Maturity (or lack thereof) [LWN.net]

Maturity (or lack thereof)

Posted Mar 27, 2008 17:36 UTC (Thu) by landley (subscriber, #6789)
In reply to: Maturity (or lack thereof) by GreyWizard
Parent article: Bruce Perens and the OSI board

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.

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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.