Nope, I don't believe this. Linus is not that kind of person - he's an honest, ethical guy who cares most about Linux being the best-written operating system. He's not a business person, and he doesn't work for a Linux company.
And I'm not writing off the chance of Solaris, Java, etc., going fully Open Source. It's not really in Sun's own best interest to hold back, they'll eventually realize that.
Red Hat has a history of publishing source, heeding free software licenses, and being nice to the developer community. Let's assume they will continue to do that, and will thus publish their internationalization work so that others can make use of it in competing products. What, then, do we have to lose from this? Not much, as far as I can tell.
If we go beyond the things that probably aren't going to go wrong, we have one fear - that Red Hat may achieve name recognition and brand loyalty elsewhere, as it has in the U.S.
I think the point you are missing is that sun is asking for Community participation as there is with Linux, but they are not giving the community the same quid-pro-quo that they get with real Open Source software. So, people of that community have a right to say:
1. I am not going to work on this because I don't think the license offers us a good deal, and I don't think you should work on it either.
2. Hey, you out there who don't understand about Open Source but have been hearing about it! We want you to know this isn't the real thing!
The only reall difference between SCSL and GPL in this instance is that with the GPL you can go your own way and distribute it anyway [if Linus doesn't like your change].
I can't stress how important a difference that is. The right to change software without someone's approval can be abbreviated to "the right to change it", period. For Sun, it's a control thing - they can't stand the thought that Microsoft might participate in Open Source and make its own changes. This even though everyone else would have access to MS's changes in that case and could clone the good ones.
There's also the matter of circumvention. If I don't like what Red Hat is doing with some GPL software, I can circumvent them and distribute my own version, which I continually develop and for which Red Hat gets no money. When you work on SCSL software, you're essentially working for Sun - paycheck or none.
Sun sells hardware. They can afford for their software to be Open Source if they just keep making good hardware. They are going to control-freak themselves right out of the market if they keep on this course.
The president of the Internet Press Guild tells me that they did use "Open Source" at the StarOffice press conference, and then they stopped using it soon afterward. He was there and seems to be a trustworthy person.
there has to be a clearly defined and industry accepted meaning of open source
I'm trying to figure out if you simply don't know that it exists, or if you reject it. There is an Open Source Definition that was announced, by yours truly, in the same announcement in which Open Source was announced. Before then the only phrase used to refer to this stuff was Free Software. The definition is on the opensource.org web site. It has broad industry acceptance.
But the old Qt license was "free but not free enough" too, so I am seeing a different reaction to a similar situation. I agree that Sun is attempting to blur the boundary between Open Source and non-Open-Source.
Honest proprietary software that doesn't represent itself as something it isn't and doesn't use strategies that block the creation of an Open Source equivalent is nicer than non-Open-Source software representing itself as Open Source.
Actually, I'm trying to get to have an argument with Bill Joy. There's someone who knows him and is trying to arrange that. Scott McNeally can come after Bill Joy.
The short answer is that it is a better (faster, less buggy, more trustable) way to develop software. People can make money off of services, hardware, etc., rather than directly from sales of proprietary software, so they do that.
the slashdot community is not so huge that they can dictate what it means for something to be 'open source'
The Open Source community has broadly accepted the Open Source definition, and we really don't like people trying to re-define Open Source for their own selfish purposes. As a community, we are big enough to give Sun a real problem in the market as their customers jump ship to Linux en masse. The SCSL is a band-aid that might reduce the hemmorage of users, but won't cure it. Sun needs to get over its Microsoft paranoia - the only reason for the SCSL is to keep Microsoft from stealing the show.
by comparison, the GPL restricts companies from developing software based on GPL stuff and selling it
No, it doesn't.
What the GPL does is enforce a quid-pro-quo. Take the example of my Electric Fence malloc() debugger. I give the product and source code away to anyone who asks, and I allow people to sell it. If you want to develop something based on it without paying me, you must give the source code away to anyone who asks, and you must allow people to sell it. If you want to do it under a commercial license without giving it away or giving people source code, you give me some money and I give you another license than the GPL.
What you are looking for is something more one-sided, where I give the software away, but someone else can take it, not give me any money, add their own changes, and then sell the result without giving me back the changes or giving anyone the source code. As the original author, what possible reason would I have for making myself someone's dupe - a sort of unpaid employee who gets no benefits - that way?
In general, free software authors write free software so that there will be more free software. They aren't interested in facilitating non-free software unless there is some obvious benefit to free software or themselves, and I can't think of why they should be interested in that.
Remember the Linus of the bad old days when Qt had a non-OSD-compliant license? The Linus who said "whoever writes the code gets to make the license" and seemed to be mostly unconcerned regarding whether or not some Linux component would be Free Software or not?
Well, I like today's Linus a lot more than the old one.
Am I alone in percieving a change? Would anyone like to speculate on what brought it about?
What it was meant to say was "We think a leader acted too soon on a policy decision, we can't stand behind it, and we want it changed." It is clear that it was not read that way, but heck, I can't think of a better way to have said it and it needed to be said. I am at a loss here. Sometimes it will be necessary to say "you goofed" in public. I frankly do not believe I could have been any gentler about it. Give me some guidance here, folks. How would you have written it?
Yes, it is no doubt a personal matter. I just want people to know that I am not trying to hold a grudge and I am not trying to prolong the issue. Any time Eric wants to talk it out, I am ready, and I will continue to originate attempts to talk it out when I see him.
Well, at LinuxWorld, I offered to participate in a Niven-style duel* to satisfy the demands of honor, knowing full well that Eric knows how to aim and I don't. He didn't go for it. I think he understands that it's necessary for him to accept criticism now, but he's not ready to forgive me for offering that criticism. Waiting is.
* Niven-style duel: Champagne corks ejected from the bottles at 10 feet, eye-protection required.
Eric's still upset about my criticism of the Apple license. I'm glad that Apple wasn't as upset - they incorporated all of my suggestions into the next version of their license. It's interesting that Eric's job for VA is to question them and to stop bad ideas before they go too far, but he won't accept someone doing the same thing for him. Public argument and criticism are the ways our community finds its direction. They should be encouraged, not resented.
I worked with IBM folks on the latest version of their Open Source license. They are serious about Open Source, they made the effort to comply with the OSD, and they were really nice and easy people to work with.
Free information isn't inconsistent with making money, though, at least until you can copy food as easily as software. I worked with IBM on the latest version of their Open Source licensing, and they were incredibly nice about it and easy to work with.
I surmise that exponential expansion can only be seen when you consider a large group of projects that are roughly the offspring of one project. The first successful projects inspire other related projects, which form their own teams, which inspire more related projects, and there would be your exponential growth. So, you might consider Apache and several other web servers as children of the NCSA server, and Zope, PHP, etc., as a child of Apache, etc. The relationships will be very rough, don't flame me because you don't think PHP is an offspring of Apache.
So, you might want to look at a few different trees, with root nodes like the formation of the GNU project, Linux, the Berkeley System Distribution, and the NCSA Web Server Project. I suspect you can make a case for exponential expansion that way.
Perhaps communication problems do contribute to our being oriented toward computers. Although I don't see myself in your description, I do have some motor brain damage that kept me from speaking clearly for a long time. But it never stopped me from speaking a lot - people just asked what country I came from because they couldn't figure out my "accent". Therapy made it better. But I'm sensitive enough to nonverbal cues. And so, of course, are lots of us. Thus, I fear that the "autism" argument is being over-applied.
OK. I percieve that there are some people out there with autism, ADHD, etc. I happen to have a little motor brain damage, not unlike Eric Raymond's. I've done better in therapy than he did. But I don't see my brain pathology in your description. I feel it's being over-applied.
Slashdot Mirror
And I'm not writing off the chance of Solaris, Java, etc., going fully Open Source. It's not really in Sun's own best interest to hold back, they'll eventually realize that.
Bruce
If we go beyond the things that probably aren't going to go wrong, we have one fear - that Red Hat may achieve name recognition and brand loyalty elsewhere, as it has in the U.S.
Pardon me if I don't throw a fit about this :-)
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce
I think the point you are missing is that sun is asking for Community participation as there is with Linux, but they are not giving the community the same quid-pro-quo that they get with real Open Source software. So, people of that community have a right to say:
1. I am not going to work on this because I don't think the license offers us a good deal, and I don't think you should work on it either.
2. Hey, you out there who don't understand about Open Source but have been hearing about it! We want you to know this isn't the real thing!
The only reall difference between SCSL and GPL in this instance is that with the GPL you can go your own way and distribute it anyway [if Linus doesn't like your change].
I can't stress how important a difference that is. The right to change software without someone's approval can be abbreviated to "the right to change it", period. For Sun, it's a control thing - they can't stand the thought that Microsoft might participate in Open Source and make its own changes. This even though everyone else would have access to MS's changes in that case and could clone the good ones.
There's also the matter of circumvention. If I don't like what Red Hat is doing with some GPL software, I can circumvent them and distribute my own version, which I continually develop and for which Red Hat gets no money. When you work on SCSL software, you're essentially working for Sun - paycheck or none.
Sun sells hardware. They can afford for their software to be Open Source if they just keep making good hardware. They are going to control-freak themselves right out of the market if they keep on this course.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce
I'm trying to figure out if you simply don't know that it exists, or if you reject it. There is an Open Source Definition that was announced, by yours truly, in the same announcement in which Open Source was announced. Before then the only phrase used to refer to this stuff was Free Software. The definition is on the opensource.org web site. It has broad industry acceptance.
Thanks
Bruce
Honest proprietary software that doesn't represent itself as something it isn't and doesn't use strategies that block the creation of an Open Source equivalent is nicer than non-Open-Source software representing itself as Open Source.
Actually, I'm trying to get to have an argument with Bill Joy. There's someone who knows him and is trying to arrange that. Scott McNeally can come after Bill Joy.
Thanks
Bruce
The short answer is that it is a better (faster, less buggy, more trustable) way to develop software. People can make money off of services, hardware, etc., rather than directly from sales of proprietary software, so they do that.
Bruce
The Open Source community has broadly accepted the Open Source definition, and we really don't like people trying to re-define Open Source for their own selfish purposes. As a community, we are big enough to give Sun a real problem in the market as their customers jump ship to Linux en masse. The SCSL is a band-aid that might reduce the hemmorage of users, but won't cure it. Sun needs to get over its Microsoft paranoia - the only reason for the SCSL is to keep Microsoft from stealing the show.
by comparison, the GPL restricts companies from developing software based on GPL stuff and selling it
No, it doesn't.
What the GPL does is enforce a quid-pro-quo. Take the example of my Electric Fence malloc() debugger. I give the product and source code away to anyone who asks, and I allow people to sell it. If you want to develop something based on it without paying me, you must give the source code away to anyone who asks, and you must allow people to sell it. If you want to do it under a commercial license without giving it away or giving people source code, you give me some money and I give you another license than the GPL.
What you are looking for is something more one-sided, where I give the software away, but someone else can take it, not give me any money, add their own changes, and then sell the result without giving me back the changes or giving anyone the source code. As the original author, what possible reason would I have for making myself someone's dupe - a sort of unpaid employee who gets no benefits - that way?
In general, free software authors write free software so that there will be more free software. They aren't interested in facilitating non-free software unless there is some obvious benefit to free software or themselves, and I can't think of why they should be interested in that.
Thanks
Bruce
Well, I like today's Linus a lot more than the old one.
Am I alone in percieving a change? Would anyone like to speculate on what brought it about?
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Leaving that board meant I was free to criticize rather than to be silenced. It's been a positive change.
Bruce
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
I criticised Apple's license and IBM's in public. Both responded positively. I think the public debate was essential in eliciting that response.
Certainly your criticism of RMS has been as bad as anything I've ever directed your way.
You dish it out, you've got to take it too.
Thanks
Bruce
* Niven-style duel: Champagne corks ejected from the bottles at 10 feet, eye-protection required.
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce Perens
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce Perens
So, you might want to look at a few different trees, with root nodes like the formation of the GNU project, Linux, the Berkeley System Distribution, and the NCSA Web Server Project. I suspect you can make a case for exponential expansion that way.
Thanks
Bruce Perens
Perhaps communication problems do contribute to our being oriented toward computers. Although I don't see myself in your description, I do have some motor brain damage that kept me from speaking clearly for a long time. But it never stopped me from speaking a lot - people just asked what country I came from because they couldn't figure out my "accent". Therapy made it better. But I'm sensitive enough to nonverbal cues. And so, of course, are lots of us. Thus, I fear that the "autism" argument is being over-applied.
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce