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Interviews: Ask a Question To Christine Peterson, the Nanotech Expert Who Coined the Term 'Open Source'
Christine Peterson is a long-time futurist who co-founded the nanotech advocacy group the Foresight Institute in 1986. One of her favorite tasks has been contacting the winners of the institute's annual Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology, but she also coined the term "Open Source software" for that famous promotion strategy meeting in 1998. Now Christine's agreed to answer questions from Slashdot readers. We'll pick the very best questions and forward them along for answers.
Interestingly, Christine was also on the Editorial Advisory Board of NASA's Nanotech Briefs, and on the state of California's nanotechnology task force. Her tech talks at conferences include "Life Extension for Geeks" at Gnomedex and "Preparing for Bizarreness: Open Source Physical Security" at the 2007 Singularity Summit. Another talk argues that the nanotech revolution will be like the information revolution, except that "Instead of with bits, we should do it with atoms," allowing molecule-sized machines that can kill cancer and repair DNA. Her most recent publication is "Cyber, Nano, and AGI RIsks: Decentralized Approaches to Reducing Risks." Christine graduated from MIT with a bachelors in chemistry.
So leave your best questions in the comments. (Ask as many questions as you'd like, but please, one per comment.) We'll pick the very best questions and forward them along for answers.
Interestingly, Christine was also on the Editorial Advisory Board of NASA's Nanotech Briefs, and on the state of California's nanotechnology task force. Her tech talks at conferences include "Life Extension for Geeks" at Gnomedex and "Preparing for Bizarreness: Open Source Physical Security" at the 2007 Singularity Summit. Another talk argues that the nanotech revolution will be like the information revolution, except that "Instead of with bits, we should do it with atoms," allowing molecule-sized machines that can kill cancer and repair DNA. Her most recent publication is "Cyber, Nano, and AGI RIsks: Decentralized Approaches to Reducing Risks." Christine graduated from MIT with a bachelors in chemistry.
So leave your best questions in the comments. (Ask as many questions as you'd like, but please, one per comment.) We'll pick the very best questions and forward them along for answers.
I have proven conclusively that you did not coin the term "Open Source" as pertains to software; not even the term Open Source Software is your creation. Ransom Love's corporation Caldera (which was later taken over by others, becoming The SCO Group) was actually using the phrase in press releases in 1995, but I (and others) who were in the scene at the time remember well using the phrase before Caldera did so. So why do you continue making these false claims? Is it simply for your own self-aggrandizement, or are you warming up for the OSI to make a run at copyrighting the phrase?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You're lying. You've never proven this statement -- but you repeat it over and over because you want it to be true. And when pushed you pull out [one] press release from 1996 about proprietary software where the code was made viewable-but-not-usable.
I've provided literally exactly as much proof for this statement as Christine Peterson has provided for her claims that she coined the phrase. Besides Lyle Ball (CEO of Netendeavor, formerly of Caldera) who was willing to publicly support my claim, others here on Slashdot have come forward to support me. We were using the phrase "Open Source" to describe software whose source you could get at and compile for yourself by the mid nineties.
Great! So then we agree that Caldera's code was proprietary/non-modifiable/no distribution allowed. But Martin prefers hiding behind weasly phrases like "clearly used...in the sense which I describe." (That "sense" being proprietary/non-modifiable/no distribution code.) Whoopee. It's not something to be proud of.
This is not about pride, for me at least. This is about facts, which are something I thought geeks cared about. Silly me.
Right, because you were "chumming" with your friends at SCO. We all get that you want to hurt the Open Source Initiative -- but to do it, you're making shit up.
My friends from SCO predate the SCO v. Linux SNAFU by many years. In fact, they predate Linux. I know quite a number of them, few of whom I will name here because I have not discussed that with them. I will stick only to public information. I knew these people because we moved in the same social circles — namely, the scruz geek community which grew up around UCSC. I came into it through BBSing; local BBS lists included two public-access SCO systems run by some of these employees, ex-employees, and friends. One of them was gorn (the planet gorn) which was a 386 running SCO Xenix. Another was deeptht (deep thought) which ran SCO Unix. Through these connections I got my hands on a trial copy of Xenix 286, which I ran on my own computer (inkpot) which was a 286@6MHz with 1MB RAM and a 40MB RLL disk. inkpot ran as a UUCP node hung off of deeptht for some years. Consequently, I can thank SCO (and friends at SCO) for introducing me to the world of UNIX and Unixlikes.
Try to understand that's not "The SCO Group", but the real Santa Cruz Operation. Though amusingly, while I was acting as the admin at circus.com (formerly the Marshmallow Peanut Circus) we ran Caldera Network Desktop on IIRC a Compaq 486 with 16MB RAM. One of my housemates brought both the hardware and the software home one day from work, and I installed it. Circus.com had formerly been running on one of the other local geeks' '040 NeXT Turbo slab. We had an entire class C (165.227.17) connected through scruznet on a dedicated 28.8k SLIP using Hayes Accura modems. (28.8kbps was the last symmetric modem speed...)
Please tell me which parts of this you believe I am making up. Be specific. Follow this up with an explanation as to why I'm not entitled to the opinion that Open Source and Free Software are not the same thing. The user must be entitled to the source code, and must be protected from workarounds which prevent them from using the source code.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Actually the whole point of Free Software is that you can use, modify it and redistribute it with the rights still intact. The term "Open Source" has many meanings.
Thank you for understanding this. Free Software and Open Source are fundamentally different things, and I believe that the OSI's ongoing attempts to conflate them when they know better are harmful to users both in the short and the long term. They like to claim that Open Source is sufficient, but that's simply doing the will of corporations rather than actually serving the needs of users. Settling for Open Source when what users need is Free Software is the white flag of surrender. We need integrity and courage, not lies and cowardice. We can't win by giving up.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"