On Mon, May 28, 2012 at 2:41 PM, Michael Meeuwisse <[email protected]>wrote:
> > Nice spin. Say Microsoft would contribute anonymously to linux, then sell > linux before linux itself works. Because that's what happened. (Don't start > with "Yes but the firmware!" that's like saying linux is useless without a > GUI) > > Well that ended well :) but it reminds me of a conversation I had in the late '90's with one of my top former engineers. He was hacking linux for a US DoD contractor, using it for missile guidance and other nice things. I remember catching up with him, he told me that there were about 1000 linux hackers on the planet that were really taken seriously at that precise moment in time. 500 were working on linux. 500 were salaried at Microsoft. Does anyone remember the stability miracle of Windows XP in 2001? Michael, you have the moral high ground here, no one can deny that. It is impossible to find fault with anything you are saying, and rightly so. However, there is a deeper truth about OGP and Traversal. Please bear with me a moment or two longer. After John Hurt's famous line in Contact, "Once upon a time, I was a Hell of an engineer." By about 2005 or so, when I stumbled across OGP, I was a thief (... but not a lawyer!). My interest was to exploit the nascent hardware community for money, the way the bankers had exploited free software back when my generation built the Internet. In those days, all you had to do was have an outrageous amount of fun and then collect an outrageous amount of money. Never mind it all ended up in the Microsoft Dark Ages, we really thought it was all too easy at the time. Even from first contact, hardware is a damn sight far away from easy. But it is the next, perhaps the final frontier. And I wanted to be on the winning side this time. Which does not appear to be the side that fights for truth, freedom, and an open sharing of ideas. I quickly integrated myself into Tim Miller's good graces by submitting an RGB-YUV converter (which was never used, mercifully!) and proceeded to tempt him and Andy and Howard with all the tea in China, literally, if only they would compromise their interpretations of open source. Eventually, the project they turned down processed all the media traffic at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, in coordination with the most prestigious people, governments, banks, and corporations on the planet. And a river of gold flowed through it. Their reason was that they had a plan for OGP, and they had a plan for Traversal, and they were sticking to it, even though at that moment they already knew that the outcome was not going to be good. I was one of the people who asked for and received privately detailed information about the OGP/Traversal connection before it was "exposed". It is true that the arrangement between OGP and Traversal was not perfect, but it was clean, honest, in good faith, and in the end it was good for open source and good for freedom. I was witness to their golden opportunity to do shady things with their shaders, for the most possible profit, and they turned it down. Let me repeat for emphasis: it's called hardware for a reason. Brilliant people are not enough to create something like FOSS in hardware. You will have to change those rules. But OGP has a history. It has gone over the falls and lived. It has acquired real knowledge and real power. It has Tim Miller and Andre Pouliot, whom I have had the great pleasure to get to know over the intervening years. Tim has survived his own trials along with OGP, and has come out reincarnated unimaginably more powerful, bringing the enormous advantage of academic authority to OGP. You cannot ask for a better leader than Tim. Andre continues to impress me more deeply with every conversation. His deep knowledge and experience are matched by genuine wisdom, he is an amazing asset to any organization, private, public, or even volunteer! It has all of you, some grizzled veterans who have survived against all odds and emerged unstoppable, and some fresh faces (emoticons?) spreading contagious enthusiasm. Like Michael, I will be watching from the sidelines this go round. But based on all my experience in open source, industry, and research, I can honestly tell you there is no better place to be in the world today than OGP, if you care about technology. OGP is a very special opportunity precisely because of all the trials it has survived. Good luck! -- _Lance
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