Interview: OSI's new president [LWN.net]

Interview: OSI's new president

Posted Feb 2, 2005 3:28 UTC (Wed) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559)
Parent article: Interview: OSI's new president

Not so sure on this guy, he regularly posts in Slashdot and comes across as a little snarky and sometimes flat-out mean...in my opinion if you are going to be a leader you have to chose to simply ignore and rise above 99% of comments, emails, postings...otherwise you get drawn into these debates that always end with personal jabs. Wading hip-deep into Slashdot flame fests can only damage a reputation, particularly if you chose to use your real name (not advised). Already he has posted several times in the Slashdot story about his own appointment, which I can say with full certainty is ill-advised.

That said, he can only be better than ESR. Eric made good arguments from time to time and is clearly intelligent, but there is this other side to him that is straight-up creepy...and unfortunately the creepy side is in full public view on his website.

In any case its not clear what OSI's role is anymore, outside the obvious arbiter of licenses. Maybe Russ can make it relevant again, who knows.

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Interview: OSI's new president

Posted Feb 2, 2005 3:49 UTC (Wed) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link]

Wading hip-deep into Slashdot flame fests can only damage a reputation, particularly if you chose to use your real name (not advised). Already he has posted several times in the Slashdot story about his own appointment, which I can say with full certainty is ill-advised.

This is kinda amusing coming from someone named "b7j0c". While getting into flamewars is probably not the _best_ habit, I respect someone who uses their real name a lot more than I would if I knew that person was nice with their public identity but "snarky" (as you say) all day long under a handle.

Interview: OSI's new president

Posted Feb 2, 2005 6:26 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

"slaves only paid a quarter"? Wow.

Interview: OSI's new president

Posted Feb 7, 2005 16:00 UTC (Mon) by RussNelson (guest, #27730) [Link]

"slaves only paid a quarter"? Wow. Put on your economist's hat, Joe (if you have one). The slaves worked, and they were compensated for their work with food, clothing, and shelter. That's a form of pay; low pay to be sure, but compensation for work. More on this topic at my blog: http://angry-economist.russnelson.com -russ

Interview: OSI's new president

Posted Feb 10, 2005 10:22 UTC (Thu) by zerblat (guest, #644) [Link]

That doesn't make sense to me (but then, I don't have an economist's hat, thankfully). Slaves aren't compensated, they are provided with whatever they require to stay alive and healthy enough to work. Or perhaps you compensate your car for its valuble service of taking you from A to B by paying it in the form of gas, oil and whatever maintainance it needs?

Interview: OSI's new president

Posted Feb 10, 2005 15:27 UTC (Thu) by RussNelson (guest, #27730) [Link]

I don't have an economist's hat, thankfully.

Wow. That's a really weird thing to say. If you said "I don't have an mathematician's hat, but I really think that 2+2=5", a lot of readers would say "yeah, that follows logically, you would think that". If you don't know anything about economics, then you should expect your economic reasoning to be little better than guessing.

Getting to your point, if slaves were indeed machines (the analogy you make), that is how you would look at it economically. But slaves weren't machines. They were able to withdraw their labor for reasons unrelated to their bodily maintenance. Cars don't do that, so your analogy falls down. Slaves would sabotage their work, work poorly, pretend to be stupid, pretend to not speak English, or even remove their entire work product by escaping temporarily or permanently. All of those took courage, and were the result of human choice. Slaves were people; some of them accepted their lot, and others struggled against it until the day they died, or were killed. Slaves that worked chose to work; alternatives were available to them. They weren't good alternatives, but they sometimes they were better than working. You have to conclude that because slaves (who knew their choices better than you or I) sometimes made that choice. You have to consider their maintenance as wages from an economic analysis of slavery.

There are still slaves today even though many nations have outlawed slavery. If you are concerned about slavery, go read Free The Slaves's website. Modern slavery is typically of a different form than the American outright ownership of a person. It typically uses debtor's laws, and the slave's moral unwillingness to repudiate a debt, to keep the slave under control. The slave is induced, by force or by fraud, to enter into a situation where they require credit to get a job. For example, they have to pay for a bus ride to get to a remote workplace, and once there, they cannot take a different job. Once they owe money, they are kept from ever paying back that debt. It's a nasty, nasty situation.

Russ Nelson quotes from Slashdot article

Posted Feb 2, 2005 6:11 UTC (Wed) by stevenj (guest, #421) [Link]

I didn't know anything about Russ Nelson before today, so I'm just looking through a few of his posts on Slashdot to get it from the horse's mouth. Here are a few of the things he wrote (trying to sample all of the substantive comments, omitting jokes...no particular order):

here: You've just put your finger on why the patent system is so evil (or, more technically, its costs exceed its benefits): because ideas are reinvented all the time. Rewards for inventing go, not to the inventor who has filed a patent, but to the inventor who gets his invention into the marketplace. A patent helps but slightly in that process even in the best hopes of the theory.
here: My point remains. Generally Americans are happy to let others live and let live. The American government, on the other hand, is a lot less tolerant. Lemme see, Trail of Tears: yup, US Federal Government policy of "Indian removal."
here: It [open source]has become more than a merely descriptive phrase, though. It has become a well known term; a trademark if even I may say. If you talk about Open Source Software, people know that you are referring to a specific class of software, all of which have licenses approved by OSI. There is cause and effect here between our promotion of the term, and people's use of it. Very early on, I heard the term, felt it to be more accurate than "Free Software" (after all, it's not about price, it's about openness), and adopted it for my own software, long before I was elected to the board of OSI.
here: It's not that freedom has ever been a non issue or a side issue. How could you have open source software without freedom? It's that we haven't tried to sell the idea of freedom in the way that RMS does. In a world where the citizens of most developed nations have half their incomes wrested from them by the state (slaves only paid about a quarter, effectively), how widely supported do you think the idea of "freedom" is? Look at the recent report about American high school students having almost no respect for the first amendment? In a world where there still exist ANY people who think socialism is a good thing (hello slashdot posters!), it's too risky to tie the acceptance of open source to the acceptance of freedom. The first, you see, is the reality of freedom; the second is the naming of it. I'd rather have a pound of gold and not know what to call it, than to have a piece of paper with the words "a pound of gold" written on them. The thing is not the name and never has been (outside certain fantasy books about magic, of course).
here: I'm just frustrated with RMS. I've tried to explain differently to him for, well, for years now. He continues to contend that open source is just a development methodology whereas free software has a philosophical basis. I was just reading in Reason Magazine today that Ayn Rand didn't like libertarians because they didn't have an epistemology explaining WHY they were libertarians. Who cares why you prefer freedom? The fact of the matter is that open source is inseparable from free software. Give up the one and you lose the other. So what is RMS worried about? I don't understand.
here: I think you've been drinking too much of the kook-aid that RMS has been handing out.
here: Sun's patent-encumbered license? I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you're talking about. I don't think you understand what you're talking about either. Maybe you should explain it to both of us. Remember that I'm not very smart, so please use small words.
If the CDDL is a weapon against free software, why isn't the Mozilla license a weapon against free software? The two of them differ only slightly.

CDDL lures

Posted Feb 3, 2005 1:11 UTC (Thu) by grouch (guest, #27289) [Link]

"If the CDDL is a weapon against free software, why isn't the Mozilla license a weapon against free software? The two of them differ only slightly."

A rattlesnake and a garter snake differ only slightly, too. How many Mozilla software patents have been promised to open source developers? The little difference between the Mozilla license and the CDDL is all about patents. CDDL allows Sun to cuddle up to developers without disclosing information about patents, which is what that clause deals with that appears in the Mozilla license but which was left out of CDDL.

CDDL lures

Posted Feb 7, 2005 16:36 UTC (Mon) by RussNelson (guest, #27730) [Link]

CDDL allows Sun to cuddle up to developers without disclosing information about patents

Sun's opinion is that that matter is better addressed in the contribution agreement. When you give software to them, they'll have an agreement between you and them for the use and disposition of that code. You should expect to see that agreement address patents. They hear your concerns and intend to address them. Write some code for Open Solaris, contribute it to Sun, and see if you're still unhappy.
-russ

Interview: OSI's new president

Posted Feb 3, 2005 10:23 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

For what it is worth, which isn't much, I've been around in this community for at least 10 years and I tend to think that Russ is a good guy. He's more "reasonable" than ESR in my opinion.

For what it's worth (and it's far less than what your word is worth), I agree. ESR has a habit of ranting in public in a frighteningly serious manner about subjects on which his opinions are extreme even for US society and outright loony in the rest of the Western world. Russ is less over the top, generally keeps his politics a bit quieter, and uses humour to try to keep things from turning into flamewars. That counts for a lot, I think. :)

This is not to say that ESR is any sort of `bad person' (he's not; even though his opinions are extreme, they're not dangerous) or that there's anything wrong with his expressing his opinion, but when you're in a (semi?) public role like OSI president, it helps not to do things that actively frighten away people who should be your friends.

On the other hand, I'm the guy who brought you BitKeeper with that oh so awful license so salt heavily.

Said license has already led to the total destruction of all other version control programs, the banning of discussion of version control by anyone whose surname does not start with the letters M and c, and the disintegration of society as we know it. Hadn't you noticed? :)