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

[Jim Thompson]

On Nov 21, 2006, at 9:09 PM, Julian Yap wrote:

> On Tue, 2006-11-21 at 18:16 -1000, Hawaii Linux Institute wrote:
>> Jim Thompson wrote:
>>> The "term" Open Source was a marketing campaign, promulgated by Eric
>>> Raymond,
>> What's wrong with a marketing campaign?  The more the merrier.
>>
>> If I can live comfortably on donations, I wouldn't mind insisting  
>> that
>> every piece of software to "free", whatever that means.  Wayne
>
> The problem is that "Open Source" is a muddied definition.  All it
> really focuses on is the development model and hence access to the
> source code.

True, but its worse than that.  The "Open Source Definition" created  
a situation where the lawyer (at the time) for OSI (Larry Rosen, whom
some of you met at the first TPOSSCON) correctly interpreted that any  
software license that met the OSD *must* be accepted by the OSI
as an "Open Source License".

Since the OSD was poorly developed, we got "license proliferation",  
and the term "Open Source" was diluted so badly that it can't be  
trademarked,
and therefore can't be protected.  ("Open Source" literally became  
"too descriptive" and the PTO rejected the application for "Open  
Source", though
"OSI certified" later became a registered trademark.)

Therefore, the phrase "Open Source" can (and is) used for anything.   
It has no meaning.  We have "Open Source Company", Open Source  
Developers Day”
(August 1998), and we even got an executive from a software company  
proposing that his company's products were "internal open source",  
because the
support staff at his company could read the source and fix bugs.

And when you think about it, the last of these exactly fits the  
definition commonly used for "Open Source", that of its "superior  
development model".

And the whole idea was bad from the very start.

> The term "free" too is a muddied term in the English language as many
> hear and think free as in $0.

A person can not be "free" in this definition.

Land (or any other "real property") can not be "free" in this  
definition either, but I digress.

> The Free Software (http://www.gnu.org/) movement however stands for  
> freedom in terms of liberty, not price.
>
> As a result, an "Open Source" person can look at things without  
> considering freedom.

Which makes "Open Source" no different than "Extreme Programming".   
Its fine for what it is, but its not a way
to meet the goal of Software Freedom.

> Proprietary software companies build of the term "Open Source" and
> tackle the issue in terms of convenience or cost.
>
> For example, Xen virtualization comes along as Free Software.  VMWare
> then responds by putting out a version of their product, VMware  
> Server,
> as $0.  Microsoft does the same and releases Microsoft Virtual PC 2004
> as $0.  Are you then inclined to use either VMWare or Virtual PC?

Or:

Are you inclined to use Internet Explorer?  Its also "No Cost".


> A Free Software person considers freedoms of the user and therefore
> opposes DRM.  "Open Source" only cares if the program used to  
> propagate
> DRM is "Open Sourced".

Moreoer, leading "Open Source" proponents advocate that licensing  
(software) patents is a "good thing".   ESR said this only months ago  
about
the MP3 (etc) patents in his efforts to "help" his new friends at  
Linspire.

Course, one needs only to look at the Microsoft - Novell deal to see  
just how bad that is.

"Open Source" is dead.  Microsoft co-opted it for its own use.
Film at 11.

jim