not scale."

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this sounds horribly negative, but I'm getting one of those vibes like someone wants to be more important than they already are. Do these Open Source foundations feel like they lack direction and need the authority and guidance of a new boss foundation to get things done?

I've found that additional bureaucracy and the in-fighting that comes with it makes things worse. Not better.

Re:"Centralization does not scale."

[davester666]

It's just like most analysts of Apple.

You are very successful up to now.
But now that you are so successful, you must change and start doing things the way everybody else is, otherwise, you will go out of business.

Re:"Centralization does not scale."

[unixisc]

Not only that - if different organizations have different goals, like OSI and FSF do, bringing them under a common umbrella is self defeating.

Re:"Centralization does not scale."

[Anonymous Coward]

The premise is just ridiculous. It's like calling for all world armies to unite under one flag... Most FOSS projects are legal tools for companies to circumvent anti-cartel restrictions under the guise of philanthropy[y. A few players would seek to combine their effort in developing some technology, without getting dragged to court over price fixing, will setup their shared code base as GPL and will match code contributions to one another thus enforcing mutual corporation.
This is what drives the linux server development despite the competitiveness of the players.
As both end-user and developer I like having one system to rule them all. But as a consumer I know this is really hurting competition in the sense that we haven't had OS alternatives for 3 decades. Worse since when technologically superior alternatives are offered, they are often rejected since it's nearly impossible to over power a cartel of any kind.
As such, the idea different projects of this nature should somehow be centralized is counter productive to their purpose of appearing decentralized.

As a side note, FOSS seems to be the M.A.D of the tech world: If a company exerts too much pull to make sure it keeps a monopoly, other companies will offer their commercially failing but otherwise technologically equivalent \ superior product as FOSS. This will provide a golden parachute of sorts since if a tech company wants to take out a competitor, it will have to buy them out eventually instead of actually competing over quality features. Trace back enough of the current patent claims and you'll find this small companies that could never compete as the source for the I.P.

Generally, I find FOSS is overly romanticized in Slashdot and is rarely seen for what it is when big names are involved.

Re:"Centralization does not scale."

[steviesteveo12]

The nice thing about standards is that there're so many of them.

Re:"Centralization does not scale."

[Seeteufel]

The example is good for the following reasons: Some are US entities, some are European ones. Organisations like Apache Foundation are obsolete. No one wants to be governed by US entities because we don't understand them. KDE e.V., Document Foundation are so much better governed.

Well duh...

[Alwin Henseler]

These foundations should get into the online advertising business.

Maybe then -finally- their market cap would increase... or something.

Exchanging the Bazar for the Cathedral?

[Lisias]

*NO*.

Open source can be a "mess". But it's exactly this "mess" that makes the FOSS resilient.

Re:Exchanging the Bazar for the Cathedral?

[Anonymous Coward]

Industrial organizations do seem to work in general, so the supporting role, or meta-role of the OSFF suggested in the summary should not lessen the resiliency of the FOSS. Pooling resources does not always equal pooling power.

Re:Exchanging the Bazar for the Cathedral?

[martin-boundary]

Ok. What if there was just one foundation, and then a second, secretive, foundation foundation whose purpose is to monitor the foundation's activities in Open Source? We could even build an open source AI that could secretly oversee the second foundation foundation and make executive decisions for human^H^H^H^HOpen Source.

I think that could work. Oh, and we'd have to nuke the Earth, to encourage programmers to free their code and spread it far and wide across the Internet, for free (don't worry, the Internet was designed to be nuke resilient). A bit on the "messy" side, granted, but trust me, I've thought this through.

Re:Exchanging the Bazar for the Cathedral?

[Lisias]

Industrial organizations do seem to work in general, so the supporting role, or meta-role of the OSFF suggested in the summary should not lessen the resiliency of the FOSS. Pooling resources does not always equal pooling power.

I don't agree with you.

I had worked for Siemens Mobile (acquired by BenQ at the time of my leave), Siemens VDO (acquired by Continental, then acquired by Schaefler Group, and then I leave). The recent Sun acquisition by Oracle came to my mind.

The industrial organizations mindset is all about power concentration and promoting scarceness in order to promote revenue. It's about acquisition and/or annihilation of the competition.

I'm serious. We can't afford this mindset on FOSS.

Re:Exchanging the Bazar for the Cathedral?

[Lisias]

Ok. What if there was just one foundation, and then a second, secretive, foundation foundation whose purpose is to monitor the foundation's activities in Open Source?

A FOSS oriented Church? =P

Come to Brazil, Churches don't pay taxes around here. This can be a highly lucrative enterprise! =D

(Ahh, the blips of the bitcoins being donated by mobile phones on the mass....)

Re:Exchanging the Bazar for the Cathedral?

[wzzzzrd]

Industrial organizations do seem to work in general

Ahem, no. Industrial organizations do not work, not even in general. Brands and trade marks do, but "industial organization" is almost an oxymoron.

Re:Exchanging the Bazar for the Cathedral?

[bug1]

Dont be so superficial, its not about the structures, its about the people.

Im sure we could all make a big mess in a cathedral if it was useful.

Re:Exchanging the Bazar for the Cathedral?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had worked for Siemens Mobile (acquired by BenQ at the time of my leave), Siemens VDO (acquired by Continental, then acquired by Schaefler Group, and then I leave). The recent Sun acquisition by Oracle came to my mind.

Those are not examples of industrial organizations. Examples of industrial organizations are IEEE, IETF, ECMA and CEA.

next... Copyleft adoption !!

[martiniturbide]

I think that the copyleft adoption is next. Currently corporations like non-copyleft open source licenses like Apache, eclipse so they can create commercial derivative works. The next step is don't caring about commercial software anymore and focusing 100% in services, turning on the obligatory open source on derivate works. ... nah... don't have the time to think on details.

Re:next... Copyleft adoption !!

[YurB]

Yeah I think the same. Things like Wikipedia and Creative Commons are helping to promote this model. I think people are 'by default' thinking the copyleft way, we just need to show them there's nothing wrong with their thinking, and show how it might work ethically:)

Re:next... Copyleft adoption !!

[kthreadd]

I don't mind corporations preferring non-copyleft, especially since non-copyleft contributions can usually be used within both copyleft and non-copyleft projects. If corporations started to mass-adopt copyleft a lot of non-copyleft projects that used to rely on contributions from such companies would be left out in the cold.

What we need is ONE Destop UI Standard

[VortexCortex]

We could call it the Free Desktop Standard, and all Open Source Desktops could implement it -- Yes, even you my little Haiku. What's that Haiku? You don't want to conform to some generic standard? It would limit your ability to differ from other desktops other than by look & feel? You don't want to implement X11 just to comply with the Standard?! Well, fine. You just won't be under the Umbrella of the Free Desktop Standard. You just won't benefit from the services we provide! What do you mean you greatest assets are user/developer hybrids not money and legal advice? Haven't you heard of the patent wars? Well, just remember this you rebel factions, when the Propriety Axis of Evil Patent-Cross-Licensors comes to call. Don't bother whining to the EFF! They're under OUR Open Source Umbrella! HA!

On second thought, maybe the Umbrella Corporation should be fought tooth and nail. Maybe open source foundations should just act as a collection of independent tools that each do one thing and do it well regardless of loyalty to any platform, standard, or ideology (CopyFree vs CopyLeft), instead of become a single insane bureaucrazy... You know, because THAT'S the Open Source Way.

Re:What we need is ONE Destop UI Standard

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey it's called the GNU Project you insensitive clod.

Re:What we need is ONE Destop UI Standard

[Anonymous Coward]

We could call it the Free Desktop Standard, and all Open Source Desktops could implement it -- Yes, even you my little Haiku. What's that Haiku? You don't want to conform to some generic standard? It would limit your ability to differ from other desktops other than by look & feel? You don't want to implement X11 just to comply with the Standard?! Well, fine. You just won't be under the Umbrella of the Free Desktop Standard. You just won't benefit from the services we provide! What do you mean you greatest assets are user/developer hybrids not money and legal advice? Haven't you heard of the patent wars? Well, just remember this you rebel factions, when the Propriety Axis of Evil Patent-Cross-Licensors comes to call. Don't bother whining to the EFF! They're under OUR Open Source Umbrella! HA!

First of all, that will be a dumb thing to do. Who needs just one DE? Why limit yourself? People don't have the same taste. People don't have the same needs.
One like configurability, others like effects, some like widgets, some not.

Second of all: have you seen this? http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/
Think of having multiple DE in term of...websites
How about we make a unique website, so we don't have to search through google to find something? A? Wonderfull idea, right?

consistency

[girlintraining]

The author suggests an umbrella foundation to provide consistent direction across many projects. Quoting;

Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Open source does not need consistency. It was created as a reaction against people who think they do need it.

Re:consistency

[Zapotek]

Well, yes and no. As a leader/owner of a F/OSS project myself a reviewed and tested legal framework, along with some operation guidelines, would be immensely helpful in "business" situations or any time monetary issues are at hand.
That's probably what they meant with "to provide consistent direction across many projects", not some plan to force everyone to rank and file under their command.

And since no-one is born with universal knowledge of every imaginable field then that sort of thing would benefit medium (or even largish) sized minds by saving them from a boatload of research and brain-melting legalese.

Re:consistency

[Anonymous Coward]

The exactly quote is more specific:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

However, this does not give a complete dismissal of the value of consistency, and if I wanted to dig up some pithy quote about the value of a regular structure, I'm sure I could do so.

And you can bet if Open Source becomes a mish-mash of inconsistency, there will be people who decide to cut that Gordian Knot.

Re:consistency

[iggymanz]

businesses have to have their lawyers go over such issues with a fine tooth comb anyway, they're not going to trust some "foundation"

Re:consistency

[noobermin]

How about an interface instead of a abstract base class?

If two or more organizations feel they can do better if they pool resources together, why not make an alliance or a small partnership or such? If there is no real need for a meta-bureaucracy to handle the existing bureaucracy, why make it?

Re:consistency

[noobermin]

s/a abstract/an abstract/

slashdot needs an edit button.

Re:consistency

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed! Down with standards of any kind! bitchintraining says it's bad and she's an expert on everything!

SImple really...

[Anonymous Coward]

What should happen now is stop the e-peen waving and produce software that is usable to non-neckbeards.

Re:SImple really...

[Anonymous Coward]

Free software is already usable by non-neckbeards and has been for years. Take Ubuntu, or Mint, or any of the other dozens GNU/Linux distros made for newbies - you insert the disc or flash drive, boot into it (this is non-trivial, but booting a Windows DVD would be non-trivial as well) and can use the system right away (unless you have unsupported hardware, of course, but finding supported hardware isn't difficult). To install you simply click install and it works. The idea that GNU/Linux is difficult to use is nothing but a myth.

Open source can go fuck itself. Free software is where it's at.

Re:SImple really...

[unixisc]

This is pure hogwash. First of all, Ubuntu, or Mint, or the dozens of distros are not recognized by GNU as legit; instead, what is endorsed are distros like Trisquel, Dyne:bolic, gNewSense and some others that nobody outside the FSF has heard of. Secondly, while it's true that Linux distros have been made that boot automatically and so on, very often, this plug & play functionality is b'cos they have binary blobs - something that's hated by the FSF guys. OSI doesn't have an issue w/ them, but FSF does. That's why one is more likely to find holes in those Linux-libre distros than in the standard Linux distros. Heck, even Debian, recognizing that there are times that un-liberated software is needed, provides those separately from its liberated software for those who are not that uptight about this purity, and guess what? Debian too doesn't have the endorsement of the FSF.

Open source is more accommodating of such deviations than Free Software, and that is why most businesses are more receptive to it.

Re:SImple really...

[Anonymous Coward]

What if your binary blob becomes incomaptible with the new API? What if you have ATI HD 3000, and ATI doesn't want to support that?
Have you ever thought of the future?
FSF is doing a great thing, promoting freedom. If they wouldn't be where they are, and they have allowed all sort of blobs for
for the sake of "I don't want to upset you, o mighty company" and other thing the OSI aproves, the world would be a worse place.

I'm using blobs too, heck, I'm even using the proprietary ATI drivers. But I'm supporting the FSF, and I wish them all the luck in the world.
I have no idea why are you hating someone is working for your good, guys. I just look at this, and wonder.

Re:SImple really...

[unixisc]

Aha!!! Here is the problem! Why would a new API not be backward compatible? The only reason is to accommodate the FSF's insistence that all software be liberated. Not everybody is comfortable w/ liberating their software, but why should a customer who likes their software - or hardware - be punished b'cos of that? Binary blobs are again a win-win situation for both vendor and customers, since the latter gets to use the thing, and former gets to sell it. Why should the former be forced to publish their specs if there are either business or other reasons for not doing it? If a vendor and a customer like a particular solution, who is any third party to dictate whether that solution is good enough or not?

This incompatible by design philosophy is also the reason that old software doesn't work on newer distros. On top of everything, there are several combinations of kernel versions, library versions, compiler versions and the like which make even FOSS tough to work w/, since one can't freely mix and match, due to incompatibilities that already exist. Things like drivers should be a write-once, forget about it deal. It's not that way in Linux. In Windows, the only time there has been a disruption has been when the very base of the OS has changed, like going from Windows ME to Windows 2000, or XP to Vista (since the latter was a migration from a win32 to a win64 OS). Allowing things like blogs also forces some discipline w/ OS makers, and forces them to maintain backwards compatibility.

The FSF is not a live-and-let-live organization - their whole philosophy is about disrupting the businesses of others by encouraging things like boycotts and the like. That's not the deal w/ the OSI. Otherwise, I'd have had no problems w/ them. Maybe the organization should become more independent of RMS, for starters - I wonder whether the rest of their membership are really as fanatical as he is?

Just for Fun

[tuppe666]

Microsoft Mission Statement (http://www.microsoft.com/about/en/us/default.aspx) - "At Microsoft our mission and values are to help people and businesses realise their full potential." their values are more interesting "As a company, and as individuals, we value integrity, honesty, openness, personal excellence, constructive self-criticism, continual self-improvement, and mutual respect. We are committed to our customers and partners and have a passion for technology. We take on big challenges, and pride ourselves on seeing them through. We hold ourselves accountable to our customers, shareholders, partners, and employees by honoring our commitments, providing results, and striving for the highest quality."...they haven't looked at those for a while.

Apples Mission Statement (http://investor.apple.com/faq.cfm?FaqSetID=6) - "Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad." - Seriously Apple!! that is less of a mission statement and more of a list of products.

flexibility

[RedHackTea]

The one great attribute (besides being free & open) about F/OSS is flexibility. Don't like this distro/program/script? Use this one. Like this distro/program/script but not feature X? Use a forked version with alternate feature Y, install alternate feature Z, or hack it up yourself. Don't like the license being BSD-like? Find one that uses the GPL, request for someone to write a new version (or for the author to change licenses), or again hack up your own.

Creating one umbrella foundation sounds good on paper, but how to make it flexible? And how do you guarantee there won't be corruption? We (humans) have spent years on philosophy, politics, etc., and there is always a little corruption. The problem is that corruption trickles down. If there's a break in the main foundation of the umbrella, then you might as well throw it away. Do we really want to risk this? And is it even possible to get everyone to agree?

It could work, and there are good intentions here, so perhaps I'm just being selfish? But for me personally, when I write open source code I don't want standards forced upon me. I want the freedom to write my code like I want, put my braces/brackets/whatever where I want to put them, name my program with f***ed up acronyms, and I don't want to be part of corporation-like practices when I "code for fun." I want individuality, and I want that from others too. I want unrestricted creativity and intelligence without being delayed and distracted by yet another "standard." And, I may be wrong, but I think that's some of the roots of the original F/OSS.

It just depends on what this umbrella foundation is supposed to do. From reading the article, it sounds like it's just to pool money and create documents about legality in different countries? This doesn't really sound like a foundation to me; you could just make a small website for this and ask people to post best-practices documents and for donations. I think there needs to more details about what this "umbrella foundation" is actually for.

One Foundation to rule them all, One Foundation to code them,
One Foundation to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

Make Open Source win-win

[unixisc]

For starters, Open Source organizations (I'm not including the FSF in this, since they themselves deny that they are one) should abandon all support for 'free' software - be it speech or beer - and state that they are only about ensuring that source code always accompanies binary code. In other words, say nothing about re-distribution rights, and allow Open Source licenses to disallow re-distribution if the software writers choose.

This way, the advantages of Open Source software will always be there w/ ISVs, w/o forcing them to swallow poison pills, such as allowing re-distribution and thereby struggle to discover a profitable business model. The vendors can continue to sell their software, maybe even to a larger market, since customers that have the expertize to modify them might buy it even if it doesn't do everything they need, assuming that they can design in their requirements. Customers can rest easy knowing that a vendor can neither force them to buy a future upgrade (a la a Microsoft or an HP) nor would their going out of business force them to search for newer solutions. This way, open source software will be a win-win proposition for business: ISVs can sell their software w/o being afraid of it being re-distributed to those who might otherwise buy it from them, while customers can buy the software comfortable that since they have the source code, they can have their IT departments make whatever modifications are needed to customize it for their specific requirements, and not hold them hostage to upgrade plans.

The current 'software freedom' movement is a lose-win proposition - lose for ISVs, and win for end-users. But in the long term, like Stephen Covey pointed out, lose-win or win-lose solutions ultimately attain equilibrium in a lose-lose state. Which in fact has been the story of most GPL software business to date. Open source programs can lose the 'lose' element here by jettisoning the 'help your neighbor' philosophy and instead make it completely a win-win proposal for software vendors by eliminating that risk of their not recouping the cost of development b'cos some people, who would otherwise have bought it, got it for free from somewhere else.

Re:Make Open Source win-win

[YurB]

This shows me that RMS was right: open source is too lose term. 100 businesses making similar modifications to the source code of a single program on their own, fixing the same bugs, adding the same features is a waste of time. Also they may begin suing each other eventually. Libre Software is all about cooperation, and source availability is just a technical requirement for that.

Re:Make Open Source win-win

[unixisc]

Fixing bugs is just one aspect of it, and usually something that the original vendor would want to do. But there are a lot of other things that individual customers may want, but which the vendor may not be interested in b'cos there ain't many other customers interested in it. For instance, let's say an ISV makes a program that helps a company manage its finances. One customer, which is located both domestically and offshore, would like some features that helps it transact business not only according to domestic, but also foreign tax laws. The vendor has limited employees and can't/doesn't want to explore the latter. In the model that I suggested, their customer can just go ahead w/ it, implement it in-house and use it, w/o worrying about support.

As FreeBSD has shown, when a company is making modifications that others may be interested in and that the vendor may be willing to own and maintain, they are only too happy to send those modifications to be merged upstream. That's what Juniper has done in FBSD. But other than that, when Juniper wants to add modifications to FBSD that it can then use in its routers, they do it, and the FBSD foundation has nothing to say to them, and is only too happy to let them mind their own business. OSI too doesn't care.

Cooperation is a fine idea, but forced cooperation is not cooperation. What's more, the basic question out there is whether software developers have the right to earn a living simply by selling software, and not having to worry about services and those aspects. RMS' answer to that question is practically no. Their current choices are to either go proprietary, thereby denying themselves the advantages of open source, or go open source, and be put at a disadvantage in that they can't restrict redistribution of their software. My above idea would pick a sweet spot that allows them to benefit from the advantages of open source, while not having to suffer the disadvantages. That way, people who simply want to make & sell software can do that being forced to allow their customers to become their competitors.

Displacing Microsoft in the Workplace

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who spent the last 20 odd years coding C# NET / C++ COM among other things, I've recently become disillusioned with the MS nosedive as a dev platform.
I am exploring open source alternatives, learning Ubuntu, Apache, GNU tools, Google App Engine, Clojure, etc.
Now that MS has abandoned the desktop (& stagnated NET) with its Win8 disaster, Its no longer "developers, developers, developers" - it is now a "devices & services" company. Their problem with this is that they have completely lost to Android on the device front, and on the cloud services front, people are mainly interested in VM hosting not PAAS - so they are just another 2nd rate host provider. The only thing going for them is their massive workplace install base, which is rapidly ossifying into legacy tech.

So, what is stopping Linux penetrating the corporate market? Companies dont like paying MS license costs. here's my insider's take:
1) people (both LOB dev poohbahs / fanboys & office workers) are dumb, lazy to learn new things, resistant to change
2) people are unaware of the alternatives - joe shmoe does not know that you can use Google Drive for free instead of paying exorbitant license fees.
3) there is no hand-holding guidance for IT win admin bob to migrate his platform away from windows / office, or marketing materials to help convince his manager that this is the path to take.
4) retraining is expensive & disruptive.
5) A lot of in-house info systems are built on an underlying MS infrastructure: SQL Server, ShitePoint etc - there is no cheap migration path here.

So what is need is :
1) market awareness - an intense & prolonged marketing campaign regarding replacing windows & office
2) training material
3) migration guidance
4) migration tools

I was there when IBM went from hero to zero in 1992 with OS/2, & saw Digital VAX die in the 90s. Paradigms shift & change can happen fast.

Open sounrce vs free software

[YurB]

It would be great if Free Software Foundation and OpenSource Initiative worked together to minimize the differences and together support the critical projects like a free/open source Skype replacement.

P.S. I personally would be very happy to see the term "Libre Software" to become the common denominator. Open source sounds cool and everyone knows it, but the name only says the source has to be open, that's only a part of what we all mean by it, and FSF is opposing it. Free software, on the other hand, is a little ambiguous in the meaning of the word 'free'. Also I don't like that FSF only says a system is free if it doesn't provide tools to install non-free software, and thus excludes Debian. User must be free to make the choise on his own (oh I mean her own:), while understanding the risks.

Re:Open sounrce vs free software

[Rockoon]

"What we actually mean by 'Free' is this set of restrictions on freedom.."

The only free source code and/or software is Public Domain.

Re:Open sounrce vs free software

[Anonymous Coward]

The only free source code and/or software is Public Domain.

The public domain gives developers the freedom to restrict others' freedom. Licenses like the GPL guarantee the freedom can't be taken away.

Re:Open sounrce vs free software

[Rockoon]

The public domain gives developers the freedom to restrict others' freedom.

Its impossible for my use of the Public Domain to take away your freedom to also use the Public Domain.

Licenses like the GPL guarantee the freedom can't be taken away.

That thing that you are calling freedom, isn't. Freedom is not a contract with obligations.

Re:Open sounrce vs free software

[kthreadd]

The public domain gives developers the freedom to restrict others' freedom. Licenses like the GPL guarantee the freedom can't be taken away.

And it won't as long as you have your copy. GPL merely restricts the existence of non-free copies. Code can be copied, which means that just because someone uses a copy in a non-free way doesn't mean that your free copy is now somehow also non-free. It doesn't matter if it's GPL or permissive, freedom isn't just magically taken away.

Re:Open sounrce vs free software

[vurian]

Where I live "public domain" does not exist. The concept has no legal meaning over here.

Re:Open sounrce vs free software

[Anonymous Coward]

That thing that you are calling freedom, isn't. Freedom is not a contract with obligations.

Contrarily, freedom is exactly a contract with obligations. To be free from something, there must be a background against which that freedom has meaning. In other words, whenever someone says something is free, we have to ask 2 questions:

1) Freedom for whom?

2) Freedom to do what?

I can easily talk about the freedom to exploit one's user base, or the freedom to steal. The thing is, sometimes one freedom limits another freedom. In those cases, we don't choose between freedom and tyranny. Instead, we choose which freedom is most important to society. Developers using the GPL decided that their own freedom to benefit from their software trumps others' freedom to benefit from their software.

Re:Open sounrce vs free software

[Anonymous Coward]

Its impossible for my use of the Public Domain to take away your freedom to also use the Public Domain.

You haven't case matched on all possible types. Your argument is equivalent to proving "for all numbers x, x+0=0" by demonstrating the statement is true in the x=0 case. This is because "Freedom to use the public domain" is not the only type of freedom.

For example: It is possible for your refusal to use the public domain to take away from my freedom to use the public domain.

Some freedoms necessarily limit other freedoms. In such cases, we have to choose what type of society we value. GPL develops value sharing over personal profit.

Re:Open sounrce vs free software

[Rockoon]

For example: It is possible for your refusal to use the public domain to take away from my freedom to use the public domain.

Examples come with things called examples. You clearly couldnt provide one.

Re:Open sounrce vs free software

[booch]

Licenses like the GPL guarantee the freedom can't be taken away.

That thing that you are calling freedom, isn't. Freedom is not a contract with obligations.

So your claim then is that a society that allows the freedom to own slaves is more free than a society that disallows slavery?

Re:Open sounrce vs free software

[booch]

How about the term "Free Source"? It allows the FSF to continue having the word "free" as in freedom. And it allows the OSI to still focus on the source code. And realistically, the source code really is the only "free as in beer" portion. Additionally, it solves the problem that the OSI has, in that "open source" already has a meaning in the intelligence community, causing the term to not be trademarkable.

Re:Open sounrce vs free software

[Rockoon]

Nice try reaching for the emotional card.

Re:Open sounrce vs free software

[Anonymous Coward]

Forced freedom is not freedom.

It's like saying, "I know you don't want to have kids early in life, so I'm going to sterilize you to protect you from yourself".

Re:Open sounrce vs free software

[Bengie]

For example: It is possible for your refusal to use the public domain to take away from my freedom to use the public domain.

It is impossible to take from someone something that which they never had.

You've ventured into the RIAA's "lost sale" logic.

Would there be One Ring?

[Voline]

Cause that would be cool.

They need "UI experts".

[Alex Belits]

They should all hire some hipster UI company to ruin the remaining desktop environments and UI-heavy software with some moronic tablet-wannabe interface. After all, Windows 8 is selling so well, GNOME3 is welcomed by the users, and Unity did not hurt the popularity of Ubuntu at all!

Re:They need "UI experts".

[kthreadd]

I think that once GNOME 3 and maybe also Unity (I haven't looked too much at it) has been more fine tuned that users will actually like them more than the older GNOME 2 desktop. It's however unfortunate that GNOME 2 has been discontinued since while GNOME 3 is probably the right desktop for most users it's not the right desktop for all users. Sure Mate exists but the whole thing could have been handled so much more smoothly.

Re:They need "UI experts".

[Alex Belits]

No, the whole models of both are fatally flawed. GNOME 3 breaks all window managers except its own shell -- that kills any customization that is not done within that shell, and their shell sucks. Both Unity and Gnome break easy window switching and screen layout control -- that clearly identifies them as touch-only design, no matter what their authors thought.

Re:They need "UI experts".

[kthreadd]

Sure and that's why I said that they are not the desktop for everyone. I don't know much about Unity, but at least GNOME 3 will (when it's ready) be a good desktop for most users. I have seen a ton of people that previously would never touch Linux try GNOME 3 and say that this is the point where they could actually consider it as an alternative to Windows or OS X.

Now the bad thing that the GNOME developers really dropped the ball on was that GNOME 3 is not a good fit for those of us that have used Linux for many years now. We want t keep using GNOME 2, or whatever else we are using. For example we have a lot of users still on fvwm. So it would have been so much better if GNOME 2 and GNOME 3 had continued to live side by side. The fact that we have to rename a lot of things in Mate just to avoid name collisions is just ridiculous.

Open source foundations - what next?

[Anonymous Coward]

You already have various major projects tying up in Software in the Public Interest (the organisation behind Debian, amongst others) and SPI are prepared to talk and deal with OSI and the FSF. Many of the people involved in SPI and Debian are also luminaries in FSFE for those who prefer to deal with FSFE. Do we need much more?

Re:Open source foundations - what next?

[unixisc]

From what I understand, Debian wasn't previously a member of OSI, but joined them not too long ago. I guess being tarred by the FSF for not being free enough (by providing separately the option of un-liberated software for those who wanted them) probably made them decide that they're better off w/ an open-source certification as well, in addition to the Debian Free Software Guidelines.

OSI

[booch]

Seems like that would be a good role for the Open Software Initiative.