ARTICLE - ESR gives up on Fedora

[Jon 'maddog' Hall]

On Thu, 2007-02-22 at 11:39 -0500, Thomas Charron wrote:
> On 2/22/07, Jon 'maddog' Hall <maddog at li.org> wrote:
> > I could not agree with you more, which is why I sent my email.
> > I liked Alan Cox's response the best.
> 
>   Right up till the:
> 
>         "That was said by Eric Raymond who belongs to another movement"
>                         - Richard Stallman
> 
>   Nice to be able to declare things when your self appointed.
> 
There actually is some meat behind that statement.

The term "Open Source" was created for many different reasons, but the
main one being that a group of people thought that "Free Software" was
creating a mixed message in that it was taken to mean "gratis software",
which would lead to "gratis everything".  So they invented the term
"Open Source" to try and give it less ambiguity.

Richard does not like the term of "Open Source" since he feels that it
detracts from the real message of "Freedom" in the usage of the
software, and anything that takes away from that freedom (DMCA, Software
Patents, etc.) is bad.  "Open Source" as a phrase does not touch on
those things directly, but simply hints that if the "source code is
available, it is o.k.", which is not true.

As a pragmatist, I originally found myself in the "Open Source" camp
(although I never liked the term "Open Source" either).  Over the years,
and with careful reflection, I have moved more toward Richard's camp.

Part of ESR's latest statements in this letter have to do directly with
this issue.

md