Comment Process vs. product, and other disingenuousness (Score 2) 191
I am often amazed at how infuriating RMS's writings are to many people. His concise response to Bob Metcalfe's article has done it again.
ESR's thesis seems to be that the "propaganda" of Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation has only hurt the cause of free software. ESR claims that their contribution to the community is the software itself, rather than the rhetoric. However, he then goes on to congratulate himself and the rest of the "Open Source advocates" for their particular brand of propaganda: "OSI's tactics work."
Setting aside the presumptuousness of claiming that ESR et al. are wholly responsible for the degree of acceptance that free software has today ("consider the 180-degree turnaround in press and mainstream perception that has taken place in the last fourteen months, since many
people in our tribe started pushing the same licenses and the same code we used to call "free software" under the "open source" banner"), I think it makes sense to ask what "success" means to ESR. Apparently, it involves "market share" and "mind share" amongst "opinion leaders" and "executives." What will the free software movement have to compromise, or what has been compromised already, in the rush towards corporate acceptance? (I hope that "Open Source advocates," with their chumminess with "opinion leaders," haven't gotten too comfortable with jet-setting speaking engagements, despite their protestations to the contrary.)
Ultimately, the FSF philosophy that is so roundly criticized is not about the end product -- if such a thing even exists in the software industry. Rather, it concerns itself with the process of its creation. Whether the software is ignored or widely used is ultimately unimportant. What matters in Richard Stallman's moral calculus is the way that the software is written and the way those pieces are distributed: for a programmer, this is the way you live your life.
Perhaps this is why people dislike RMS so much: he is proposing a set of ethics for hackers, a modern text on how to better the community as a whole through the act of programming. And perhaps the lesson of the last twenty years of the 20th century is that many people just don't want to be bothered with contributing to their community when they could spend that time making more money.
-- Paul Walmsley, shag@nicar.org
ESR's thesis seems to be that the "propaganda" of Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation has only hurt the cause of free software. ESR claims that their contribution to the community is the software itself, rather than the rhetoric. However, he then goes on to congratulate himself and the rest of the "Open Source advocates" for their particular brand of propaganda: "OSI's tactics work."
Setting aside the presumptuousness of claiming that ESR et al. are wholly responsible for the degree of acceptance that free software has today ("consider the 180-degree turnaround in press and mainstream perception that has taken place in the last fourteen months, since many
people in our tribe started pushing the same licenses and the same code we used to call "free software" under the "open source" banner"), I think it makes sense to ask what "success" means to ESR. Apparently, it involves "market share" and "mind share" amongst "opinion leaders" and "executives." What will the free software movement have to compromise, or what has been compromised already, in the rush towards corporate acceptance? (I hope that "Open Source advocates," with their chumminess with "opinion leaders," haven't gotten too comfortable with jet-setting speaking engagements, despite their protestations to the contrary.)
Ultimately, the FSF philosophy that is so roundly criticized is not about the end product -- if such a thing even exists in the software industry. Rather, it concerns itself with the process of its creation. Whether the software is ignored or widely used is ultimately unimportant. What matters in Richard Stallman's moral calculus is the way that the software is written and the way those pieces are distributed: for a programmer, this is the way you live your life.
Perhaps this is why people dislike RMS so much: he is proposing a set of ethics for hackers, a modern text on how to better the community as a whole through the act of programming. And perhaps the lesson of the last twenty years of the 20th century is that many people just don't want to be bothered with contributing to their community when they could spend that time making more money.
-- Paul Walmsley, shag@nicar.org
