Gentoo Linux founder to 'educate' Microsoft (News.com)

Posted Jun 16, 2005 17:13 UTC (Thu) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

A good look at the facts should reveal that most if not all of those
accusations were the result of a man mistaking his image in the mirror for
an assumed opponent. What I mean is that a close read of the facts --
even as presented on the zynot site itself, will demonstrate that the guy
making the accusations had nearly all the qualities he was accusing
the /other/ guy of having.

Ask yourself this. Daniel Robbins had a background in earlier Linux and
in FreeBSD, where he spent a few years and where he got the ideas for what
later became portage, borrowed from FreeBSD ports. He certainly had
enough background in free source and its various licenses to have a good
idea what he was doing, when he chose the policy of making the GPL the
license under which all Gentoo projects would sit. Does that sound like
the type of guy that's mainly interested in his own gain -- in taking it
private? Not to me it doesn't! Despite the accusations, there's little
or no evidence backing them up.

OTOH, take a look at the other guy and /his/ background, then take a look
at his stated plans for Zynot. He was forking Gentoo because the license
Daniel deliberately chose allowed him to do so. At the same time, he had
a whole list of criticisms based on his closed source background of how
open source was doing it wrong, and how Zynot would work so much better
with a top-down management directed environment. Anybody who's spent time
in the open source community should know how /that/ will go over with most
open source developers, and the community in general -- like a lead
balloon, which is about how Zynot ended up going over -- it never got much
of anywhere and was eventually dropped, despite being able to get a
jump-start from Gentoo's GPLed code. The guy basically had no feel for
the open source community and how it worked at all!

Contrast that with what happened to Gentoo since then. Yes, Daniel had
made some mistakes, but Gentoo was doing well before all this came up. It
had the potential of killing Gentoo but it didn't. In ordered to do the
best he could by Gentoo and prevent those personal accusations from
affecting Gentoo any more than necessary, DR did two things. First, he
completed the setup of the not-for-profit Gentoo Foundation as he'd always
promised, and handed over to it all his Trademark and copyright rights.
Second, after seeing that safely setup, he distanced himself from the
distribution he created, so the personal accusations still following him
to this day wouldn't affect Gentoo more than it already had.

You see, when I was considering switching to Gentoo, I checked all this
out (tho the NFP was still being setup and DR hadn't fully pulled out yet
because he couldn't until there was that legal entity to transfer his
claims to). As I said, it quickly became apparent what the /real/ story
was, from the guy making the accusations himself! Time has only proven
that to be the case.

....

Back on topic, I know not what Daniel Robbins is really doing at MS,
besides the headlines, but he's a pretty sharp dude, who has already paid
his dues to the FLOSS community. Whether or not MS (or part of it) has or
is changing, I'm convinced he believes it is or he wouldn't be there.
Ultimately, MS /must/ accept coexistence with open source and indeed
libreware as well, making its products available on the platform, or it
will be confined to a smaller and smaller portion of the market. What's
to say they (or at least some element of MS) hasn't realized that and the
recent noises about being friendly, while rather awkward and uncoordinated
so far, aren't the beginning of that realization. Whether or not they are
actually changing or are only faking, they've obviously convinced Daniel
Robbins, or I doubt he'd be there. I can only hope that he overpowers the
forces of the dark side, rather than them overpowering him, and he doesn't
get to mangled in the process. Time will tell, I guess.

Duncan