Re: GPLv3 comedy unfolding -- Lyons: The breakup

[Alexander Terekhov]

http://floatingpoint.wordpress.com/2006/11/03/whats-really-happening-here

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The breakup: Pragmatists versus extremists
November 3rd, 2006 

Step back a bit and look at recent events. The GPLv3 fiasco, with HP and
OSDL griping about FSF, and Stallman refusing to accommodate corporate
types and trying to screw TiVo, among others; the Oracle move on Red
Hat; the Microsoft move on Novell and Red Hat, which was sanctioned and
even encouraged by OSDL (they were at the conference, and in fact were
the ones who leaked this info to the press yesterday). What’s happening?
The long-simmering tension between the two camps within Linux is now
boiling to the surface, and the market is blowing apart. Richard
Stallman and his band of merry anarchists have overplayed their hand
with the GPLv3, and angered everyone on the other side of the table. By
playing such a big role yesterday, OSDL, a vendor- and customer-funded
consortium, was very publicly telling the Stallmanites: Bye bye.

Crunchies versus suits. Extremists versus pragmatists. Collaborators
versus the resistance. Open source versus proprietary. Stallman versus
Torvalds. Religious crusaders versus business people. Call it what you
want. These two camps have had an uneasy alliance for years. Now the
breach is coming. It needs to happen. Both sides need to be rid of each
other. The pragmatists can go forward with a great low-cost high-value
operating system, building a platform on which to build a new ecosystem
that can innovate and deliver value, creating a heterogeneous
environment where proprietary code and open code can coexist. The
crunchies can go back to screwing around with HURD and all those other
little pieces that don’t really work right, and they can all turn their
copyrights over to Stallman and obey his every command and wait years
and years for new features that still won’t really work right; but at
least they’ll be able to sleep at night telling themselves that yes,
even though their printer doesn’t work right, and they can’t open
Powerpoint slides or run that video clip that everyone else is talking
about, well, at least they’re still free.

On behalf of everyone in the former camp, OSDL is saying to the
Stallmanites: Please go away. Take your code and go back to your
sandbox. Howl about Microsoft and have your little “debates” about
freedom and file your little lawsuits over model train software and
write your tricky little licenses that nobody understands, and let the
rest of us get on with the business of running computers and writing
software and making money. Please. You’ve had your fifteen minutes. Now
go away.
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regards,
alexander.