Comments on: Toward a new self-definition for open source

By: trinkeles

trinkeles — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 10:14:00 +0000

Things change. For exp. I live in country (Lithuania) where in XIX century we had book smugglers – That’s right, books were illegal an they were brought from abroad by smugglers. Of course they were criminals or pirates by messurements of those times. But now they are heroes and we pay tribute for them – for bringing culture to our people during those dark times. So – think the same with piracy now. people like billy gatesy call these people pirates, they are steeling their money. But from other side – people from third world, they will never get chance to same technology, same knowledge and culture as rich nations do. What if piracy can change this – lead us to better world, where every man has a right to read, use, or entertain with content that was created by mankind.

By: Trystan

Trystan — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 21:49:27 +0000

Very well said, this is why I’m interested in free and open source, thanks

By: Open Source Newby

Open Source Newby — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 22:23:21 +0000

Very interesting post, which lets me focus on a difference I didn’t recognize that well between Open Source and Free Software. I liked the political aspects you mentioned, too. On my point of view, if a kind of revolution is still possible in our (over-)developed world, it will be a digital one!

By: Eddy

Eddy — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 15:41:47 +0000

I found this post just checking out what folks are saying about “yaks”. At first I thought it was just another “yak shaving” post. Somehow reading the first few paragraphs hooked me. I am not a programmer, just a simple yak rancher. Still I was fascinated by the political point of view. I ended up following most of the comments. Thanks for a great post and somehow broadening my thoughts on software and politics!

By: Eric Olsen

Eric Olsen — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 20:23:00 +0000

Love the crossover between political thought and how it applies to the new evolution of open-source technology. Tremendously insightful!

By: Doug Hellmann

Doug Hellmann — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:23:35 +0000

Nicely said. You might find “The Success of Open Source” by Steven Weber an interesting read. It’s a few years old, but touches on quite a bit of history and some of the motivations for participants in a few of the larger OSS projects. He also does some analysis of the difference in culture between BSD and GPL licensed projects.

By: Shannon -jj Behrens

Shannon -jj Behrens — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:59:26 +0000

Thanks, Ian. It’s nice to hear introspectives on FOSS again. I miss those. Last year, I posted http://jjinux.blogspot.com/2008/02/hybrid-world-of-open-and-closed-source.html which is similar in nature to your post, and there wasn’t as much of a response as I expected.

I’m glad to see other people thinking deeply about these things. Recently, I posted http://jjinux.blogspot.com/2009/08/open-source-closed-source-video-games.html in which I admitted that I’m thankful for both open and closed source video games. I still wonder if that applies to the entire software world. Part of me thinks it does, but the little Stallman who sits on my shoulder keeps calling me a sellout ;)

By: Mark Ramm

Mark Ramm — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:37:30 +0000

On the subject of anarchism, capitalism, and geek culture, I always recommend Ursila K LeGuin’s fantastic sci-fi novel “The Dispossessed.” It presents a picture of one possible anarchist society, and contrasts it with something much more like american capitalism. The subtitle is “an ambiguous dystopia” and it’s not clear which culture is supposed to be the dystopia from the title. But what’s appropriate to this discussion is that the anarchy in the book is pretty much presented as a stand-alone society, which is defined positively, not by what it stands against.

I think the experience of open source developers shows that some of the premises of LeGuin’s book aren’t totally valid, but it’s interesting how much of the contrast between the two worlds in the book is reflected in the contrast between the open source and commercial software communities.

By: sirpi anton

sirpi anton — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:15:32 +0000

A relate post is “We No Longer Need Power” from Bruce Eckel and the comments there. I must say I read you post yesterday but I was not able to get the deep meaning of it. Only skimming throw the text I got the impression that you feel that a change is going to occur but don’t see the direction or how to focus people to go in some direction.

I think we should learn the value of symbols, for example what is the meaning of a coin for society. We depend very much of such concepts, imagine there were not possible way to guarantee secure economic transactions, or that legal status are not respected by people any more …

In order to change we should be able to appreciate the kernel features that are at the core of our society. Such change require a deep knowledge of the human nature, an appreciation that I think we will never get when a person is only a mascaraed to live in a tribe.

By: Brad

Brad — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 03:24:46 +0000

Thank you for his refreshing read! This is a jewel I will definately share with my fellow developers in Academia — who sometimes forget that sharing of knowledge is a good thing!