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

[Jim Thompson]

The "term" Open Source was a marketing campaign, promulgated by Eric  
Raymond, to make Free Software "safe for business", and cloak himself  
in glory...

That goal seems to have been reached, though not in the way that "the  
community" might have liked.  MSFT has now "co-opted" "Open Source"  
for its own ends.

Embrace and Extend anyone?

As you know, Raymond later claimed that 'we no longer need the GPL".   
I suggest that the opposite is true, and that we've never needed it  
more.

(Note that the BSD license is a "Free Software" license, as is the X  
license.)


On Nov 21, 2006, at 12:06 PM, Dave Burns wrote:

> 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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