Re: Revisionist Open Source

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com> wrote:
> Rjack wrote:
>> The conceptual underpinnings of "open source" and its benefits
>> predated ESR

> Of course. It was those underpinnings that inspired Stallman to
> invent his notion of free software, after all, when the openness
> was taken away from him.

> However, the (capitalized) Open Source movement was a deliberate
> counter-reformation to Stallman and the FSF. The movement wanted
> to promote the benefits to companies of an open source model in
> distinction to the FSF-promoted freedom for users. They wanted
> "business-friendly" open source, so that companies and programmers
> could create better software more easily, and not be required to
> provide their users with the four freedoms.

> They are welcome to do that, but the FSF is also free to point out
> the harm of such an approach to the freedom of users. They also
> believe that promoters of Open Source sometimes obfuscate the
> distinction between it and Free Software.

It is also fair to point out that the Open Sourcerers and Freedom people
work together without (much) friction, since the core effort to
implement these philosophies is the same, namely writing good software.
For example, ESR has recently contributed to Emacs.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).