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Bruce Perens and the OSI board
Bruce Perens and the OSI board
Posted Mar 26, 2008 1:56 UTC (Wed) by landley (subscriber, #6789)In reply to: Bruce Perens and the OSI board by BrucePerens
Parent article: Bruce Perens and the OSI board
> So, to resolve the legal ambiguity you go to LGPL3, GPL3, and Affero > GPL3... Not that I care about your quest to make OSI even more irrelevant by joining it, but the irony of you joining an advocacy organization is just too much. You are the reason I will never write any code under GPL version 3. Before encountering you, I merely thought GPLv3 was a bad idea that I could ignore. Your misguided and aggressive trolling of the busybox list (a full decade after you'd abandoned the project, never posting _once_ to that list until you came back as a troll) is what pushed me over the edge to actively work _against_ GPLv3. These days, I license all my code GPLv2 only, the same license as the Linux kernel. My code _cannot_ be used under the terms of GPLv3, and never will. Although I was never likely to leave GPLv2 behind, you're the one who convinced me to drop the "or later". Because you advocated for GPLv3 _that_badly_. And now you want to join the board of an advocacy organization? Dude: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect
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Maturity (or lack thereof)
Posted Mar 26, 2008 17:26 UTC (Wed) by GreyWizard (subscriber, #1026) [Link]
So you admit that you go out of your way to oppose a license for reasons of petty spite. That's not as impressive as you seem to think.
Maturity (or lack thereof)
Posted Mar 27, 2008 17:36 UTC (Thu) by landley (subscriber, #6789) [Link]
I thought GPLv3 was a bad idea for day 1, long before Bruce showed up. Primarily I thought it was unnecessary, divisive, and an order of magnitude more complicated than its predecessor (which is a big down side all on its own). He didn't change my mind on that. I just wasn't motivated to _do_ anything about it, and was happy to ignore it the way I ignore other licenses (like the CDDL) that I consider a bad idea. Bruce's attempt to advocate in favor of GPLv3 failed so spectacularly it left me motivated to actively oppose GPLv3. His advocacy backfired. The _point_ of my post was that he's not planning to join an advocacy organization to increase the scope of the damage he can do, and alienate more people. However, I expect the actual _effect_ of this would be to cause OSI to collase into complete dysfunctional irrelevance in a few years, due to the kind of infighting Debian suffered in the decade or so after Bruce's leadership of that project. So it probably doesn't really _matter_. I just found it ironic.
Another Fine Rant
Posted Mar 28, 2008 18:00 UTC (Fri) by GreyWizard (subscriber, #1026) [Link]
Yes, yes, yes. I gathered all that from your previous rant. I also noticed that you admitted -- twice now -- that you were planning to do nothing about the GPLv3 until Bruce Perens ticked you off. I'm having trouble imagining the Free Software Foundation trembling in fear of your wrath, but your motivation is clearly petty spite. Since you're wandering off topic at length I'll take the liberty of debunking two of your more bizarre distortions. First, characterizing Perens' activity on the BusyBox list as "advocacy" is a stretch. As I read it he was objecting the removal of the "or later" clause from a project based on his original work and arguments about the merits of the GPLv3 were a side issue. Second, Debian has had infighting for as long as it has been around. Consider what's going on around dpkg for a recent example. Laying this at the feet of Bruce Perens is silly. For someone so concerned with what makes effective advocacy, you seem blissfully unaware of the effect all this foaming at the mouth has on your own credibility.
On the shoulders of Perens and yet kicking his head
Posted Mar 27, 2008 1:07 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]
From your link:The Dunning-Kruger effect is the phenomenon wherein people who have little knowledge tend to think that they know more than they do, while others who have much more knowledge tend to think that they know less.I gather that you are accusing Bruce of having little knowledge while thinking he knows a lot. I don't doubt that you have done a lot for Busybox and helped it to be a hit, but you are aware that he started the project, aren't you?
On the shoulders of Perens and yet kicking his head
Posted Mar 27, 2008 18:07 UTC (Thu) by landley (subscriber, #6789) [Link]
> I gather that you are accusing Bruce of having little knowledge while > thinking he knows a lot. No, I'm using the formulation that uses "skill" instead of knowledge. You can be a quite well-informed klutz. Neither programmers nor lawyers (similar but distinct skill sets) necessarily make good good advocates (essentially a marketing position) or project managers. (Heck, Transmeta made Linus Torvalds a manager and had people reporting to him, and by his own admission he sucked at it. Open source project management and corporate middle management are different skills.) Am I the only one to remember Bruce's tenure at HP? That he was on the OSI board before and that the actions leading to his resignation involved describing Tim O'Reilley as "one of the leading parisites (sic) of the free software community"? Did anyone actually read his Debian resignation letter (http://lwn.net/lwn/1998/0319/resign.html) in the context that A) none of the "more mainstream" distributions he felt he "should be working with" paid him any attention, and B) since then both Knoppix and Ubuntu have made new mainstream distributions based on Debian. Looking at the past full decade of his attempts at this advocacy thing: he's shown much motivation, a reasonable amount of knowledge, and very little skill. This has nothing to do with how well he might program. Al Viro and Cristoph Hellwig are both great programmers, would either of them be your first choice for a public relations position? Rob
Advocacy turned wrong
Posted Mar 27, 2008 23:57 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]
Oh well. That is a massive body of evidence you present: (Bruce tried to advocate for GPLv3 on a mailing list and it backfired on you, whose best man actually did threaten to kill him a decade ago. But let me point out this anecdotal piece of evidence: he has so far convinced 1820 people to sign his online petition, many of which were impartial to his particular plead (at least I know I was).Wait, and then instead of being hired by a major distro like Ubuntu he has worked for Pixar, HP and founded several companies? What a loser!
I'm feeling this strange urge to wipe out every GPLv2-only package from my hard disk. Anybody know how to turn Debian lenny into Nexenta?... just joking.
On the shoulders of Perens and yet kicking his head
Posted Mar 30, 2008 20:10 UTC (Sun) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
Can't say I agree with your tone, Rob, but I do think your message has merit. UserLinux was another particularly salient example.