-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----Why is our freedom to hack important to corporations? The answer is it isn't and they couldn't care less. By making the arguments the way Eric does is that it becomes palatable to corporations and the other freedoms we get are sorta slid in under the radar.
Hash: SHA1> The real challenge is in getting them to see profit in working with
> the community while discouraging parasitism on their part. I don't
> see you doing this.
>
> This is precisely what Eric does.Does he? That's not the impression I get. "Discouraging parasitism"
with respect to the free software community means to me "understanding
and respecting the ideals of the community." Eric isn't telling them
that issues of freedom are important to the vast majority of us
hackers; in fact, he actively downplays the importance of such issues
in his writings.
Their successful participation in contingent on their understanding of it. They can pull an Apple (or a Sun with it's "community" license) but this doesn't mean that this will fly with the developer community and the blow back on the corporation will be considerable. The free marketplace of ideas in the free software community assures that really pig-headed ideas don't fly very far. They should respect the community, they should play well with others. The fact is that many of them won't and many of the them will get burned by the community. Corporations often make very dumb mistakes and then draw the wrong lesson from it. "We tried our Bobo Community License and no one liked it, no made improvements etc" The lesson the corporation will learn, "open source doesn't work." Then of course the movement will flatten them with a free product is better, faster and bundled with every linux cd.My point is that Eric is giving them an easier way out, by
representing a part of the community that is more palatable to them.
Instead, companies should be made to know that their participation is
contingent on their understanding of and respect for the principles of
freedom we follow.
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Brian DeSpain ******************************************************** http://www.bravenewworlds.com Technical Consultants Business Development Electronic Commerce Toll-Free: 800.631.2527 Fax Number: 626.584.9364 ********************************************************
