[NH LoCo] I'm writing an opinion piece for the Concord Monitor -- care to weigh in?

[Joshua Judson Rosen]

"Jon 'maddog' Hall" <maddog at li.org> writes:
>
> Ben, Tom, et. al.,
> 
> Thank you for the kind words.
> 
> I meant it when I said:
> 
> > I hope I have partially answered your question.  There is actually a
> > lot more to this, but I am tired tonight.
> 
> and I do intend on writing more about it....and then some.
> 
> I took particular offense at this attack, and I will be talking to
> someone in an hour about what we can do to set this straight.
> 
> I anticipate "at least" a blog on it, if not a trip to Washington.

I'd like to give the exact same sort of praise that Ben gave: yours is
exactly the sort of response (well, one of two) that I was hoping to
provoke.

Hopefully, the irony in my incitefully para-insightful remark isn't lost.

And hopefully Susan will find something in your response that she can
cannibalise into her article.

The only `issue' I have in reading your response is where you write:
>
> Who loses in a true FOSS environment?  The investors.

I don't quite understand how that's true--FOSS is basically a
consortium with open membership, and it's not like investors as a
whole group lose-out on investments made in consortium projects. It
may be more difficult to trace the ultimate gains from participation
in the consortium..., but it seems like someone must have already been
able to make a case in favour of consortia, since they're so common.
Maybe I'm missing something about how participation in FOSS
development is supposed to be different from any other sort of
consortium involvement.

I'm somewhat surprised that none of the FOSS-friendly media picked up
on the (now quasi-)recent interview in which James Cameron, talking
about development that he and his team did while working on `Avatar',
said that they `just considered it completely open-source':

        http://www.studio360.org/episodes/2009/12/18

Did we just get an endorsement from James Cameron?

I can imagine that Cameron would be an Open-Source fan simply because
he'd rather spend his time making *the most profitable movies in
history* than spend it trying to stifle the industry *just enough* to
make a few paltry millions of dollars(!) selling tools.

Maybe everyone just *missed it*, because the remark was made so
casually--so naturally matter-of-fact'ly, as if `Open Source' wasn't
even something `novel' or `weird' enough to bear explaining; as if
it's just `part of everyday life'. That would be profound.

Or maybe that's not what he meant--maybe he had some completely
unrelated definition of "open source" that he was using, as
Christopher Lydon does with his radio show.


> No lawyers.  No Trolls.

And good riddence: if I recall correctly, there have been
research-papers published that show how *harmful* those groups and
their activities are on industry--that the only benefit to dealing
with them is that the ones that you hire may be able to help you
*avoid* the obstacles created by the rest of the ones that you didn't.

-- 
"Don't be afraid to ask (λf.((λx.xx) (λr.f(rr))))."