LCA: Addressing the failure of open source [LWN.net]

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 19, 2012 17:07 UTC (Thu) by BenHutchings (subscriber, #37955)
Parent article: LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

The open source movement was always about the idea that opening up software development could make it more efficient (an extremely questionable idea in general). I think it's disingenuous of Bruce Perens to pretend that by promoting the 'open source' brand he was doing anything other than de-emphasising user freedom, or that this failure could not have been expected.

(Log in to post comments)

LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

Posted Jan 24, 2012 20:45 UTC (Tue) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

Ben,

I think Eric Raymond said "I just want software that doesn't suck", but this doesn't mean that anyone else adopted it as their official philosophy. Open Source has always been a marketing program for Free Software, intended to bring it to people that were not being reached by the then-existing Free Software campaign, especially business people. Bringing them in did mean that we did not require them to a priori accept the value of software freedom, as the Free Software campaign did, we expected them to use the software first and learn the value of freedom by doing so. Some did, some didn't. I am astonished by the conversions of some past adversaries in the business world.