Re: Revisionist Open Source

[Rjack]

Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
> "I never imagined that the Free Software Movement would spawn a 
> watered-down alternative, the Open Source Movement, which would 
> become so well-known that people would ask me questions about
> 'open source' thinking that I work under that banner."; Richard
> Stallman http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/RMS
>
> Even though the BSD license was first used in 1980, 
> http://www.linfo.org/bsdlicense.html and the first use of the GPL
>  license was in 1988, http://www.free-soft.org/gpl_history/ the 
> outright lying and revisionist propaganda efforts of the Free 
> Software Foundation continue to this day.
>
> Where exactly did RMS imply that the BSD license was written
> before the GNU GPL?
>
> The Open Source movement was created after the Free Software
> movement, you can ask ESR about that.

The conceptual underpinnings of "open source" and its benefits
predated ESR -- you're indulging in revisionist history again. The
term "open source" wasn't formally coined until 1998 around the code
for Netscape Navigator -- long after computer program source code
was openly available. Playing with the word "movement" until it fits
your particular definition is constrained by *real* open source
philosophy and history.

The Computer Science Research Group (1977-1995) at Berkeley was one
of the root source communities underlying open source software. The
Free Software movement was "spawned" by MIT's Richard Stallman and
his attempt to co-opt open source code licensing. By no stretch of
the imagination did the CSRG co-opt the closed socialist goals of
RMS -- that's simply revisionist bullshit from Stallman worshippers.

Sincerely,
Rjack :)