Wow.......
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.
There's been no plebiscite, of course. However, web content
analyses and surveys of the licenses used at sites like
SourceForge and ibiblio paint a pretty consistent picture of
who developers consider the authorities on licensing and IPR
best practice. Those authorities are FSF and OSI.
Perhaps what you neglect is overlooked closed mindedness. It appears
these organizations are the refuge of the developers who wish to force their
narrow minded view of software right and wrong upon the masses. Many of the
greatest contributions to software are the product of truly free software.
Software with no demands as to it's further use. It seems to me incredibly
refreshing that the IETF is able to step back and realize that both camps
are just that, sides of an argument. The IETF freely distributes its
documents and insists on nothing but disclosure of limitations, as opposed
to demanding that anything be a certain way. If you give something with
strings attached it is NOT giving, but a transaction, and therefore NOT
free.
I find it interesting that you would reference surveys of licenses
on sites(2) as justification for any claim beyond what it is. What you say
is analagous to a survey that says devout christians vote republican being
applied to the population as a whole, and wreaks of politics. It seems you
have no notion of the law of large numbers and have NO formal concept of
population sampling theory, otherwise you wouldn't make egregious claims of
grasping, much less representing the open source developer community as a
whole (I'll not mention at all my distaste for your claim of being able to
represent myself personally). Once again it's very nice to see the IETF say
that people are just that, people. Clearly your desire to be an 800 pound
gorilla and carry the respect of more than 1 person is directly at odds with
accepted IETF philosophy, and I don't need contrived statistcs to make that
claim, because it's in an RFC that was reached by consensus. Do you think
your claims could make it through the same rigorous screening process? Could
we get an RFC titled "Eric Raymond Represents Open source community to IETF"
passed? Or even "FSF and OSI represent defacto Open Source Beliefs"? I think
not, so perhaps this is the wrong forum to try to make such claims.
While I respect your desire that I not represent you (or
claim to), the reality is that people outside our community
are generally going to behave as if I do. OSI as an
organization, and I as an individual, had to build that
reputation in order to represent *anybody* effectively, let
alone the large number of developers that want us to.
And this was a job that needed doing, so I won't apologize
for taking it on.
I do in fact believe I have your best interests at heart;
this is a safe thing for me to believe, because I have no
actual power over you.
I do not require that you trust me, though that would be
nice. Many people do trust me and don't seem to have been
harmed by it.
You're a typical member of the 5%, in that what bothers you
is not policies or the effects of what we do, but our implied
claim to represent you. I do not presume to criticize your
position, but neither am I going to abandon my duty to
hackers who *do* want OSI to represent them on any single
refusenik's say-so.
Perhaps the desire is that you comment on your reality and leave
others' reality to them. Perhaps what's lacking is a clear definition of
respect.
Do you think you represent acadamia? You seem to ignore the
underpinnings of open source which came from the scientific ideology of peer
review and sharing for the good and knowledge of all. How odd that acadamia
often chooeses BSD style licenses. How odd that folks in acadamia value
sharing over evangalizing open source on everybody.
Do you think you represent hardware makers that write open source
products to aid developers and induce hardware sales?
Do you think you represent Folks who work at proprietary sofware
companies by day, and come home to donate their time to the open source
community
If you truly believe that you have my best interests at heart and
have the right to represent ME than there's probably nothing anyone can do
to shake that. I however will happily tell you otherwise, and than continue
to read down this discussion curiously to see how many people jump to your
banner, and how many people respond as I did. As for my self, hopefully, I
came forward with some thought provoking logic and ideas that people who
consider themselves intellectuals can analyze and grow from. I DO NOT, as
you demonstrate, hope to achieve my ends through politiking, propaganda,
intimidation, and unvalidated claims. To me all it seems you're doing is
putting a lot of effort into margnializing everyone else to achieve your
ends in a forum where you'll probably succeed at little else than
marginalizing yourself. From what I've read it seems that neither the
greater good nor progress even come close to mattering compared to your
"duty to hackers". Great.
Tom
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