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The Internet

Open Source Bill of Rights, and Beyond 53

Posted by JonKatz from the Revolution dept.
In the powerful new book "Open Sources, Voices from the Open Source Revolution" Bruce Perens of the Open Source Initiative and others describe the process by which they helped create the Open Source movement and established the radical notion that computer users had rights. This was -- is -- a shocking idea for most of the people who buy computers and struggle with expensive equipment, rapidly-obsolete software, and companies that keep their operating systems and other programs secret. The Open Source Bill of Rights is an idea whose time has come. And for the sometimes beleaguered new citizens of the Internet, the notion could be taken even further

(Note: Maybe because I read it in one sitting in a hotel on the edge of San Francisco's Mission district, where many of the Net's architects still live and work and where Hotwired, the first Website I wrote for, is located, I was blown away by Open Sources, Voices from the Open Source Revolution, published by O'Reilly ($24.95). I've been struggling to learn about OS and free software and to acquire and learn Linux on my new box. I'm not there yet, but I'm not inclined to quit, and the voices in this book explain why.

The programmers, hackers and others developing OS are freedom fighters, guerillas of the Information Age; the Open Source and Free Software movements are both radical and unprecedented. There's a lot at stake in whether or not they succeed; whether the Internet remains the freest culture in the world or suffers the fate of off-line media - becoming corporatized, homogenized, mass-marketed and pervasively censored. Open Source Voices is an important document, and this is the first of several columns about it.)

Every significant movement seems to have a book that sparks or defines it, from environmentalism's "Silent Spring" to Mao's little red volume. Open Sources is that kind of ideological book.

It charts the growth of OSS from a hacker's fantasy to a bull-blown technomovement, one that has membership in the millions, gives Microsoft fits, and, potentially at least, alters the laws and structures of media.

When I began reading the voices in Open Sources - including Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation, Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly & Associates, Bruce Perens and Eric Raymond of the Open Source Initiative, and Linus Torvalds (Linux) - I expected to hear a description of a new kind of technology. But what's captured is the birth of a movement.

Almost from the beginning, the political ideas underscoring the creation, design and growth of the Net have had to do with the liberation of information from its many powerful, greedy, sometimes stingy gatekeepers. A generation of digital engineers created a new kind of information architecture: it used to trickle down from the top but increasingly, it moves laterally and rises from the bottom as well.

Linux and other OS systems didn't just happen. Torvalds and other programmers designed and improved the kernel, and Linux spread from there. As contributor Eric Raymond describes a l998 meeting with a number of people involved in Linux and Netscape, the group realized that the idea of free and shared software needed a strategy if it was to grow.

"The real conceptual breakthrough," he writes, "was admitting to ourselves that what we needed to mount was in effect a marketing campaign - and that it would require marketing techniques (spin, image-building, and re-branding) to make it work."

The strategy did work, brilliantly. The Open Source software movement is one of the fastest-growing technological ideas on the Net.

The Open Source Definition, the code that defines the movement, is the computer user's first bill of rights. Apart from Thomas Jefferson's and his pal Thomas Paine's idea that the press be democratic and free, there's never been anything approaching one before. But as the Information Revolution has mushroomed in the Digital Age, the idea seems long overdue.

Conventional media remains top-down and arrogant. As the year-long wallow in the Lewinsky scandal - opposed from the outset by a significant majority of the American public - demonstrates, individual consumers have few media rights. The media considers them too ignorant or wanton to be taken into account. Not only are their wishes and agendas ignored, but the giant corporations that increasingly control computer software and technology actually promote confusion and planned obsolescence.

The Open Source Definition defines certain rights that a software licensor must grant its users in order to be certified as Open Source. In exchange, companies that use OS have the advantage of rapid development, often with a number of collaborating companies, and many of the advances are contributed by individual users.

Open Source users are assured of these rights, write Perens in Open Sources:

* The right to make copies of a program, and distribute them.

* Access to the software's server code, a necessary preliminary to changing it.

* The right to make improvements. ***

The notion of free access to networked computing, the information it leads to, and its other benefits isn't a new computing idea; it may, in fact, be the very earliest one.

In l968, J.C.R. Licklider, a computer pioneer at the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency, which commissioned the research that led to the Internet, wrote an essay called "The Computer as a Communication Device."

In a few years, Licklider predicted, humanity would be able to communicative more effectively through a machine than face to face. "For the society," he wrote, "the impact will be good or bad, depending mainly on the question: Will ?to be online? be a privilege or a right? If only a favored segment of the population gets a chance to enjoy the advantage of ?intelligence amplification? the network may exaggerate the discontinuity in the spectrum of intellectual opportunity." But if the network should prove to do for education what a few "have envisioned in hope? surely the boon to humankind would be beyond measure," he wrote hopefully.

Although the Net was initially designed, expanded and shaped by hackers, academics and scientists, by the mid 80's corporations - Microsoft foremost among them - moved aggressively to develop and dominate the operating systems that run most personal computers, as well as the soaring information and service markets spawned by the Net.

As a result, few computer users understood how their machines work. The code that ran the systems were kept secret, al the better - and easier - to charge for them. People couldn't communicate with anyone but the manufacturers about their problems, and that was never easy. Technical support became synonymous not with deserved and timely assistance but with a consumer nightmare - remote companies, long waits, confusing information from people who were largely unaccountable. The irony was secret, expensive software that made it possible to use the wide-open culture of the Internet and World Web.

If any other industry operated this way, journalists and politicians would have been up in arms; laws and dicta from regulatory agencies would come showering down. But most Americans know so little about the computers they use that they are unaware of their rights. It was the founders of the Open Source movement who came up with the idea that certain fundamental rights were inherent in the Internet, a new kind of nation.

This is, in fact, a radical idea. Americans never had the computing "rights" that Perens suggests. They didn't think of themselves as having any. They couldn't copy or distribute their software programs or access the software's source code in order to change it; they couldn't improve the programs they'd purchased, only buy expensive updates and replacements..

But that's changed. A a growing number of large corporations, including IBM, have adopted Open Source as a strategy for preventing Microsoft from completely dominating the computer industry. "?The most reliable indication of the future of Open Source," writes Perens, "is its past: in just a few years, we have gone from nothing to a robust body of software that solves many different problems and is reaching the million-user count. There's no reason for us to slow down now."

Open Source is still too complex for most Americans, it's support still too primitive. Many of the amateur programmers working on systems like Linux aren't motivated by the political generousity Perens describes; to them, it's a hobby or a badge. Some are arrogant in their own turn, seeing themselves a closed society increasingly being violated by ignorant, undeserving outsiders.

But they are going to have lots of company, like it or not. Americans and people in other countries love having rights, and have a long history of asserting them. Linux users are growing at the rate of 40 per cent a year. Open Source is an idea whose time has definitely come. Microsoft is being challenged across the board by systems like Linux, Apache and BeOS as well as by the federal lawsuit. Millions of computer-abused people all over the world are itching for their rights; they're ready to learn more about the necessary technologies.

In fact, Perens? list of rights could be longer, extending beyond Open Source. I'd propose a few additions. Computer users have the right to freely access the Internet and the World Wide Web, for instance. The oft-censored young, in particular, ought to have the right of access to new information technologies like the Net and the Web, which increasingly determine cultural literacy, social connectivity, and their economic futures.

Citizens of the Internet, once arrived there, are entitled to speak freely, unencumbered by censorious legislators or abusive flamers. They have the right to a wider range of choices about the computers and software they buy, the software that runs them, the means by which they access information. They have the right to purchase software and computing machines that last longer.. They also have the right to find technical and other support for the software and machinery they buy.

Online and off, there is a growing awareness that the Net isn't just a story about technology, but a fundamental change in culture and society. As the significance of the Net becomes more obvious by the day, the idea of rights of access and use become more important.

And as consciousness about the Internet grows, so do the politics surrounding it. The open source movement echoes one of the deepest and most fundament political traditions in American life. When Thomas Paine wrote his landmark essay "The Rights Of Man" from a French prison in 1791, he presented it to George Washington with this prayer: "That the Rights of Man may become as universal as your benevolence can wish, and that you may enjoy the happiness of seeing the New World regenerate the Old..." Amen.

"Originally, cable television was just meant to improve your picture reception," Bran Ferren, the chief Disney Imagineer is quoted as saying in Richard Rhodes new book ?Visions of Technology. "Theater people used to think that the idea of motion pictures was ridiculous. But the Net, I guarantee you, really is fire. I think it's more important than the invention of movable type." jonkatz@slashdot.org
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Open Source Bill of Rights, and Beyond More

Open Source Bill of Rights, and Beyond

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  • one little, two little, three little endians,
    four little, five little, six little endians,
    seven little, eight little, nine little endians,
    ten little endian words,


    Sorry, couldn't help myself
  • I agree with your comments about `usage'. Others keep complaining that most people don't have a need for the source, or the ability to do anything with it, but that's not the point.

    The whole point of free software (I prefer `free' to `open source', means more to me) is that these people have the choice to make use of the source to the best of their ability, even if it means aquiring new skills. The option to tinker/distribute/hack/whatever is the point of free software, not the obligation (what obligation, I never felt (externaly) obligated to do anything with software other than get something done so I get my payslip).

  • > Citizens of the Internet, once arrived there, are entitled to speak freely, unencumbered by [...] abusive flamers.

    Umm... does anyone else see the logical inconsistancy inherent in this statement? Hint: Flamers are "Citizens of the Internet", too.

  • I'm not seeking protections, or attempting to define an "Internet citizen", whatever that may be (In the context it was originally used, it sounds like anyone who gets hooked up to the Internet is instantly an "Internet citizen".). I'm simply pointing out that the difference between someone rambling on in a public forum about (e.g.) the rights of Internet citizens, and someone making the observation in the same public forum that aforementioned rambler is (e.g.) a long-winded twit, is merely one of content.

    Based on this reasoning and the statement that "Internet citizens" should have certain rights that should be denied to "flamers", Katz seems to be expressing the opinion that the right to communicate should be given or withheld on the basis of content... and that's a short and slippery slope straight to 1984.
  • Well, according to the dictionary beside me, "citizen" is defined as a person who owes loyalty to and is entitled to the protection of a government.

    In the case of the internet, what is this government, and how is this loyalty expressed or broken?

  • I wrote a response, but it appears that I may have neglegted to submit it. (Or, maybe, I was bitten by the technical difficulties.)

    I began by appealing to the definition of "citizen" that I had in my dictionary: A person who owes loyalty to and is entitled to protection of a government.

    I think it's clear that the protection you want is the right to flame. What, then, is the loyalty that you owe? How can it be violated? What is the government in the case of "internet citizenry", and is treason possible? What happens when the owed-loyalty is not given?

  • That's an interesting observation. It makes me wonder how society would handle computer-simulated child pornography -- where the content was entirely synthetic (i.e. no children were involved). I would be tempted to take a step down the short & slippery slope to 1984 and ban its distribution on the basis of content alone; but, then, I have children.
  • You hit the nail on the head, Cassius.

    Does anyone else find it vaguely staggering to
    see an article by jon katz, wannabe new media
    great mind, talking about how monumental a
    book by bruce perens, wannabe free/open/whatever
    source great mind, is?
  • "they couldn't improve the programs they'd purchased, only buy expensive updates and replacements.. "

    I'm sure writers who can't even install Linux are going to be re-writing Word, eh? Open source is of most use to companies who have people on board that can REALLY change the software so they don't have to worry about forced migrations and other nasty bits from vendors.

    Is he really saying you have the rights to other people's privately-developed anything?

    Does he really think most people want to ACTUALLY program the VCR when they can't set the time?

    Real people just want stuff to work and not be taken to the cleaners for it. That's a far cry from "gimme the source to WordStar".
  • Check out the copyright on the articles---you can copy them freely---O'Reilly doesn't own them, and the authors allow copying.
  • The Open Source trend is important, but I'm not convinced it's quite as profound as Mr. Perens and others seem to believe it is. There is a class of users now for whom the "openness" of the source is the primary consideration when selecting software, and this class effectively didn't exist before Linux 2.0. (Obviously the concepts were there before Linux, and Linux did have many users, including myself, in the pre-2.0 days, but it wasn't a force the "mainstream world" felt a desire to pay attention to.) But it's definitely premature to predict that it will ultimately lead to the death of "closed source" software. Software exists primarily because people have a use for it; open source software exists primarily because its users have a use for the code. But to many people, "open source" just means "free," in the "free beer" sense. This group will talk the talk--usually quite loudly and with much vitriol--but they really don't use that source. And this group is growing a lot more rapidly now that Linux is cool because it's not Microsoft. Whatever this is, a political movement ain't it.

    When we try to talk a "right to open source," we're really reaching. There's no right to phone service (there wasn't even when AT&T was a government-supported monopoly), so we can't use that comparison. There are "consumers' bills of rights," but they're not rights, per se; at best they're legal protections, saying less that a consumer has a right to 'X' than saying that a producer doesn't have the right to do 'X' to a consumer. (When you pay for goods or services, the producer has a responsibility to deliver them to you, for instance.) As long as a consumer knows what he's supposed to get and he gets it, the producer has fulfilled the contract. Software companies may choose to release products as open source, and consumers may choose to use them; if consumers don't want proprietary software they have the "right" not to buy it. At best they'll have a right to know whether or not a product they're purchasing is open source. (If they're not purchasing it, and not signing anything, it may be open to question whether or not there's an enforceable contract there at all, as no financial transaction has taken place.)

  • Just a reminder, this "trend" was the de facto standard of development prior to the stricter licensing of *nix systems in the early-mid 80s.

    There's always been a Unix community which did a lot of "open source projects" before the term was coined. Outside of that, though, I think you had two separate communities--mainframes and micros. Microcomputers were pretty much using a closed source model from the get-go. Mainframes, from what (admittedly little) I've seen, have a different culture than either of what we're now calling "open source" and "closed source." Development environments and tools are usually quite proprietary on them. Applications are either closed source and commercial, or bought with source licenses--you get the advantage of being able to screw around with the source and modify it, but it's not redistributable.

    If I go with the NT solution, I must purchase the software and along with it, hire someone who can make it work. If I choose the open source solution, I pay a minimal amount (compared to the NT solution) and I don't have to hire someone who has the MCSE added to his resume.

    True, but if you're a business that doesn't have programmers (or programmers who have spare time) on staff, you may still need to hire someone who can make it work and maintain it. If you're a tiny business or just one end user who isn't interested in programming, there's little value in having the source. Half the non-programmers are going to drop out before they figure out to compile the source at all. The first time one of the braver ones types "make" and the Makefile stops with an error (and that will happen sometime) the chances are he'll decide the occasional blue screen of death isn't that annoying after all.

    You see this in the BeOS crowd right now (what there is of it). There are people of the hacker mentality, then some of the sufficiently strict open source mindset that they don't want to even go near "yet another proprietary OS." But an increasing number of BeOS "newcomers" will be perfectly happy if they never have to open up a bash terminal window. They don't want to know how to run gcc, they want to know when there will be a Photoshop clone and how much it'll cost. And if you gave them the source code to the GIMP and asked them to join the BeOS porting effort, they'd strangle you with your mouse cord.

    Reaching those people is (at least to some) the real hurdle for open source software. I'm not convinced they are reachable, though, and that's not really a slight to them. Linux hackers are the descendants in some ways of the old micro hackers on Apple IIs and TRS-80s, where it was de rigeur that you knew how to program. It's like owning a car and immediately going out, buying the Chilton manual and learning how to do the maintenance yourself. That's a great thing, but a lot of people would rather pay to have someone else do it. They don't care how the car works; they just want to be able to drive it.

  • The following, disturbing "fact" from Katz's article really has me rattled:

    >Linux users are growing at the
    >rate of 40 per cent a year.

    Shit! I'm not prepared for this! And my wife probably won't stand for it either! That means I'll top 250 pounds sometime in mid-November! I never knew this Open Source stuff was so potent!

    Jokes aside - I must recommend Katz's gift for putting words to thoughts that have been mulling and lulling around in my subconciousness. I'm a relatively inexperienced Linux user myself, struggling to fathom this new power-tool, in awe of its potential both as an OS and a political statement. Keep up the good work Katz - I, for one, am listening!
  • When, on the overnight repeat of Friday's Washington Journal, Brian Lamb mentioned Katz's then upcoming appearance I submitted the story that he (Katz) was going to be on. It occured to me that, since he was going on to plug his book, he and/or Rob might be reluctant to appear to be further promoting his book here, but one Slashdot reader alerting others to an item of interest should seem sufficiently non-opportunistic. At that time C-SPAN's on-line schedule wasn't up to (a future) date enough for more detail. When they finally put the details on line Sunday I submitted a cut and paste straight from the on-line schedule page. Unfortunately it never made it past the trained mammals, possibly because they were too busy trying to deal with being (your favorite body part here) deep in alligators to pay any attention to my suggestions about swamp-draining.
    I watched and taped this morning, and sent in an e-mail to journal@c-span.org 30 minutes before the start of the Katz segment wishing him a good show (and trying to get in a subtle plug for slashdot)but no mention of it was made on the air.
    As for his appearance, I enjoyed it, but it's difficult to reconcile the peson I saw on the air with the Katz we know and love (to flame)here.

  • Corruption and bribery often involve transactions between two consenting individuals - kickbacks for contracts, payoffs, and the like. No theft there!

    The question is how far ownership goes. Do I own a story after I've told it to someone? Can I get royalties for jokes I've told? Can I sue you if I tell a joke at a party and you tell it later?

    Recipes are not copyrightable. A chef who invents a recipe has no rights over it at all. It's simply arbitrary that you continue to "own" software even after I've bought it.
  • More and more I am finding that Katz's modus operandi is to appropriate the cultural zeitgeiste and simply amplify slightly louder than it was before.

    Simply put, he reads something, then appends "and its gonna change the world!" to the end of it, and publishes it as an essay.

    I know you have good intentions Jon, but you're not offering any novel insight. You're simply turning up the volume on what already has become a cacophanous din of open source rhetoric. I find that most of the "essays" in here are of the same tone - nothing new to say, but the author is desparately hopeing that by adding an exclamation mark to someone else's idea (which may in the form of a insanely tangential corollary), they'll make their nut.

    Not the the book "Open Sources" offered any real novel insights - it simply assembled all of the ideas that had already been published into one volume. This sort of work needs to be done simply so there is one published work that future writers can reference.
  • Not only are you correct in pointing our some huge hole's in the prevailing "logic" of the open source community, members of that community should also realize that they aren't nearly as powerful as they think they are.

    Closed source software has far more market share in virtually every segment. Internet servers (web servers, mail servers) are strong segments for open source software, but they simply don't rank in comparison to browser and word processing segments (which, regardless of the impending mozilla release, are still populated by closed-source software titles). I'm not being ungrateful or snotty or supportive of Microsoft, I'm simply stating that the numbers still aren't backing up open source. Trends aren't much better either - most software shipped next year will be video game titles for consoles (sega, nintendo, etc). These are all closed source last time I checked.

    Also, money still controls the world. Nothing has changed since 1917 - community-based sharing movements still haven't overcome greed. Unless developers want to live the freaky lifestyle of Richard Stallman, they are going to realize that selling their wares, and protecting their intellectual property, has some value. If it comes down to my kid going to college and your ideals of intellectual property, then its not even a decision.

  • Graft corruption and bribery are illegal. Closed source software is not. How you drew this analogy in the first place is beyond me
  • Excellent point. It seems that these open source "rights" would be better off as open source "privileges." That is, one should maybe have the privilege to copy software, unless the creator invokes what seems to be a better-founded right to control what happens to his software. There are obvious instances (to me) where the user should NOT have the "right" to copy the software.


    Those who advocate a consumer's right to copy software as a means of eliminating a software developer's existing right don't do anything meaningful to advance the discourse. It is more effective to argue what is at the heart of the matter: who should be favored? The developer or the user? Since the developer does all of the work, I would have to vote for him....

  • >The Open Source trend is important, but I'm not >convinced it's quite as profound as Mr. Perens >and others seem to believe it is.

    Just a reminder, this "trend" was the de facto standard of development prior to the stricter licensing of *nix systems in the early-mid 80s.

    >But it's definitely premature to predict that it >will ultimately lead to the death of "closed >source" software. Software exists primarily >because people have a use for it; open source >software exists primarily because its users have >a use for the code.

    I agree, people have become accustomed to buying software that meets their needs. Even before closed source became the norm, software engineering firms existed that solved the problems of clients and gave the clients proprietary software. This is one of the primary methods of software engineering. The other, of course, is developing a product that has a certain demand in the market and attempting to make it meet the needs of the majority of consumers.

    However, the numbers become important when you're talking one of two things. Money and usage. First I'll look at the money issue. This is the primary reason why open source makes more sense to more and more corporations. Bottom line, generally speaking open source often means free software (Now there's a hot issue.), but even when it doesn't it follows that a buy once rev many policy will follow.

    Example: Let's say I must choose between NT * Server and an open source alternative. If I go with the NT solution, I must purchase the software and along with it, hire someone who can make it work. Microsoft did the IT profession a service when creating the MCSE because now once I'm certified, I can charge more. Now, if I choose the open source solution, I pay a minimal amount (compared to the NT solution) and I don't have to hire someone who has the MCSE added to his resume.

    What about the usage? What I mean by usage here is not the general usage, but I guess usability and the ease at topping the learning curve. Right now, I have Mandrake 5.3 on my system as well as a more obscure OS from Redmond. I dual boot, that's life. Why do I do this? Because I'm still learning my Linux and I need a "reliable" system. MS reliable? No, not on your life, but for my needs right now, yes. I haven't gone about hunting down the elusive geek who actually does know how to set up Linux for dialup at school. And I've still got some revs to do to my system before I really want to anyway. So, I need it for connectivity. Personally, I jump over to the Linux partition when I need to do some coding for class, whatever. I've found that I can do some of my own revisions easily by reading the Howtos (what a novel idea, and that these are easily accessible to the average joe on the net. hmm...) In other words, besides the difficult stuff, patience pays off and reading before you leap is the best lesson I've learned. Soon enough, I'll be revving my kernel with the best, something I could never do with the other OS. I can make what I have meet my needs, in other words, and if it's not meeting them, I don't have to wait for a patch or whatever. Therefore usage is met.

    Now, the big kahuna of it all. Open vs. closed, do they meet your needs? That's the meat of this argument, right? Well, for now, there are more solutions on a closed os from redmond than the open one from around the globe. But I have a feeling that the end of the ms era was at hand even without the DOJ. IBM held it for 25+ years, then a little upstart came along. It's been about 20 years that that little upstart has been running things, and 20 = 25+ these days what with web speed and all being accounted for.

    Solutions are coming, because more problem solvers are turning to open source. The best idea I've seen in this whole new age is the idea that in closed source, the wheel is reinvented too many times and no progress is made. With an open view of the wheel, more ideas are bound to flow.
  • The real turning point for the free software movement was the realization that the existing body of intellectual property rights law -- copyright -- could be adapted to the new medium in a novel way: GPL. The popularization of the GPL (and also the LGPL) opened the third way between normal copyright usage and public domain software. As far as I know, RMS is the originator of the copyleft, though it seems very likely something similar predates his usage. Certainly, he got lawyers to nail it down, popularized it, and most importantly used it in two incredibly useful pieces of software. IMO he deserves recognition on that basis even more than the particular merits of gcc and emacs.

    It is ironic that RMS apparently does not believe in copyright, at least for software, when copyright is the powerful legal tool he used to implement his vision.

    btw: Katz, get a spell checker, proof reader, and non-Microsoft text editor. It is painful to read such a sloppy production from a "professional" writer.

    GNU -- propaganda by deed
  • It is ironic that RMS apparently does not believe in copyright, at least for software, when copyright is the powerful legal tool he used to implement his vision.

    No. GPL is the implementation of non-copyright within the copyright system as it is.

    You do not need the GPL when there is no copyright (on software).

  • It charts the growth of OSS from a hacker's fantasy to a bull-blown technomovement, one that has membership in the...

    yucky.

  • Troy McClure.

    MEEPT!!
  • Authors write books to distribute ideas. If you had a brain, you could place the ideas there and give the book to a friend. So there's no restriction on redistribution of the ideas in the book. If you like, you can modify the book and its ideas. You can highlight words you like, and black out words you don't. In fact, you can cut out all the letters, re-arrange them, and make your own book! So there's no restriction on modification. Anyone you give the book to has the same freedoms. What's your gripe? You don't like the concept of ownership? Remember, if you don't own and are not compensated for the things you produce, you are a slave. Or an amateur.

    It's so sad to see such knee-jerk reactions from people who are so obviously the products of 12 years of government-funded education.
  • Who's going to check it, CmdrTaco and crew? :)

    I like Mr. Katz, and I enjoy reading him, but he wouldn't have made it out of my freshman Comp 110 class. An essay is complete, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. Mr. Katz needs an editor not only for grammar and spelling, but also for style.

    When I was in high school (read "when I had 30 years less experience with writing than Mr. Katz"), we had a guy on the newspaper staff who wrote much like Mr. Katz does. The one thing he wrote that made it into the paper was a movie review. He wrote a lot about the experience of going to the movies (the red velvet ropes, the enveloping seats) and not much about the movie. We made him an editor - no classified ad was allowed in the paper without his say-so.

    Mr. Katz, if you read this (and I know you will :), keep writing. I like what you say. But find a friendly, intelligent, rational, professional writer who does not like the way you write and LISTEN to them. You're not progressing as a writer unless you look at what you wrote a year ago and cry "HOW COULD I HAVE SUCKED SO BAD?"
  • Funny, I thought those who created things (software, art, clothing, whatever) had the right to decide what to do with their creations (burn them, sell them, give them away, give away derivative works such as binaries, etc.).

    Graft and corruption involve actually stealing stuff and otherwise abusing other people. I don't see how the analogy applies.
  • Did any sizeable number of people think of "closed-source" books about open-source software as a bad thing before RMS made that comment about O'Reilly being a "parasite"? That's only a little bit less ridiculous than the people complaining about corporations offering commercial support for Linux.

    I'll reconsider the O'Reilly issue if the FSF ever manages to put out documentation remotely as good as O'Reilly books. And I'll reconsider the support issue if someone can present a realistic business plan for selling "open support".
  • I think the idea is that the users have rights, just like the developers.

    And anyway, what does it matter that 99.9% of the human race wouldn't know source code from a bar of soap, or have the skills to modify or improve it - refusing to give them the option is hardly likely to change that situation. One of the most important things about the open source movement (IMNSHO) is the enormous body of code out there in the open. Most computer users probably don't even know what source code is, because they have never had the option of learning about it. Give them the option, and many of them will learn, because it is interesting, a new challenge, a way to impress people, whatever. Saying that people are ignorant, so why bother teaching them, is basically stupid (I could use worse terms, but I'm not in that sort of mood).

    himi

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