Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Email to Brian Behlendorf

Author:Dave Winer
Posted:4/23/2000; 5:04:55 AM
Topic:Email to Brian Behlendorf
Msg #:16572 (In response to 16566)
Prev/Next:16571 / 16573

There are open source users, open source creators, and open source zealots. The only kind you're worried about are the zealots.

Not true. Let's start getting some discipline here. When you say "The only kind you're worried about are the zealots" what evidence do you have to support that? It's just not true Faisal. Let me speak for me, and you can speak for you.

The zealots influence the users. When the open source mania was wafting over our industry a couple of years ago, our users would quote Raymond to us, as evidence of how corrupt we were and go on campaigns against us. Faisal, it can be hard to remember how crazy things were then. And it couldn't have come at a worse time for us, we were in the process of going commercial with Frontier. Raymond and O'Reilly et al made it much more difficult for us, and mostly, I think for selfish reasons.

As my quote started percolating, about O'Reilly monetizing open source, I thought about what Tim will say to me when he reads it, if he ever does (I don't think he's actually a web guy). Maybe he didn't make all the money, but Red Hat, VA, Cobalt, etc sure did, as did Raymond. As it turns out, monetizing was largely what was happening there, with the benefit of hindsight.

Pop up a level, and the real problem are the stupid manias that the software industry goes through. They wipe out all the good work, and focus on a few people and companies, who are usually selling air. That's one of the reasons I want to create a New Journalism to go along with the New Economy. Let's build a system that defends against such stupidity. Instead of going along with each mania, let's get prepared to evaluate each mania so we can decide whether or not we want to go crazy with them.

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