here's the link [LWN.net]

here's the link

Posted Jan 25, 2010 23:33 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544)
In reply to: No philosophy? by dowdle
Parent article: Red Hat launches opensource.com

I was stating fact:

http://opensource.org/history

''The conferees decided it was time to dump the moralizing and confrontational attitude that had been associated with "free software" in the past and sell the idea strictly on the same pragmatic, business-case grounds that had motivated Netscape. They brainstormed about tactics and a new label. "Open source", contributed by Chris Peterson, was the best thing they came up with.''

Reading OSI's history (or just searching the page for "ambig", "price", and "cost" - no hits), I don't see anything to support your suggestion.

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here's the link

Posted Jan 26, 2010 1:26 UTC (Tue) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312) [Link]

Pragmatism is a philosophy, you know. Philosophy is so deeply embedded into
everything we do, think, and say that it is essentially impossible to avoid.
People do philosophy all the time without any particular awareness that is
what they are engaging in.

"Open Source" is based on the philosophy that royalty free, open, modifiable,
and redistributable source code is better for all concerned - as in the world
will be a better place to one degree or another if we avoid the most
pernicious forms of proprietary software and vendor lock-in, to the degree
and at the rate such a transition is economically and pragmatically feasible.

here's the link

Posted Jan 26, 2010 1:32 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

> "Open Source" is based on the philosophy that royalty free, open,
> modifiable, and redistributable source code is better for all concerned

I disagree. That's (presumably) your philosophy, and mine, and the philosophy shared by many people include those who talk about "open source", but we didn't get this idea from OSI or the OSD. As I mention in my comment below, these came from the free software movement and the hacker community. This philosophy *survived* open source, rather than coming from it.

here's the link

Posted Jan 26, 2010 3:01 UTC (Tue) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]

So, you paste a quote confirming what I said and then tell me it is proof that I was wrong? Ok. Just because "open source" as defined by the OSI is not equal to the definition of "free software" as defined by the FSF doesn't mean that "open source" is without ideals. I happen to like both ideals... and many people (including myself) today lump free software and open source software together as FOSS or FLOSS.

They might differ on the why, but the what is very similar. I happen to think free software is enhanced when combined with the ideals of open source and vice versa. Not only can it potentially be morally good, it can also be a superior development model. I'm glad that sharing isn't only good to do, but also beneficial for business. :)

here's the link

Posted Jan 26, 2010 23:15 UTC (Tue) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

Just because "open source" as defined by the OSI is not equal to the definition of "free software" as defined by the FSF

How is it not equal? (hint: it's equal)

here's the link

Posted Jan 27, 2010 0:21 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

Of course I'm wrong, for certain standards. The question is, am I:

A) completely wrong, and the truth is that "open source" really was coined mainly to fix the "no cost" ambiguity? or

B) generally right that distancing themselves from Richard's ideals was a bigger priority than fixing the cost ambiguity, but I've made the slightest historical error or incompleteness which can be used to justify calling me wrong :-)

OSI's history page strongly suggests B. There history page should be either accurate, or a reflection of how *they* see the important points of the meeting & aftermath. (Bruce, it's obvious that *your* goal wasn't to push RMS under the carpet.)

here's the link

Posted Jan 27, 2010 1:02 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

I think it's fair to say that OSI's site doesn't state the history accurately. The folks at the meeting at VA Linux Systems (which I didn't attend - I became involved the next day) were interested in promoting Free Software to business, but as far as I can tell the deprecation of RMS and his philosophy was not on their agenda. If you look at the list of attendees, especially folks like Maddog, many of them are still today pretty sympathetic to Free Software.

The next day the whole thing was introduced to me as marketing Free Software to business. The fact that Eric later engaged in some RMS deprecation was unfortunate and of course never something I wanted or approved of. It should be viewed as Eric's activity, not that of the Open Source initiative.

There is some other statement of history that I dispute on that site. For example, the O'Reilly conference which they seem to view as important in acceptance of Open Source actually came a while after Open Source was announced, and IMO really wasn't important.

And you know full well that the OSD is the Debian Free Software Guidelines with a new title, and even RMS approved of it at the time, so why the heck are you dumping on it?

here's the link

Posted Jan 27, 2010 2:23 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

Thanks for the info about the sequence of events.

OSI used Debian's criteria, which is great, but cut off the philosophy by which Debian rejects (or at least scorns) software that fails the criteria. My negativity is about this de-coupling. People are simply told how to categorise software. Luckily, values of the free software movement and values of the hacker community have survived and exist even in projects which exclusively use "open source" terminology, but this survival seems to have nothing to do with OSI.

So, as I was reading OSI's Annotated OSD (quoted below), looking for philosophy, I though it funny that when I found a clause which could be read as promoting social values, it's immediately followed by a note giving only an efficiency rationale for having this criteria - as if to avoid some horrible confusion that equal access might be a good thing in and of itself.

5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups

The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.

Rationale: In order to get the maximum benefit from the process, the maximum diversity of persons and groups should be equally eligible to contribute to open sources. Therefore we forbid any open-source license from locking anybody out of the process.