>
> On Mon, 18 Sep 2000 04:15:33 -0400, kelley <kwalker2 at gte.net> wrote:
> >
> > btw, i suppose that the reason why esr isn't taken seriously
> > ac is the reason why that faction, the "other" open source,
> > won in the duke out over the name, yes?
>
> you know, sinster is a much better person to ask about that than
> i. he remembers those battles. personally, i don't think the
> "name" is as important as you or eric. there are several forms
> of "official" open source licenses, to which matt already
> referred. eric wanted linux called gnu linux, iirc, and you
> notice that it's not...
Um, it was Richard Stallman who wanted Linux called GNU Linux, not Eric Raymond.
That fight was important, btw. - RMS was pretty burnt by the whole process.
[snip]
>
>
> On Tue, 19 Sep 2000 15:17:21 +0200 (SAST), Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com>
> wrote:
>
> >
> >Eric S. Raymond inconsequential? I'm sorry, Matt, but where have you been
> >over the last few years? 5 years ago no one had ever heard of 'open
> >source' software
>
> hmmm, you need to learn a wee bit of history before you throw
> something around like that. yes, "open source" is a new *brand*
> but not a new concept. code has always been free, it was only
> the irrational agreement between microsoft and altair that led
> to this anomolous condition where people expect to pay for code.
> code produces nothing -- users do. it is *your* work product
> that adds value, not the code base upon which it was built...
'has always been free'? I assume you are referring to the period before the PC revolution when all source was effectively given away along with the hardware - which had a lot to do with the fact that the hardware was very expensive, and the cost of the software was effectively counted into the cost of the sale. Your timescale for 'has always' is a bit odd - the era of 'primordial free software' was from when computers became commodity products (approx. the mid 1950s) to when computers became a largely undifferentiated infrastructure (the PC revolution of the late 1970s / early 1980s). So that is about 25 years - that's all.
When computers became a pretty much undifferentiated infrastructure, new markets developed in software. Now that software itself has become largely an undifferentiated infrastructure (the Internet), new markets are opening up in other products - i.e. WWW portals and the like. All of MP3.com runs on 'open source' software, yet MP3.com is not open to re-use. O'Reilly's talk at the BOSC conference was largely a call for WWW sites to publish APIs and to become 'open source' themselves (we'll see if it happens).
>
> > Also, if ESR is so inconsequential, then how did he get his
> > manifesto published by Tim O'Reilly?
>
> i suggest you read one of the histories of o'reilly. this was
> not nearly as coincidental or legitimizing (for eric) as you
> presume. rather, tim was hoping for a little of eric's
> legitimacy to rub off on him...
If ESR was so inconsequential, then why did O'Reilly need to rub legitimacy off him?
Anyway, O'Reilly's history is that of a publisher for a particular market - a market which has for a long time respected open, inter-operable software because they were into building infrastructure, not software. I.e. O'Reilly was talking to systems programmers, the segment of the IT community from which a lot of 'open source' people originate. He was naturally positioned to move in - all that he needed was someone like ESR - someone he could 'talk to', as opposed to someone like Richard Stallman, who was (and I think still is) calling for 'open source documentation' to make publishers irrelevant.
Peter -- Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com> NOTE: I do not speak for my employer, Electric Genetics "Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower." - Karl Marx, 1844