[LUAU] the term "open source" is dead, says Eben Moglen

Dave Burns tburns at hawaii.edu
Tue Nov 21 14:06:57 PST 2006


Did this make sense in context? I have no idea what they are trying to say.
Why do they think "Open Source" is dead?
TDB

On 11/21/06, Jim Thompson <jim at netgate.com> wrote:
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/20/
> eben_moglen_on_microsoft_novell/page2.html
>
> The Novell-Microsoft deal certainly shows Redmond's desire to draw a
> line between the "free"and "open" communities. In an interview on
> Friday, Bill Gates was effusive in his praise for the "purity" of
> Richard Stallman, the original author of the GPL.
>
> Did the term "Open Source" mean anything, any longer?
>
> "They're going to have to co-opt a new vocabulary," thought Moglen,
> "because the old vocabulary just died on them."
>
> "I agree with you. This was the week 'Open Source' ceased to be a
> useful phrase because it denoted everything up to and including
> Microsoft's attempts to destroy free. Language is subject to this
> problem. Since the beginning of time uprising movements have taken
> pleasure in perverting the language of criticism used against them by
> the ancien regime - the 'brave beggars' of the Netherlands, and
> Yankee Doodle, and the Whigs and the Tories - it's all the same terms
> of dis-endearment turned into a weapon. But the game is also played
> by modern propaganda in the other direction - by turning language
> into the property of the guy on top: Fox News "Fair & Balanced (tm)".
>
> "What Microsoft did to 'Open Source' was what Stallman always said
> could be done to it: first you take the politics out, and when the
> veal has been bleached absolutely white, you can cover it with any
> sauce you like. And that's what Microsoft did, and 'Open Source'
> became the sauce on top of Microsoft proprietarianism. And once that
> process has been completed they have to go after the next vocabulary."
>
> And now?
>
> "So now they're going to try the hard work of cracking 'Freedom'.
> Free, well that means stuff you don't pay for..."
>
> Microsoft had always been very astute in its analysis, we suggested.
> While the press focused on the open, or distributed nature of the
> production process, Redmond identified the fact that the GPL was
> viral as the real attack. "That's right. They understood the copyleft
> problem well - and understood the GPL well. But they didn't want to
> talk about the enemy because of the rule in American political
> campaigns that you don't say the name of your opponent in case people
> remember it. They don't do that anymore. They've dropped the mask,"
> he suggested.
>
> "What's happened is that "Open Source" has died as a useful phrase -
> Free Software, the GPL, the FSF - all have become major stakeholders
> in the industry in Microsoft's verbiage."
>
> "Once you're a major stakeholder you don't go back to being a minor
> stakeholder unless you go bankrupt - and we can never go bankrupt
> because we have no business to lose.
>
> "So if we're a major stakeholder now we stay that way until the end
> of the chapter, and that's a problem for Microsoft."
>
> ---
>
> See also:
> http://news.com.com/New+GPL+clause+to+flip+Microsoft-Novell+agreement
> +on+its+head/2100-1016_3-6137486.html
> http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2168151/novells-opens-microsoft
>
>
>
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