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

Re: Thoughts on ESR and Perl

Author:Dave Winer
Posted:8/26/1999; 1:20:28 PM
Topic:Opening Up Linux Journal and O'Reilly
Msg #:9991 (In response to 9988)
Prev/Next:9990 / 9992

Given Corel's track record, I was terrified that Linux might be doomed. Everything they've touched in the last five years has tuend out to be a lemon. I wondered whether I should run screaming and abandon Linux. Eventually, I decided that the hucksters and the spinmeisters don't matter, and that I should just ignore them entirely.

Yes, but here's a little honesty from DW. When the time is right, you can achieve some velocity by engaging them in debate. Kind of like the Casini using its home planet Earth to add new power to its trip to Jupiter.

Truth be told, there's a shitload of open source in the Frontier 1.0 release. Now the license agreement zealots (like ESR and Stallman) will ask where's the license agreement? But come on folks, when you ship source, it's out. In any case, we explicitly said people could use the source for whatever purpose they wanted to.

The truth, from my point of view, is that some code should be distributed in source, esp when you want to lead, and help people be compatible with what you do, and to take over some of the development tasks, and some code should be maintained by a small group of focused and economically incentivized developers working for a strong leader.

What I'd be looking for in a conversation with ESR is not a raging flaming personal debate, rather a balanced intelligent discussion that reflects reality, not religion.

Ask anyone, I was never a religious zealot for the Mac. I never told anyone to shut up. The Mac was simply better, then it wasn't anymore, and now it may be again.

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