[buug] Seek the Wisdom Of Our Elder Geeks

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Zeke Krahlin (ezekielk at goct.net):

> Another blog entry inspired by my association with some excellent  
> folks. Enjoy!
> 
> http://zekeblog.wordpress.com/2010/03/18/seek-the-wisdom-of-our-elder-geeks/

Zeke, I'm always unsure, when you provide a link to a new blog essay,
whether you're seeking comment or not.  You might, for all I know, just
be carrying out personal expression within your own space.  What follows
is under the assumption that you were hoping for public comment.

   I think what needs to be acknowledged, is Open Source's emergence
   from an earlier movement that was largely composed of renegade,
   left-wing, anti-establishment types.

I know a lot of those people. E.g., Richard Stallman's a friend of mine.
I wouldn't have a clue about the politics of more than one or two of
them, but they don't strike me as "renegade, left-wing,
anti-establishment types".  You take your cited statement as given, i.e.,
you don't bother to substantiate it, except to link to a rather fuzzy
Wikipedia article that doesn't support your notion.  So, no, that simply
is not correct, let alone "needing to be acknowledged".

And there's a broader point:  The free software movement has always been
purely and simply about _software freedom_.  You want to tie it to a
particular brand of broader politics, but claiming that is so doesn't
make it so:

   ...the original ideals of the FSF [include] distaste towards the
   status quo, which of course includes the corporate world -- as 
   well as Republicans, Libertarians, and other right-leaning types.

Well, no.  The concerns of FSF have always been orthogonal to all that,
and FSF has been "anti-corporate" only to the extent that corporations'
practices have often been among the primary obstacles to software
freedom.

   And from what I've just studied regarding this history, Open Source
   Software (OSS) established itself as separate from Free Software
   (FS), to assert a growing membership of business entrepreneurs and
   corporate interest.

That is approximately correct, although it would be more accurate to 
say, instead of "established itself as separate from free software",
that open source was established as a parallel marketing effort for the
same code and licensing, aiming to build on the success of the 1998
success at Netscape Communications, Inc. by promoting free software's 
advantages to business.[0]

However, you've misstated the nature of Richard's complaint about OSI.
Richard (and FSF) doesn't object in the least to "growing membership of
business entrepreneurs and corporate interest".  To the contrary,
Richard and FSF are delighted at anyone, portions of the corporate world
included, adopting free software.  Richard's gripe is that he thinks OSI
doesn't talk about freedom enough; that it is so focussed on pragmatic 
advantage that it fails to promote the reason why free software matters
and doesn't ultimately care about freedom at all.

(Richard is also personally pissed off -- with some considerable
justification -- at the fact that his and FSF's vital roles have tended
to get airbrushed out of history, and I rather suspect that a lot of his
animosity towards OSI and open source owes to that unfortunate fact.)

Now that we've seen eleven years of OSI history, I would personally say
that Richard's concern has lacked foundation.  OSI continues to strongly
enforce and defend the Open Source Definition to the best of its limited
ability, and the software territory described by the two groups'
semantic map, OSD and Richard's "four freedoms essay" (lately restyled
as the "Free Software Definition") continue to be the same with only
trivial and meaningless differences.[1]

I consider myself a longtime member of both the open source and free
software camps (a user and mentor but not advocate[2]), and that that is
the only logical stance given that both groups seek the exact same
result.  At the end of the day, after the rhetoric fades in the wind,
it's fundamentally all about code and licensing, licensing and code.

So, be anti-corporate, left-wing, and anti-establishment[3] if that
makes you happy -- hey, you're in Berkeley, after all -- but don't claim
that the Elder Geeks predominantly share your political and economic 
views, as I greatly doubt that is so.  


[0] Ego alert:  An article of mine covers this.  See:
http://www.itworld.com/print/36449

[1] There is no longer any software under ASPL 1.0, so FSF's differnce
of view about it with OSI no longer matters.

[2] http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/12/26/1040511127721.html