Sorry, but I just can't stop myself from responding (and thus continuing
this thread)...
> Hmm, saying that the FSF brought the GNU/Linux OS into
> existance, is like saying that churchill and his croonies created
> the atom bomb. You (and they) may have created a position or
> environment where the item being created flourished in. It is
> not a very sound argument to assume that the item being created
> would have never made it without these conditions.
Boy for being around this long (a real 'net old-timer :) you sure seem
to have missed the boat on a few things. How can you say that FSF, and
the GNU tools, weren't instrumental in bringing GNU/Linux into being?
Sure, Linus wrote the kernel, but it would have been pretty much useless
if the GNU stuff hadn't already been there. An OS kernel can't do much
without things like: compilers and make utils, binary utils, a shell or
two, tar, etc, etc, etc. And FSF was not too proud to pick up on the
Linux kernel (even when they had been working on their own Hurd kernel for
quite some time).
> You talk about freedom, about right and wrong. I fail to see
> where the freedom is in the GPL.
Say what? The GPL is all about maintaining freedom (it explicitly
forbids you or anyone else from taking freedom away). I guess you
haven't read much of Richard Stallman's definitions, explanations, and
other philosophical stuff.
> I'm not exactly sure what or more exactly "who" the opensource
> movement really is.
>From what I can see, the "who" is pretty much Eric Raymond (see the
Cathedral and the Bazaar, etc). And RedHat is perhaps one of the main
"whats". And my impression is that the "open source" movement is all
about making the free software/open source concept palatable to
corporate types (who only see things in a proprietary way). I've been
working with software (literally IV&V of safety-critical code) for
years, and the quality of proprietary "closed-source" code is about the
worst there is (not all of it, but most). I certainly wouldn't bet my
safety, or my business, on somebody else's software that I couldn't see,
touch, or fix (but now I'm digressing too).
> Did their original licensing terms for the BSD code not follow in
> a "truer" sense of the word of freedom? What about the original
> MIT project athena license for X?
In short, no, and it sucks. RS created the GPL precisely because the BSD
license was too restrictive. And the XFree86 guys use the GPL because
they didn't like the X license (again, too restrictive).
> Would it not be better to try and see why the opensource movement
> was "created" in 1998? Since (as a lot of people seem to state)
> the two movements have roughly the same goals in mind, does the
> creation of the opensource movement not point out a deficiency in
> the FSF?
Not at all. As I said, I think the genesis of this more recent
"movement" was all about not alienating corporate/business types (ie,
suits). The core RS/GNU philosophy is just way to socialist for real
suits. Although I don't understand why they fail to see the viability
of the "give the code away but charge for your expertise" open source
business model.
IMHO, the combination of closed source (ie, binary only), overly
restrictive licensing, a total lack of warranty ("if it breaks, you get
to keep the pieces"), and, lest we forget, almost no understanding of
proper software engineering, has created the sorry-ass state of
shrink-wrap software that we see today (and M$ has made it available
everyone - thanks so much, Bill). Most of the shrink-wrap stuff I've
bought over the years (except a few games) has been highly over-priced
and generally worthless crap. And the whole windoze thing just sucks the
biggest schween I can think of. OTOH, the GNU tools, Linux, XFree86,
Enlightenment, etc, are like a dream come true. Hey, they actually
behave the same way each time you run them (unless you change the
configuration)! What a concept! It's almost like mainframe stability on
PC hardware.
Granted, most free software projects don't exactly follow good SE
practices either (but at least they do *some* things right, like control
code via cvs, etc) but the nature of open source lets as many people
eyeball/test the code as are interested, and actually produces some of
the highest quality software (ie, fewest defects, highly stable, etc) we
have today.
There, I think that's enough ranting for one day...
Steve
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Stephen L Arnold http://www.rain.org/~sarnold
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