[OT] What is Open Source? (was Re: ANN: Twisted 0.16.0...)

[Laura Creighton]

> >>>>> "Laura" == Laura Creighton <lac at strakt.com> writes:
> 
>     Laura> People here seem to be thinking that the GPL is there to
>     Laura> protect creators rights to their software.
> 
> I'm pretty sure that that is what rms has in mind, as long as both
> "creators" and "software" are inclusive collective nouns.
> 
> The consumer protection argument is the OSI line (a special case
> thereof), and rms don't have much truck with anything so economical
> and relativist.

1. Why did you remove my prior line, 'as a thought experiment?'  I put
   it in in order to avoid having this conversation right now?  This
   is very rude.

2. I learned this from RMS himself, when he was living in my house
   about 15 years ago.  Look up 'hoarder' in his writings.  Many of
   those writings were getting composed at about that time, and in
   part come from arguments John Gilmore and I were having with
   him.  RMS called me a software hoarder, because I was writing
   closed-software for pay.  I took great offense because he was
   eating food purchased with this pay.  Much argument ensued.
   I thought that everybody should have the right to do whatever
   they wanted with the property they created, open source it,
   close source it, whatever -- they made it, it is _theirs_.  I
   wanted people to open source whenever possible out of decency
   and kindness, but I did not want to compell them to open source
   their software.  I thought compelling people was a worse sin
   than software hoarding.

   RMS does not see things this way at all.  He thinks that software
   hoarding is a worse sin than compelling, indeed he wants a world
   where the idea of 'having the right to close source your program'
   is greeted with the same sort of horror as 'having the right to
   sell your children into slavery'.  He doesn't want software to be
   property in the sense that it is now.

   I want the same world.  RMS and I are only fighting about the
   implementation details, and the philosophical underpinnings.  (But
   that is _pleanty_.  It takes about 45 seconds for RMS and I to be
   in the same room for an argument to start.  But since we rarely see
   each other, this is not a problem.)

   And I am now with RMS -- I think software hoarding is so vile that
   I want laws preventing it.  But until we have such laws, everybody
   has to do whatever their own consciences dictate.

3. I'm glad you recognised the OSI line, and even the rhetoric.  Eric
   Raymond showed up at my house the week after.  We discussed what
   Eric is now calling 'sustainable public rhetoric' a _lot_.  I
   thought that if businesses were too stupid to already know that
   'the tools you use to run your business -- being able to fix them
   when they break -- good idea' then educating them was a waste of
   time.  But I was perfectly willing to help Eric come up with
   rhetoric -- I didn't think that RMS's vision was going to happen
   until the hypothetical Socialist World Government nationalised the
   entire labour force, something which I most devoutly wanted to
   prevent.  I thought that it would take something like that for it
   to happen -- but then I expected the GPL to be tossed out of an
   American court on a legal challenge more than a decade ago, as
   well.

   My judgement about American courts and American businesses has an
   inperfect track record.  Remember this when I discuss what I know of
   them.

4. I am not in the channelling RMS business, even the channelling RMS
   of a decade ago business.  If anybody out there wants to find out
   what RMS thinks of something -- go volunteer for something and then
   ask him.  I guarantee you will learn something.

Laura