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Round 3 Of TAP Forum By ESR, Lessig, Et Al. 91

Posted by Hemos from the good-reading dept.
Iambic Pentametor writes "Back in April, Slashdot had a story covering the first two rounds of a forum at The American Prospect between Eric S. Raymond, Lawrence Lessig, Nathan Newman, Jeff A. Taylor, and Jonathan Band. The third round is here. ESR's latest is pretty inspiring and despite some squabbling, each of the combatants make some good points."
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Round 3 of TAP forum by ESR, Lessig, et. al. More

Round 3 of TAP forum by ESR, Lessig, et. al.

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  • Or is http://www.prospect.org/controversy/open_source/ a bad URL?

  • Yeah, but most Linux users will advocate OSS at the drop of a hat anyway. Some even do a good job and make a good argument. As for the coding part, lots of the kernel developers manage to code and hold down a full time job at the same time anyway. Even Linus did it. Maybe ESR does more than the people with full time jobs, but then so would the others if they didn't have a real job to goto :)
  • "We'll stampede to a new leader. But it could be months or years before the talking heads notice. It took them years to notice that we existed in the first place."

    I submit that this is a problem with media that has no true intrest or ties to the community it is reporting on/about. Even other groups have this problem, and I'm sure we won't be the first to deal with it.

    "Bad Mojo is right."

    Can I quote you on that? You know, for when I run for mouthpeice of the movement? Hehehe.

    Bad Mojo [rps.net]

  • Re:ESR's presumptuousness (Score:3)

    by Bad Mojo ( 12210 ) on Thursday June 22, 2000 @04:43AM (#984280)
    No, because chances are very good that what ESR says is what most hackers think. People like ESR and RMS don't get their ability to be heard from their own power, we attribute it to them.

    If you are going to be annoyed, go be annoyed at elected officials telling you what you think. Or get mad at the media for telling you what laws you break and what a horrible person you are as a hacker. Go be annoyed with society or something. But don't try to construct ESR as `the man'. Last I checked, ESR was viewed as typical hacker with ideas that lined up pretty well with a good many open source and free software people out there.

    When that changes, I'm sure the majority will finger some other willing soul to be a mouthpiece for the movement. Maybe even you.

    Bad Mojo [rps.net]
  • He's not just a self-appointed Katz-like "spokesman for the hackers".

    He's not just that, but he still is that. I cringe every time I see him say "my tribe" or "my kind". Yeesh. We are a group centered around one activity: coding and software. It pisses me off to listen to him speak in my name as he talks about antitrust law, just because we both write code.
  • Demagogery is the enemy of rational debate. We don't need no steekin' spokesperson!

    Well then, look at some of the software copyright & privacy laws that have been passed. Are they beneficial to you? If no one is going to speak out against it, who is? Most of the public is unconcerned or uninformed about software issues.

    Yeah, so one of the traits of hackers is supposed to be individualism. But at what cost?

  • "Co-opting the system" can mean policy too (Score:4)

    by inkydoo ( 202651 ) on Thursday June 22, 2000 @06:31AM (#984283)
    I think perhaps ESR and the others are not as far apart as they might imagine. In the third round, ESR states that "we [hackers] are very, very good at co-opting the system". What he doesn't seem to realize is that there are two entities in his statement, the co-opter and the system being co-opted.

    From my reading, I believe that what Lessig in particular is saying is that the system exists in the form of policy, and that system has already been co-opted by the Microsofts, MPAAs and other large corporate interests to pass things like UCITA and DMCA. Lessig seems to be suggesting that if we don't co-opt the policy process the way we've done in other areas, somebody else will, much to the open source movement's detriment.

    ESR seems to be arguing that we don't need no stinking system, because hackers are the real creators of the digital revolution. What he is ignoring is the fact that without a system, there is nothing to co-opt. For instance, if there had been no ARPA in 1969 with money to spend on a massive networking experiment and politicians nervous about mobile military communication, then it wouldn't have mattered how many hackers like JCR Liklider and Robert Taylor there were.

    PS. I also grow weary of ESR as my "tribe's" representative. We are too diverse a group of people for any one (or two) people to really represent our views. Otherwise slashdot wouldn't be as interesteing as it is.
  • Actually, this may be why ESR has his "Geeks with Guns" bent. "When they come for my router, they'll have to fight for it."

    Contract law can be something very good. Properly applied it could simplify some of the legal maze we've built - imagine if the labels on products were contracts - if the package of grits says it great for pouring down your pants, but when you try that ... - then the manufacture has broken the contract.

    Unfortunately, these days contract disputes tend to be won by the side with the most lawyers, and consumers are consumers, not partners in a contract.

  • The Declaration of Independence "holds these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." Technocracy by hackers is not in good faith as regards the intents of our Founding Fathers, as it elevates hackers above the status of equality afforded by U.S. law.

    The U.S. is a republican democracy, not a hacker oligarchy!

  • Slick marketing vs. Real substance (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There are many ironic things about ESR being a prominent media personality in the open source world.

    * The open source/linux/free software community values real substance more than vaporware or marketing. Yet the main claim to fame for ESR is as the marketing guy for linux/free software - remove the media spotlight and his actual output is the dictionary (a good one) and maintaining fetchmail (not exactly earth shaking stuff). It's profoundly ironic that a person who uses his ability to manipulate the media does so to promote a culture which rejects slick marketing and views it with contempt.

    * open source coders do it not just for love of coding, but for the value and estimation of the world at large.Now...

    * ESR's marketing of open source pushes him into the spotlight, much more so than code contributors who have written WAY more code and built the actual software that we use as we speak. Marketing vs. coding - guess who wins?

    * The exercise for today's class is to ponder what is wrong with the above picture.

    * ESR quote from the article: "Speaking both in my own person and as an ambassador from the people who built and run the Internet".

    Question - who made him the ambassador? The people who built and run the internet....oh really? This is really stretching it a bit. Speaking one's own opinions is one thing, but grabbing the mike from bemused coders not particularly interested in cultivating networking skills with journalists and yakking away in a smug manner is a habit that is getting a bit tiresome.

    But.....the open source community has built in error correction. Notice how little ESR exposure has been seen lately on /.? I wonder why....

    (Note to journalists - you may have a symbiotic relationship with ESR via your address book, and it may help get quick soundbites, but please don't consider he speaks for *us*. Try scouting opinions from other coders instead, preferable people who won't irritate readers with their smug demeanor. It's worth it. We will actually read your article then. :)
  • yeah. but we are also green/socialist community minded pacifists.

    hint:
    why some prefer guntoting eric and others free as in beer stallman.

    coders/geeks can not be put into a camp with an ideology. We DO tend to aver and eschew traditional republican and democratic party lines and flock to alternatives that fit out worldview and morality, but some of fear BIG GUMMANINT/KarlMarx and some of us fear BIG BIDNESS/AynRand.

    ESR can not speak for us on anything other than coding. He should shut his YAP on anything else.

    Tom
  • No more annoyed than when Jefferson, Paine, Franklin, et. al. went around talking about what "we Americans" think.

    Not that I agree with everything esr says and definitely not to elivate him to that stature. I just think that "we hackers" have to recognize that this is a political debate. In this context, you have to presume that the speaker represents some body of people {X}, and that there are people who consider themselves members of {X} that agree with the speaker, and some that to not.

    Jesse Jackson is called a "black leader". Why? Is it because he's black and is a leader, or is it because he leads black people? Does he speak for all black people? Or is it simply that "black leader" is a convenient, if distracting label, for someone who gives voice to a message that alot of people (of different colors, I may add) want heard, despite the fact that others disagree?

    So, like it or not, esr is a "hacker leader". To those who call themselves hackers, and to those who do not, he still has to make his case with his own words. Whether "we" agree with him or not, the important role he plays is that he draws "us" into the discussion.

  • Why 'Tribe'? (Score:3)

    by meepzorb ( 61992 ) on Thursday June 22, 2000 @07:27AM (#984289)
    PS. I also grow weary of ESR as my "tribe's" representative. We are too diverse a group of people for any one (or two) people to really represent our views. Otherwise slashdot wouldn't be as interesting as it is.

    One of the more disturbing subtexts of ESR's use of the word 'tribe' is that, in an actual tribe (think "primitive peoples"), there can be no dissent in the modern sense. All members are of the same blood, have identical culture, and have similar life experiences so there is actually not much in the way of deeply opposed points-of-view. And the Tribal Elders run the show, and tolerate no serious opposition.

    Given these attributes, it makes perfect sense for ESR to refer to all hackers as his Tribe: In his view, those with any fundamental disagreements are, by definition, not of His Tribe. And therefore not really hackers. Witness phrases such as "...my report of what the open-source culture knows and believes and wants." If you disagree, you Don't Really Matter.

    As a self-described anthropologist/linguist ESR cannot be totally ignorant of the implications of this usage of the word.... and one does sometimes get the impression from his essays that this sort of tribal setup would, indeed, be his ideal social structure for Open Source.

    Depressingly enough, we may already be there.

    :Michael

  • I agree with him that in retrospect, very little of his poetry is worth saving.

    That "Funny Fan Mail" reminds me of those cheesy testimonial ads on TV...
  • In the past, the government has shown willingness to subsidize art via the NEA. Now certainly art and code are (somewhat) different things, but I really can't see how subsidizing OS projects would be detrimental to the community, and it would provide a more useful function than art(apologies to any art lovers).

    In a similar vein, tons of academic computer projects are subsidized by government, including the military. If the government is willing to provide funding for all this, it surely should be happy to give some money to, say, Debian or Helixcode(for support of GNOME) among others. And think how much that would benefit the general public. The government may do some really stupid things sometimes, and has the power to do even more, but giving open source a gentle shove in the form of financial backing cannot be entirely harmful.
  • > The kernel thing is news to me. I grepped through the kernel source and didn't find anything.

    Oh, well that's conclusive. I don't think.

    For a start, there's CML2, which looks likely to be what gets run when you type "make config" in future. This is entirely an ESR work.

  • > The kernel thing is news to me. I grepped through the kernel source and didn't find anything.

    Oh, well that's conclusive. I don't think.

    Never said it was conclusive.

    For a start, there's CML2, which looks likely to be what gets run when you type "make config" in future. This is entirely an ESR work.

    Well, that might be a significant contribution to development tools, I suppose, but it doesn't support the literal truth of what you said, which is perhaps an overstatement.

    In any case, this is an irrelevant quibble.

    I don't mean to criticize ESR's contributions to open source projects, to which he can justly point with pride; I don't think it gives him the right to be anyone's spokesman but his own.
  • > What kind of question is that. You can be

    It's a rhetorical question. Next time I'll put around it, so a computer expert such as yourself can understand it.
    What the average person knows most likely wouldn't amount to an eighth grade education, and wouldn't include English.
    So no, the average person doesn't know what a RFC is, most likely any more than you know the first thing about Category Theory, playing the violin, or designing automobiles.
    How disadvantaged we all are. Perish the thought the average person would want safe drinking water, when it knows nothing of Chemistry.

    > Are you this disingenuous in person or only when
    > it suits your argument? Do you really think that
    > if the government actively funded open source
    > development (this was brought up in part I or
    > II) that they wouldn't begin to make politically
    > correct demands about how their money was used?

    Are you suggesting that State Universities require me to have homosexuals, or to develop disability functionality on my research project, which happens to be open source?
    Perhaps the Government isn't funding the State University, eh?

    > In any case, there's not much that goes on in
    > open source development that affects anything
    > beyond developers and users.

    So the realm of open source software has no effect on anyone not actively using or developing open source software? That's not even remotely logical. For instance, if I run a business and use open source software, perhaps it saves me money (either in price, or long-term maintenance), which can then be passed on to the consumer. No, this has no effect on anyone.

    Or more related to the actual discussion, if the Government were to prefer open source software, or to prefer software vendors that preformed open disclosure of communication and storage protocols, interoperability between your grandmother's e-mail client, and your child's, may be less inclined to be totally and completely incompatible, because any given vendor wanted a larger piece of the pie.

    And related to the actual comment you replied to, since Microsoft's business practices effect such a wide range of people (whether or not they use their products themselves), their lives are influenced by Word, Excel, VB, Windows, and many other MS products that millions of people use to get their work done. It's only natural that they have a say in whether or not Microsoft may harm them, just as we institute laws to gurantee food quality, automobile safety, and any other number of things.

    > If you want to argue for reform of patent laws,
    > that's fine. If you want the government actively
    > involved in the generation of open source
    > software, well, I'm reminded of African-American
    > leaders in the late 80s asking for "help with
    > the crack epidemic." Be careful what you ask
    > for.

    I'm not personally asking for anything in this matter. I simply believe that U.S. citizens are entitled to their say, if they are being harmed, whether or not they know what a RFC is, have ever implemented their own heap manager, or can count in octal.
  • That is asinine. All of your rights are precious, and just as you wouldn't tolerate me trying to restrict a right that you value, I won't tolerate you trying to restrict a right that I value.

    I believe that's more where ESR is coming from.

    Eric, correct me if I'm wrong, please.

    You got it right.

  • Because the true owner of the Internet's open architecture has never been either the government or the telecom companies. The true owner was us -- the hackers.


    Shoot, I'm calling up Network Solutions, MCI, and BBN Planet right now and demand the equity that's mine. All this time, thinking property law defined who controls the infrastructure.. what a chump I was! I guess all is well after all.
  • Well.. as much as I dislike being grouped and generalized, like ESR did when he wrote that Guide to Being a Hacker or something like that, someone has to present us to the rest of the public. And ESR is doing a more or less good job of that. We are still a minority (urk. categorization again) and I guess ESR is our self-appointed spokesman, if we think that he is doing a bad job, then just speak out, or better yet, go appoint yourself spokesman. Like someone said in another comment, it's not an easy job.
  • ESR does not represent a community, he is part of a community. This gives him the same right to speak about the community that every other member of the community has. I'm frankly pleased there's someone with his elan out there talking for us, otherwise, the Clueless Masses would be forming their ideas about geeks solely on the basis of mass media reporting about Columbine and Mitnick.

    Oh, and to paraphrase ESR, if you don't like the job he's doing, then do it yourself. You don't need to be appointed or selected, just get out there and do a better job. I'm sure he'd applaud your efforts. Hell, I would too!
  • Good point. I dunno why the government cares so much about beefing up the existing laws. When you think about it -- people who have something covered under intellectual property law and DMCA comes around, now their property is 'protected' in a way they never wanted. If DMCA applies on/to all software, it makes these big monopolies they _say_ they want broken up into goliaths in a world of davids. And of course more copies of software _have_ to be sold, as the companies can require this, and the government makes money off various taxes. You ever wonder if there wasn't some underlying theme? Oh... that's right... money.

  • Re:ESR's presumptuousness (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I agree, but you are focusing on the details and not the whole picture of that post.
    Look.. I've got more code in the linux kernel than I care to own up to. I write free software, some of which is pretty good according to the users.
    Does that give me the right to stand up, beat my chest and scream "WE ARE HACKER! HEAR US ROAR!".
    I don't think so. I hope not. The problem with most of the free software community is that they can be easily sucked in by a saviour figure. ESR pops up today, half the geeks flock to him. Someone else might pop up tomorrow, everyone goes to that person. Its not a good trend.. and it reinforces some of the bad stereotypes about computer people in general.
    Just my thoughts on the matter.
  • Who would win though? My bet is that Bill Gates would parachute in and smack everyone around with big wads of cash. Hrm... maybe not. The real question is: Tux vs. The BSD Daemons vs. The Atheos parrot vs. The Windows Window.
  • If we did all think and act the same, then Open source would be no better than proprietry.

    Working out whether we do all think the same is left as an excercise for the reader.

  • The government - ANY government, no matter where you may live - has a long track record of badly thought out policies on issues ranging from diplomatic relations to public health to intellectual property. Just about the only thing distinguishes an effective government from an ineffective one is how readily they learn from and fix their inevitable mistakes. Unfortunately the only indication that a government has that it has just made a mistake is the volume of protest, counterarguments and lost votes that result from the mistake.

    This is where a government is no better off than the average slashdotter because they have an even worse signal:noise ratio to cope with than we do - Anyone with a "strong" viewpoint will generate so many flames when a regulation they object to is introduced that a politician often cant "hear" the more rational voices, the ones proposing intelligent solutions or compromises. There aint no moderation in politics so the offtopic gets dragged in as relevant (how many riders to otherwise useful bills have fouled things up in the last 12 months of american politics, for example.)

    For so long as any government is trying to set policies on an issue those that are able to speak to that issue from a genuine position of experience and knowledge will be needed. I may not agree with ESR on every point but I sure as hell respect the fact that he is doing something useful by his open-source advocacy and more to the point it is something that I cannot do myself. Sure as individuals my opinion and his carry no greater theoretical weight on a national scale but the fact remains that he has earned his reputation as a knowledgable person in this field and therefore he is better placed in this role than I would be.

    He cannot do it alone though, nobody could. How many of you have written to representatives regarding issues like the DMCA - I'm not talking about flaming "this legislation is a piece of crap!" letters, you all know as well as I do that those wont even get read. I'm talking about a rational statement of your disagreements with a bottom line of "If you support this measure I will not vote for you, irrespective of my party alleigance"

    If they cant hear you, they cant represent you whether they want to or not - and even if they dont want to the prospect of losing an election is enough to force any career politician to take your views into account
    # human firmware exploit
    # Word will insert into your optic buffer
    # without bounds checking

  • Re:ESR's presumptuousness (Score:3)

    by streetlawyer ( 169828 ) on Thursday June 22, 2000 @05:44AM (#984304) Homepage
    I have no axe to grind in these matters, except to point out that if Raymond continues to claim on his website that he is an "anthropologist [tuxedo.org]", then he is practising anthropology without a license, and loses the right to complain to the world about who is and isn't entitled to call himself a "hacker"

    And his poetry [tuxedo.org] is shit [tuxedo.org]

    And his "Funny Fan Mail" [tuxedo.org] isn't funny.

  • Interesting. What branch of government do the three companies I mentioned belong to? Or are you saying that I really do own a stake in the Internet, and have every right to walk into the offices of my service provider and tell them how to run their business?

    And you do realize that public property, (you know, the stuff that belongs to "the people"), is legally owned and maintained by government?
  • Actually, this may be why ESR has his "Geeks with Guns" bent. "When they come for my router, they'll have to fight for it."

    That's part of it. A bigger part is this:

    Why does a subset of hackers get this bizarre notion that it's bad if the government tells me what I can do with information, what I can do with encryption, what I can log into when, what I can see in a movie theatre, or what I can send to whom over the net, but it's OK for them to tell me how I can go about exercising my right to keep and bear arms?

    Information is far more dangerous than guns, yet some of us will tolerate the restriction of the latter but not of the former.

    That is asinine. All of your rights are precious, and just as you wouldn't tolerate me trying to restrict a right that you value, I won't tolerate you trying to restrict a right that I value.

    I believe that's more where ESR is coming from.

    Eric, correct me if I'm wrong, please.

    BTW, why would anybody who doesn't trust the government not to lie, cheat, and steal also trust them not to murder and kidnap? Guns are your protection against the latter, just as information is your protection against the former.

    I contend that it's worse if the government kidnaps or murders you than if they lie, cheat, and steal from you, yet some hackers proclaim that they'll never give up the right to protect themselves from government lies, cheating, and theft, but readily give up the right to protect themselves from potential government kidnapping and murder.

    Give up that right if you must; but don't try to give it up for *ME* too. Or for Eric.

    --
  • It's not much of a discussion. Lessig seems to have run out of substantive things to say. Band's agenda seems lame. Who wants to read Microsoft's code? What you want are the interface documents, and those they will probably be forced to disclose.

    A reasonable legislative agenda for the open-source movement might be as follows:

    • All software development funded with tax dollars must be open-source. This includes university research, NASA, NSF, etc. (Reasonable enough; it was like that before Reagan.)
    • Patent rights obtained by government-funded researchers must be licensed at no cost to open-source software projects. (Again, it was pretty much like that before the Reagan years.)
    • Open-source software should be favored in government procurements. (Europe is moving in this direction.) It's a good deal for governments; they can switch vendors more easily.
    • "Interface patents" should not be enforceable against open-source projects. (Interface patents are narrow patents which cover only a very specific way of doing something, and are only useful for preventing interoperability. The classic Hayes escape sequence patent ("+++") is an example).
    • The use of an undocumented protocol on the Internet should be considered a restraint of trade violation for antitrust purposes.
    • Content encryption should be forbidden for any content which uses the "public airwaves", i.e. spectrum for which the transmitter doesn't pay like broadcast TV and radio. (The FCC is gingerly moving in this direction.)

    All of those things are within the realm of political reality.

  • Or are you saying that I really do own a stake in the Internet, and have every right to walk into the offices of my service provider and tell them how to run their business?

    Of course not. That violates Article VI, Clause 2 of the Constitution, not to mention the legal precedent set by Marbury vs. Madison.

  • No, because chances are very good that what ESR says is what most hackers think. People like ESR and RMS don't get their ability to be heard from their own power, we attribute it to them.

    These statements are, at least to some extent, contradictory. It's clear from anyone who's listened to them that ESR and RMS have some very, very different opinions on various matters, particularly WRT the government's anti-trust suit against Microsoft (which ESR made a big issue of in his talk). This, in itself, is evidence that ESR does not necessarily represent what most hackers think.

    IMO if you read the general opinion on Slashdot (which is at least an attempt to listen to the whole community, rather than one self-appointed spokesman), it becomes obvious that on at least some issues ESR represents a small minority opinion. The Microsoft breakup is one good example of this. The opinion on Slashdot seems primarily divided between people who have listened to Microsoft's POV (MS has done nothing wrong and should remain atop the heap) and people who think that the anti-trust suit was a great thing. Comparatively few people have expressed Raymond's view that the anit-trust suit is essentially meaningless (because MS is going down to the power of "Open Source" programming) and a bad thing in the abstract (because the government should butt out).

  • I think ESR did miss Lessig's points

    I think ESR misses everything these days. His thinking seems to have crystallised a couple of years ago and never moves forward, no matter what changes out in the rest of the world.

  • Re:ESR's presumptuousness (Score:3)

    by dsplat ( 73054 ) on Thursday June 22, 2000 @08:15AM (#984311)
    I submit that this is a problem with media that has no true intrest or ties to the community it is reporting on/about. Even other groups have this problem, and I'm sure we won't be the first to deal with it.

    Yeah, I stopped believing that the mainstream press was correct, accurate, complete or up-to-date years ago. Every time they report events that I have first-hand knowledge of, they are dead wrong on at least a few important aspects of it. By Occam's Razor, I assume that the same is true when they report on things I wasn't already familiar with.

    Part, and only part, of the problem arises from the model of the press as an entity that practices unbiased journalism. Those two words hold the key to the problem. There is nothing wrong with the hope that we can get a view of every side of a controversial issue. But it is common for press reports to reduce it to two competing sides. As for journalism, there are too many reporters out there who know how to write stories for newspapers and magazines and too little about what they are reporting on.

    I prefer press with a background knowledge and a viewpoint. I don't have to agree with that viewpoint, so long as I know what it is.

    Mojo, go ahead and quote me. It isn't like my comments ever got anyone else anything.
  • "IMO if you read the general opinion on Slashdot (which is at least an attempt to listen to the whole community, rather than one self-appointed spokesman), it becomes obvious that on at least some issues ESR represents a small minority opinion."

    I think that by your logic, using Slashdot to get a consensus of the general Hacker opinion is no different that getting it from ESR. IMHO of course.

    Bad Mojo [rps.net]
  • When I read your comment, I realized that my last sentence was ambiguous. I was talking about not posting my own comment anonymously.
  • non hackers shouldn't have any say in the Open Source movement, and that THEY (hackers) and not avg. Joe should decide whether to put Microsoft on it's knees.
    Hi. I'm a non-hacker. I think you should write a Linux app that will replace Hyperterminal...
    ...
    ...
    ...
    Are you done yet?
    ...
    ...
    ...
    So what's wrong with this picture? I'll tell you what's wrong. The Open Source movement is a whole bunch of individual people. They write what they want to write. No non-hacker can tell a hacker what to write, unless they've got the money to pay for the hacker's talents. I don't see ESR so much dictating policy as stating an obvious fact: those without power cannot exert power over those who have power unless they take some of that power for themselves. No non-hacker can create code unless they become a hacker.

  • Yeah boy, if only he would be more like RMS and stick to the topics at hand :) :) :) Heck, the last time I heard RMS speak, he at one point was describing marriage as a repressive male institution designed to subvert women... How exactly is that related to open source or the GPL?

    Seriously, ESR and RMS are both extremely bright and thoughtfull philosophers with important things to say. I agree with one more then the other, but I think both are important to listen too, and I don't think you can listen to them in a vaccuum.

    If you listen to a speech, you get listen to what the speaker feels is important to say. If you want to hear just what you want to hear, write your own speech or pick speakers that are more fully aligned with your world view.

    There is enough bigotry and censorship already (against both the left AND the right wings)... lets not add to it and give our guest speakers a list of "approved topics"...

    All, of course "IMHO"
  • I think it would be more precise to say that "we run the internet", not that we own it.

    Have you never read Dune? "The power to destroy a thing is the power to control it absolutely" or something like that.
  • The Government isn't strengthening or weakening its control, since it still has the sole position of allowing patents, either way.

    Rather than changing its control, it'd simply be reforming the process required to grant control over these ideas to others.

    He's not advocating weakening Government control, he's advocating weakening corporate control, and more responsible Government guidelines regarding the dispatch of control.
  • ESR has a lot going on these days doesn't he? Anyone wonder when this guy takes a break?

  • ESR's presumptuousness (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 22, 2000 @04:12AM (#984319)
    Anyone else annoyed that this guy goes around talking about what "we hackers" think?

    (AC 'cuz who knows how much today's moderators like ESR)

  • No, I think you're wrong. I think he works a lot like a duck - calm and relaxed on the surface, and paddling like crazy where you can't see!
  • violently so. ESR may have some 'elitest' tendencies, so do most of us in one direction or annother. Would a plumber let an MD touch his clients plumbing? Or an MD let a plumber at his patients? Well, in each case only if the other has formal training. What he is saying is 'elitest' in the same sence. He's saying that control of computers is in the hands of the computer literate. TRUE. Have you seen the instructions that come with an Epson printer nowadays? I have a 4 yrs old cousin who could handle the job without them, and yet, rather than do it for her, when a friend asked me for help installing her new Epson, I held her hand through following the pictorial and written instructions. The sad bit is that she's a grad student. WTF? Even though computers are becoming easier and easier by the second to use, thoes who are have-nots remain so until "we" help them.

    BTW: Grok v. (1) To drink (2) To eat

    In any case, what makes me want to puke (again, as I part one above in this text is just that) Is reading these posts. Words like "moral" and "right" - what shtooyot (heb. nonsence/bullshit). No, I'm not saying I agree with everything ESR said - not even close! It's just that = well, you all know perfectly well what he means by "we" and by "own". You've stoped to playing the lowest sort of semantic games just because you don't feel right about what someone else has to say. In any case, it's 1am, I have more netting to do, and I have to cross half of Istanbul to get back to my bed - and, my date, maybe? - and I think I've enough on-topic stuff here so I can end. Goodnight all!


  • ESR: OPEN SOURCE ADVOCATE OR GERMAN GAS CONSPIRATOR?

    we, of the linux community, can no longer tolerate the scourge that is eric s. raymond. in the text that follows, i shall show that esr is NOT the innocent open source advocate everyone believes him to be. he is, in fact, a german conspirator in the petroleum industry.

    mr. raymond is a complex personality, as are many of today's wealthy open-source advocates. most people are not willing to look beyond his open-source writings and dig deeper to find the truth. i WAS willing.

    mr. raymond's firearms advocacy is well-known. what is NOT well-known is where this intense love of firearms originated. after scouring several records in libraries all over the nation, i tracked down mr. raymond's father... josef raymond.

    josef schlecter was an anti-nazi activist in world war ii germany. fearful of nazi persecution, mr. schlecter had no choice but to design extremely sophisticated weaponry for the german army. he and his business partner, dieter van woehausen made a very comfortable living with their arms factory.

    everything went smoothly for several years, until mr. van woehausen was discovered in a compromising position with a young hitler-youth, who shall remain nameless due to his being a minor at the time. young mr. schlecter watched in horror as the brown shirts cut his friend and business partner to pieces with machetes. to add insult to injury, mr. van woehausen's heart, having been left exposed by the mutilation, was abducted by a starving dog.

    severely traumatized, and fearful for his family's safety, mr. schlecter gathered his wife eva, his young son erik and daughter heidi and left for america. to avoid persecution by suspicious fbi agents, mr. schlecter adopted the americanized version of his name: raymond. he also changed the names of his children to eric and janet.

    mr. raymond made a good life for himself and his family in his new homeland. he built a formidable empire out of his full-service gas station chain... an industry increasingly under the control of german imigrants. young eric, however, was embittered and longing for his homeland.

    several years later, mr. raymond passed away from consumption. while sorting through his deceased father's belongings, young eric came across several firearms manufactured in his father's old factory. eric packed his father's weapons in a duffel bag and left for germany to study the ways of the great german military leaders.

    after months of intensive combat training and years of meditation in the mountains of germany, eric raymond returned to america to reclaim his father's vast petroleum empire. his strong-arm tactics and cunning ruthlesness were the envy of even the most powerful mob-bosses.

    a few years ago, mr. raymond received word that he was about to be investigated by the fbi. where did he get this inside information? from his sister, janet... janet reno. mr. raymond turned control of the petroleum empire over to his eldest son, fredo, and disappeared for several months.

    the next we heard of mr. raymond was his infamous, "the cathedral and the bazaar." mr. raymond had not forseen a small problem, however. the fbi did, in fact, continue its investigation of mr. raymond. but not mr. eric raymond.... mr. fredo raymond. mr. fredo raymond was imprisoned for conspiring to abduct and sexually assault a hot young actress... natalie portman. eric raymond regained control of his petroleum empire.

    a sordid tale, i know. but think... stocks of linux-related companies have been plummeting... gas prices are increasing... coincidence? i think not.

  • ESR has a lot going on these days doesn't he? Anyone wonder when this guy takes a break?


    Realistically, he doesn't have a job or go to school. His full-time job is doing some Linux and Open Source advocacy here and there. Talk about *easy*!
  • It's about the role Open Source Software should be given in Public Policy. I.e. should the government be for it, against it, or ignore it? The worry is that the government will be against it due to the DMCA. Because if you distribute Open Source Software it hardly falls in with what the DMCA wants and if there is "Good Software" which doesn't _need_ that protection, and all the CRAP does, then the gov't looks dumb for making it law.
  • honest-to-bob then!
  • He might not speak for everyone, but I certainly agree with him, and I would say that he does speak with authority and from experience.

    He's not just a self-appointed Katz-like "spokesman for the hackers". ESR is a real honest-to-god open source programmer, with several significant contributions to the Linux kernel amongst other things.

  • > The worry is that the government will be against it.

    That is a worry. An even bigger worry is that they might try to help it!

  • Talk about _hard_. I mean really. He has a job/occupation much like the president's. He's a public speaker, writer, programmer, etc., He's like a college professor in that respect as well, except his listeners don't always have the background to understand what he's got to say. Should have prerequisites for reading anything by ESR. 1) You have to have used this _miracle linux_ 2) You have to have used some real OS 3) You have to know at least a little programming or know what it's like to work in that field. Many people take him at his words and not the ideas he addresses.
  • Works for me! :P
  • Couldn't agree with you more on this one. He has a recipe on what we should eat, drink, look like and even believe in!

    Also his idea of mixing his Geeks with Guns together with the Linux expo. At least he could keep the two separate and I'd be very grateful if he can stick to talking of Open Source when he's asked to talk about FUCKING OPEN SOURCE! The bastard keeps on pushing his agenda all the time and it pisses me more and more. Rant over. Off to order my BSD CDs.

  • The true owner was us -- the hackers.

    This couldn't have more truth in it. If you look at the 10th Amendment, it clearly states:

    The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

    The internet belongs to the people, not the federal government.

  • Talk about _hard_. I mean really. He has a job/occupation much like the president's. He's a public speaker, writer, programmer, etc.,

    No, let's be realistic here. He gives speeches occasionally. He writes essays occasionally. He tinkers with programming projects here and there. Compare that to someone with a full-time programming job that spends 8-12 hours a day banging out code with the pressure of deadlines. Or someone trying to start his own business who doesn't have millions in stock.

    I'm not putting down ESR at all, just pointing out that what he's doing is not tremendously difficult. I admire his writing, and I think more than occasional travel would be draining, but in general he can spend his time as he likes.

  • Re:ESR's presumptuousness (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What, haven't you heard? We hackers are an independent, libertarian bunch, and tend to own several firearms.

  • Thank you, ESR (Score:3)

    by Julian Morrison ( 5575 ) on Thursday June 22, 2000 @06:10AM (#984336)
    My only suggestion: please look again at copyright. What part of it could not be emulated with NDA contracts plus receiving-stolen-data laws? Because copyrights and patents both assert that I don't own my property where it has a certain form, or where I changed it with a certain process into that form. This even if I got it into that form without breaking any NDAs or accepting data derived from a broken NDA.
  • someone has to present us to the rest of the public.

    Or do they? I beg to differ here. Why do we need to speak with a single voice or need any kind of leadership? I thought we were all great individualists who know how to conduct themselves. At least I do otherwise I would be in a sect somewhere praying to the trees instead of developing applications. We don't need a guru only those who can't think for themselves do!

    Do car mechanics have their "voice of the community"? So why should we all speak a unanimous voice? I particularly differ with Mr. Raymond on most issues he chooses to talk about and when he uses expressions such as 'we the hackers' it makes my skin crawl. Not only is he self appointed he's actually helping to build stereotypes about people in the software industry.

    Dear Mr. Raymond, programming is just a frigging job. It's not a religon, it's not a recipe for life your 'observations' are just rehashing old mantras such as "real programmers are born not made". We heard it all a million times now and don't want to hear it again. Beside it being stupid and flat it can be said of most professions. Good people in any job are hard to come by and coding is no different. It's just a job and a hobby and for most of us it's both. Nothing less, nothing more. Mixing it with your 'libertarianism' passion for guns or everything else results in a mixture that's hard to swallow and leaves a bad aftertaste too.
    What a lovely HydePark slashdot is :).

  • I love posts that eloquently rebut an argument. I guess you figure your rubber stamp makes your arguments for you. Lazy AC poster.

  • ESR's presumptousness annoys me so much that when he says that ``we'' support A, then, even if I previously supported A, I'm inclined to switch to supporting not A, just to oppose ESR.
  • Here is the centerpiece of ESR's essay:
    ... the true owner of the Internet's open architecture has never been either the government or the telecom companies. The true owner was us -- the hackers. We composed the Request for Comments. We defined the standards. We wrote the software. We designed the routers. And we now run the ISPs (the suits may think they run them, but we know better). We have successfully fought off multiple attempts to lock up the network (including, for example, the voice-traffic oligopoly's concerted attempt to replace TCP/IP with ATM, and Microsoft's efforts to displace us with MSN and ActiveX.).

    Since 1969 we have owned the Internet architecture, because none of the government or corporate power groups that wanted to control it or extract money from it could run it without us -- and despite our beards and Birkenstocks, we are very, very good at co-opting the system. For 30 years, we have been pushing toward a conscious, shared goal: to build the ultimate open-access network. We have successfully transmitted that dream across both corporate and national boundaries and across generations of engineers.

    This policy debate is framed by technology we created and that only we understand -- because as people grok [deeply understand] the technology they become us; they absorb our values and goals and our cultural logic as part of the learning process, they become part of our freemasonry. Like the Chinese empire, we have defeated or assimilated every wave of barbarians to come at our borders.

    We didn't always know how we would do it, and we almost never knew what the critical breakthroughs would be in advance or who would make them, but we knew where we were headed. So, for example, the World Wide Web was a surprise -- but Tim Berners-Lee is one of us, and his disposal of his invention was not.

    While inspiring, I have a few quibbles. I think it would be more precise to say that "we run the internet", not that we own it. And what is meant by "we" anyway?

    Certainly, computer-savvy people ("hackers") are required to keep the Internet going. To the extent that we hackers believe in an open Internet and implement that belief, the Internet will stay open. However, do we as a group really believe in an open Internet? And will we as a group remain steadfast in the face of government and corporate coercion? E.g., there appears to be some number of us who work for corporations (such as Microsoft) and governments (such as China) with different visions of the Internet. The benefits of working for Microsoft and the penalties for disobeying oppressive governments can be very persuasive.

    Certainly, those of us who believe in an open Internet need to lobby politicians and persuade our managers that this is the right thing to do. The government can sometimes be very helpful. For example, I think that the USA's action against Microsoft has given a big boost to open source.

    But our primary goal must be to expand our culture to all hackers. After all, we "own" the Internet.

  • I think that by your logic, using Slashdot to get a consensus of the general Hacker opinion is no different that getting it from ESR. IMHO of course.

    There's a small amount of truth to that, but not really. The point is that ESR is just one person, so when you listen to him, you're getting the voice of just one person. He may claim to talk for the community, but he's still just one person. If you really want to know what the community as a whole thinks, you should go to a place where you can hear more than one voice. Discussions on Slashdot certainly have more than one voice, so you're at least listening to a breadth of opinions, rather than just one. Does Slashdot necessarily represent an accurate cross-section of the hacker community? I don't know, but I don't see how it could be less accurate than listening to one person who claims to speak for the group as a whole.

  • I don't claim to be as Libertarian as ESR, but I have to agree with him here.

    The question isn't one of what's best, but what is moral. I don't
    think the it's the role of government to encourage free software. I
    would be acting against my values and principles if I advocated
    government action.

    I believe Lessig has a stronger case ONLY if you believe in the
    philosophy of all-encompassing, ameliorative government. I don't, and
    believe that moving that direction is bad for the whole country in the
    long term. Not because I think I'm the only person smart enough to
    figure out software policy.
  • Noone here wants to censor Mr. Raymond. But I believe that for a discussion to have any coherence one must stick to the main theme of said discussion. Mixing in your political agenda and shoving it down your audience's throats is quite rude at best. I don't like Mr. Stallman either for mixing programming and politics even more.

    Let's restore some sanity here, programming is not a social or a political issue, even Open Software programming. It's a hobby for many and a job for some. Trying to wrap it in some sort of social package (Mr. Stallman & Freedom) or a political one (Mr. Raymond & libertarianism) is simply neglecting the focus of the discussion.

    At least Mr. Stallman speaks for himself most of the time which cannot be said about Mr. Raymond. This is why Mr. Raymond comes under so much criticism most of the time he opens his mouth. He's not critisized for having his views but for pretending that those views represent some astonishing majority of those who describe themselves as 'hackers' (God, I'm beginning to hate this word thanks to Dr. Raymond). Digressing is OK but sneaking in your agenda into a public discussion and then claiming that you represent some group that's unrelated to the forementioned agenda is awful.

  • I agree with ESR, but he could have chosen some of his words more carefully:

    Like the Chinese empire, we have defeated or assimilated every wave of barbarians to come at our borders.

    Communist China's attempts to block us out seem to be proving almost equally weak and futile; no more than the Soviets can they resist our subversive efficiencies.

    We may be temporarily hindered at times, but we will not be stopped.

    On Internet time, you and all the pundits of the world are in far more danger of irrelevance than we.

    He almost sounds like a Borg. Certainly not a picture the publice should get of us.
  • > He is right, although put this way it sounds
    > inflamatory. Let me explain why. First, hackers
    > write the code for open source projects. We can
    > choose to scratch our own itches, or help out
    > some non-hacker who needs a feature. But in the
    > end, we do the work. The choice of which work is
    > ours.

    Car manufacturers are the people that create automobiles. Yet I'm sure you'd prefer automobiles have safety features that the Government requires them to implement. If you're familiar with the early car industry, I'm sure you're aware they took a "cars are safe, as long as you drive correctly" attitude towards automotive safety. People like Ralph Nader did a lot to get the Government to change that sort of nonsense.

    As for the rest of your sentiment, specifically regarding choice, this isn't really part of the discussion. It's a given that the Government isn't being asked by any of these people to keep me from working on any project that I see fit.
    It's not a one or the other issue. That is, you aren't forced to choose between anarchy and totalitarian control.

    > As for Microsoft, many open source projects are
    > competing with Microsoft products. There are
    > only three groups of people who should have any
    > say in who wins: Microsoft owners and employees;
    > open source companies, their owners and open
    > source programmers; and users of the products.
    > The problem for Microsoft is that open source
    > can't be bought out or bankrupted the way
    > another company can. Open source is not a
    > single target.

    I'm afraid that in society, there are more people than Microsoft owners, employees, direct competitors, and consumers. So while I don't believe the Government should fragment the company for its acts, I don't believe that acts and punishment should be solely a matter of the market, since the ramifications of these acts effect a larger group of people.
    If a company is dumping toxins in the water, then it's not the free market that should remedy the situation. If a car company is selling rather unsafe automobiles to save a few dollars, then the people have the right to demand they follow safety guidelines. If radio stations wish to broadcast, then the good of the people is more important than a radio station's ability to intentionally bleed out a competitor's signal. If a meat packager wants to sell their products, then it's reasonable to expect them to follow stringent health guidelines.
    So if it is determined that a certain amount of Government influence is required to help the evolution of the net along, then that too should be done. Whether or not this is necessary is a topic of debate.
    Trying to force people to use open standards would be short sighted, but perhaps requiring corporations to publish these standards might be effective. On the other hand, things that traditionally rely on obscurity (e.g. games) might suffer as a result. So any action should be first met with great thought on the cost-benefit.

    > In the end, open source hackers, unless their
    > sheer numbers are great enough, won't kill
    > Microsoft. How many mosquitoes would it take to
    > kill a lion? But open source can set a standard.
    > If Microsoft misses that standard
    > badly enough, their customers will leave. That
    > is simply competition and it is something that
    > Microsoft is good at.

    Open Source, in modern times, isn't often in the position to set a standard, for which Microsoft would have to abide. Even large companies like Sun had a hard time forcing Microsoft to a standard, and Microsoft's developer base wasn't as strongly behind this action as you might think.
    So while there may be a collection of pre-existing standards that have been embraced by Open Source, and whose original implementation may very well have been, further standards (either open or closed) have very much been lead by large corporate interests.
    You need look no further than HTML for this, but if you want to, there're dozens of other such "standards."
  • Yeah, but does the mechanic down the garage own my car?
  • Realistically, he doesn't have a job or go to school. His full-time job is doing some Linux and Open Source advocacy here and there. Talk about *easy*!

    First of all he does have a job. You say it yourself. And then.. who says Open Source advocacy is easy? You try to do his job.

    And of course you don't have to forget the coding he does for Linux and other projects. If what he does is easy i don't want to know what difficult means....
  • Damn, when i read that headline i thought it was a wrestling match. Now that would be entertaining. Imagine it: A cage match with ESR, RMS and Linus...mmm, Geek Celebrity Deathmatch :)

  • Lessig+Brand (Score:3)

    by krystal_blade ( 188089 ) on Thursday June 22, 2000 @04:33AM (#984349)
    All in all, I think Lessig and Brand brought up and presented the strongest points so far in this thing. Jeff Taylor seems just a bit too pessimistic. And ES Raymond is an Elitist, at best.

    ES Raymond seems to say that non hackers shouldn't have any say in the Open Source movement, and that THEY (hackers) and not avg. Joe should decide whether to put Microsoft on it's knees.

    Lessig comes right out and states flat out that he never coded a thing in his life, yet seems to have a firmer grasp on the situation than others... It's quite unfortunate in todays world that the law is so convoluted that it requires readers assistance... But thank god some of the best are on the Open Source side.

    If you combine the argument of Lessig, and Brand, the strongest argument exists. Tighter Government control for the handing out of patents, the use of those patents (and copyrights) (Lessig) and Government sponsorship of Innovation, as opposed to stagnation. (Brand)

    krystal_blade

  • Re:ESR's presumptuousness (Score:3)

    by dsplat ( 73054 ) on Thursday June 22, 2000 @04:35AM (#984350)
    And it doesn't matter who I am; my point stands (or falls) on its own.


    I agree with this statement completely. I rarely pay much attention to who said what here until after I read the comments themselves. If the comments do cut it, a name attached to them doesn't fix the problem.

    As for disagreeing with ESR or his arrogance, I haven't been able to get to the page because it is severely Slashdotted at the moment. I can guess at the psychology of what he said. I would construe the expression "we hackers think ...." in the heat of an argument to mean something like "I'm a hacker. Many of us think that ...." Since I have the benefit of writing this calmly and with some thought, I won't presume to speak for ESR. Even if I did, he certainly has the time and energy to defend against anything I might say about him.

    The point I am getting at is an old one. Emotion of any kind, vocal inflection, factial expressions, pauses and so forth, are missing in text, especially text written quickly online. I try to guess at possible motivations on the part of the writer when I read something that annoys me. Usually, the answer I come up with is that somebody posted too quickly and stuck his foot in his mouth. Sometimes, I gain a different perspective and learn something that the writer was trying to say and didn't convey well at all.

    I see no reason to post this as an AC, so flame on if you disagree.
  • You are dead on with this in one sense, but you have missed an important point. We, the hackers, have recognized ESR, RMS, Larry Wall, etc. as spokesmen for our causes. We have done this in part because they have articulated what motivates us. Unfortunately, the rest of the world now considers them, and particularly ESR, to be "sources" for information and quotes about open source/free software. I certainly hope that ESR never reaches the point where he is so busy talking to the media that he forgets to talk to the hackers. Bad Mojo is right. We'll stampede to a new leader. But it could be months or years before the talking heads notice. It took them years to notice that we existed in the first place.

  • Re:ESR's presumptuousness (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    But ordering official CDs helps put food on BSD developer's tables.
  • he's posting as an AC because moderators punish negativity....They hose you if you are negative. Slashdot is turning into a giant "drink the koolaid" site

    CAN I GET A GREAT BIG AMEN TO THAT MY BROTHER!!!

    I think it's partly due to the fact that slashdot probably has many young readers. This is not a bad thing except it doesn't exactly bring a lot of open-minded deep thinkers. You are more likely to have lots of "linux(or windows or BSD or whatever) rulez and I'll mod you down if you imply otherwise" type of people.

    I've noticed that the average moderator cannot distinguish between a post that filled with passion and emotion and flambait. Try to express a strong belief and you will get smacked down, unless it's LINUX RULZ"

    So what to do??? Well you can do what I did and dump your normal account, get some stupid nick, and join in with the morons.

    Oh... by the way...Linux Rules, the GPL rocks, Perl and Python and PHP are all great, I love open source...etc.
  • > Yeah, you're right. So what. It's not like your
    > average person has a clue what the letters RFC
    > mean. Even if they do for some strange reason,
    > you can be pretty sure they don't care about.

    What do you think the average person knows, exactly?

    > Yeah. Again, so what. Who else should decide?
    > The government. . .give me a break. If the
    > government decided who coded what or, more
    > eerily, what gets coded, how much developer time
    > would be *wasted* on goofy sh*t like access for
    > the disabled, Ebonics error messages, and
    > application of equal opportunity laws to open
    > source projects?

    All of the people having a say in decisions that effect them, has little or nothing to do with the Government saying who can program, and what they can program. Whether Microsoft is fragmented or not, doesn't decide who can work on the next Perl interpreter, or whether or not programs should be written keeping in mind the disabled. It doesn't even require the GNOME crowd to allow homosexuals to develop for it.

  • Yes.

    But, part of that is standard rhetoric. If you pepper your argument with phrases like "I believe" and "It may be true that" and "This is probably how it works", you come off as wishy-washy. ESR's probably used to speaking directly, focusing more on his ideas than the supporting evidence.

    (Whew, talk about a backhanded compliment.)

    Anyway, about half the time he says something in public, I want to stand up and say "This man does not speak for me on these specific issues." It happened when he said that Linux users don't want China to use Linux. It happened when he talked about being unbelievably wealthy after the LNUX IPO.

    It happened today, when, to the best of my knowledge, he argued that government is irrelevant in the face of his anarcho-capitalism. (One might wonder, if the U.S. federal government were judged on purely economic principles -- revenue, spending, employment statistics -- how would it compare to the corporations ESR mentions as examples?) I disagree.

    I prefer Lessig's argument that giving up on The System (or denying that it exists, or, possibly, waiting to revolt against it and set up some kind of technocracy) would be a mistake. Coding skills, project administration ability, and even soi-disant expert sociological analysis are separate skills from governance. Some people might be gifted in both areas, but if you only have abilities in one, it's a grave fallacy to assume that the other is irrelevant. Both sides need to learn this lesson.

    --

  • As much as I like much of what ESR has said in a number of areas, I have to agree the his libertarianism does not represent my viewpoint. He is definitely overstepping some important bounds when he claims it does.

    If libertarianism is not about freedom, then it is not about any value I have an interest in. When ESR uses that perverted version of libertarianism which claims that government actions are inherently threats to freedom (and thus worse than corporate threats to freedom or private threats to freedom), then he has placed another value higher in the his values hierarchy than freedom itself: his dislike of government.

    Now, it is perfectly all right to dislike government in any way you wish. Government can be good, and government can be bad. If you would like to concentrate on the bad, that is your prerogative. But don't pretend your prejudice is in defense of liberty or freedom. If you intend to protect liberty, you have to recognize that government action can promote freedom and it can attack freedom.

    If we intend to promote freedom, we will have to do the hard work of figuring out what each individual action of each government, of each corporation, and of each person does to promote or diminish freedom and liberty. If we substitute any ideology (like "government is always opposed to freedom" or "corporations are always bad" or "individuals never harm anyone else's liberty") for the effort required to find out what actually does promote liberty, then that ideology becomes the value we are placing above freedom.

    And, in that substitution, we have become the true enemies of liberty. Even if we call ourselves "libertarians."

    Now, ESR has every right to make that choice. But he does not have the right to say (even if a large number of his fellow hackers are seduced by the same form of pseudo-libertarianism) that "we hackers" all agree with him.

    The really disturbing thing about Raymond's "Round Three" attack on Lessig (and there is no doubt it is an ad-hominem attack of the codier-than-thou variety) is his inexact use of language. The two prongs of his argument use the term "hackers" in two different ways: In his "we hackers" manifesto, he assumes the word means those who agree with him; in his Chinese-empire metaphor, he assumes that everyone who is learning to code is automatically a part of his Hacker Empire.

    You can't have it both ways. If everybody who becomes a hacker or a coder or a programmer is automatically absorbed into the hacker culture, each of those new hackers are going to dilute the degree to which one person can be the spokesperson of that culture, especially if that spokesperson continues to make the outrageous comments which have always made Raymond interesting.

    We have a word for people who claim to speak for large and amorphous groups of humans: politician.

    And the only way such a person gets any legitimacy for the kinds of claims Raymond makes in Round Three is to set up a structure whereby the geeks, coders and hackers can determine their spokesperson. We have a word for that, too: government.

    Guess what, Eric? I think you've already become the enemy you've been demonizing.
  • ESR is a real honest-to-god open source
    programmer, with several significant contributions to the Linux kernel amongst other things.

    The kernel thing is news to me. I grepped through the kernel source and didn't find anything.

    In any case, it doesn't really matter. I stipulate ESR is a hacker. He may even be an representative hacker. This doesn't qualify him as a representative of hackers.
  • Ironically, the Founding Fathers didn't leave the country in much of a state of equality. They more or less drafted the country into an eventual civil war.

    Many people were unable to vote and people were enslaved, depending on the state. In most states, white males without property, women or any color or creed, and others were unable to vote. Thus the power of voting for the laws that you were supposedly equal under, was left in the hands of the social elite. That is, white property owners.
    There were a few exceptions, since a few states (like Vermont) didn't require property ownership to vote, and disallowed slavery. I think NY allowed women to vote if they had land, but were not married, until that too was taken from them.

    The U.S. is indeed a Republican Democracy, but it's certainly not a truly equitable land in which to live. Even now homosexuals are denied many rights that their heterosexual counterparts are guranteed, as well as the right to serve in the military. Plus, women are still denied access to certain parts of combat.

    We've certainly come a long ways since the ratification of the Constitution by the states, but we've still a ways to go before everyone is equitable before the law, very much in any other aspect of society.
  • I grow weary of correcting this...A republic is a democracy. If you remember your grammar school social studies, you'll note there was a fair amount of time discussing the difference between an indirect democracy, and a direct democracy.

    But I will quote from the second edition of Webster's World Dictionary, for the benefit of everyone.

    re-pub-lic (re pub'lik) n.[ L. respublica, public thing ] a state or government, specif. one headed by a president, in which the power is exercised by officials elected by the voters

    and (without pronounciation, because I'm too lazy to type the accents)

    de-moc-ra-cy n., pl. -cies [ Gr. demos, the people + kratein, to rule) 1. government by the people, directly or through representatives 2. a country, etc. with such government 3. equality of rights, opportunity, and treatment.

    A political order in which the supreme power lies in a
    body of citizens who are entitled to vote for officers
    and representatives responsible to them.
  • *sigh* That last part was from dictionary.com. Sorry for not citing it explicitly. It was for "republic", which I also failed to note =)
  • Dr. Raymond? From ESR's resume:
    "Education

    Undergraduate studies (including some graduate-level courses) in mathematics and philosophy at the University of
    Pennsylvania.

    I have never taken any courses in computer science or software engineering."

    He doesn't even seem to admit to any degree, very much a PhD.
    Or are you refering to another person?

  • "despite the best efforts of the open-source movement to "crush" others"

    Does the air around you crush you? Does the sun in the sky crush you? OpenSource simply is. ESR is saying that whatever obstacles are put in place, the desire for free expression embodied as OpenSource will prevail. Goverments and big business could put all their efforts into stemming the flow of free thought or the spread of the internet, but if by nothing more that sheer volume OpenSource will prevail. It is a reality and any amount of legislation, litigation or brute force won't stop it. No more than such actions have stopped free thought and expression. Get a clue.

    What is more irritating is the wasted human effort spent trying to stop it. And when the government is doing the wasting it really bugs me because they think they are doing it in my best interests.

  • Is there anyone else who can represent us better? If we don't describe ourselves, we will BE DESCRIBED. And you'll like it even less.
    -russ

  • I think ESR did miss Lessig's point (Score:5)

    by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Thursday June 22, 2000 @04:39AM (#984364) Journal
    I think ESR did miss Lessig's points about laws concerning IP and contracts mattering more then it might seem. While hackers may route around damage to freedom, it'll do no good when there are no safe havens... and we as a species are working towards that goal with all available speed.

    While you may never corral those last few hackers, the ones who write FreeNet and change it in the face of all attacks and figure out how to disguise it yet again so it evades the law this week... so what? Freedom for the .01% is not freedom at all.

    I agree with Lessig; it's dangerous to assume hackers uber alle. Barring a large scale move out into space, the policians still have a lot of power here. There's no natural law of the universe that the they can't destroy all the routers of the world, confiscate computers, and kill the ringleaders of any resistance movement. You think they need us? Those who would fight freedom this hard would have no problem moving the world back to feudalism, as long as they are in power.

    Do not underestimate your enemies. They like it when you do that.

  • "et al." is an abbreviation for the Latin "et alienses", meaning "and others".
  • I actually don't like him much myself. But he does what he does well -- he says things to people who hear words like "linux" and get colossal chubbies, and he gets paid for it. Like I said -- words not ideas. His ideas are mostly shite. And he's an arrogant elitist.
  • Oh boy.. looks like ye ol slashdot has inflicted pain upon another server. Total meltdown..

    Oh well, I can still comment on the article anyways.

    I really like some of the things ESR says about the GPL and how it benfits the world. But then agin Lessig seems to make some terrific points about general economics and what drives the economy. I think that overall ESR stands above Lessig though, but they both do have some valid points.

    While not reading the article I couldn't help but think how much ESR really "gets it" and how this helps others to "get it" too. Another thing that stood out while not reading the article was how bright Lessig is, he seems to "get it" also.

    In conclusion I would say that this was one of the better articles that I have not read.

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