From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr(_at_)thyrsus(_dot_)com>
Your two people to go to on this would be RMS (representing the FSF)
or me (representing the OSI); between us I believe we can speak for
over 95% of the community.
I hate it when elected politicans presume to speak for me. I will not
sit quietly and let self-appointed individuals try the same. *DO NOT*
tell me to my face that you are negotiating on my behalf or even just
for 95% of the other people who write or have written software that
might be called "open" by virtue of being freely redistributable and
in use by lots of people until you can can point to the results of a
real plebiscite. Even then, you won't be speaking for me until I
personally and explicitly say so.
If you and Mr. Stallman want to speak for your respective organizations,
then peachy. If you want to speak based on what you consider your own
great experience and deep thoughts on the issues, then that's also
good. If you want to pretend that you speak for me out of my earshot,
then I'll do my best to not hear. Just don't stand in front of me
telling me that you have my best interests at heart and that I must
trust you.
It's been many years since I came to expect such behavior from the
FSF. I had a better image of/delusions about the OSI. I guess I
should know better. Just as the self-named Internet Society attracts
people far more interested in politics and telling me how I should
view the Internet than designing, implementing, deploying, and maintaining
what I think of as network stuff, any self-described open software
organization will be run by people telling me whether I'm really writing
free code and where my best interests really lie.
The appareance of such stuff in proximity to the IETF administrative
reoganization...uh...negotiations is not really irony. Such things
tend to attract each other.
Vernon Schryver vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com
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