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

Re: Anti-Microsoft sentiment

Author:Paul Snively
Posted:9/15/2000; 4:25:08 PM
Topic:Debunking the OSS Bazaar?
Msg #:21368 (In response to 21360)
Prev/Next:21367 / 21369

Dave Winer: I think anti-Microsoft sentiment is as much a cul-de-sac as Microsoft is. This might explain why I thought it was so important to find out what open source is and isn't. I think at the core of open source is the spirit to make P2P realllly work. But to do that we have to get over this idea that we're all that different. As long as all the attention is focused on Microsoft, we can't even see each other.

This is another reason I felt compelled to speak up about characterizing open source protagonists (for lack of a better term) as all anti-MS zealots. While it may be useful, in some sense, for the whole my-enemy's-enemy-is-my-friend thing, in the long run it's as counterproductive as the Cold War was after WWII.

As for what open source is and isn't, clearly the concept needs refining. As I've written before, an all-or-nothing, binary definition of open source won't work. It didn't work in dealing with static libraries, which is why the LGPL arose out of the GPL, and it won't work in dealing with DLLs, components, or systems with integrated scripting languages for extension. To reiterate my favorite examples of non-open-source systems that have communities that rival those of any open source projects, look to the Quake and Unreal and Half-Life level designers/modification developers--and these are for Quake 3 Arena, Unreal Tournament, and Half-Life, which have not been source-released, as opposed to Quake 1, which has been source-released.

I think it's important that we figure out a taxonomy to accomodate the increasingly-fine granularity at which software becomes exposed and that accomodates not only software source code in its traditional form, but also other related expressions, e.g. XML DTDs/schemata and the like. We need to be able to say with as little ambiguity as possible, this part of my system is available to you to use as you see fit and this part is not.



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