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

Re: Open Source -- a world onto itself

Author:Paul Snively
Posted:7/20/2000; 11:05:28 AM
Topic:Open Source -- a world onto itself
Msg #:18809 (In response to 18806)
Prev/Next:18808 / 18811

Dave Winer: By user I mean, in the old (crude, sexist, ageist) Apple way of talking about users, "mom".

Someone who clicks on things they should know better than to click on. Someone who prefers fewer features and to have them organized better. Not people who run websites, but people who design them.

I agree, this is not merely a vital, but in the long run, the vital set of people's hearts to woo to any craft or culture.

Dave: I'm unconvinced by the rest of your story. You could be right. But I don't think so.

Fair enough. I gleefully admit to second-guessing both "Open Source Leadership" (something of an oxymoron anyway) and huge chunks of the rest of the community whom I've never even met, so the risk inherent in my assessment is quite high.

Dave: Peace brother, at least you're here and you're not running away or flaming, and for that I am thankful.

Oh, hey. Scripting News is some of the most intelligent reporting on the web. As for personal motivation, one of my theses (not yet nailed to the local church door, but perhaps someday!) is that Open Source is not an all-or-nothing proposition in a component-software world. I'm big on existence proofs, and Frontier is my favorite existence proof of this particular thesis: the runtime is not Open Source but huge swaths of UserTalk are. Frontier has evolved in the same fashion as the EMACS editor in many ways: a very few people working on the executable and a lot more working in the elisp/UserTalk domain, taking what other people have done, extending it, replacing it if needs be, etc. And thus are developer/power-user communities built. Personally, I think anyone who claims that you haven't "Open Sourced" Frontier because you haven't explicitly placed all of the UserTalk scripts under, say, the GPL, LGPL, Mozilla, BSD-style, or X-Windows-style licenses is missing the point. Having the code and the right to change it is what confers the benefit, not the licensing terms. I consider most of Frontier to be Open Source without the "(tm)" for what I consider the most compelling reason: because you said so. And if I dig deep enough and make some changes to some stuff I'm not sure I have the right to redistribute, I'll act like any other reasonable adult human being and ask if it's OK.

I think where you and I are in closest alignment, if I may be so bold as to say, is in our mutual sense that, hey, there's a lot of stuff that can be done, that would be cool, that would be helpful to people, and it'd be a shame to see it fall apart out of something as petty and foolish as divisiveness over terms and licenses that are in some way (just different politically and/or economically) just as restrictive and draconian as the horrible we're-responsible-for-nothing shrink-wrap "licenses" the movement deplores. I'm not interested in Open Source as religion, and I doubt I'm the only one.

Dave: PS: I agree with much of the rest of what you said about Napster, in the same way that the Web lived on after Netscape collapsed. It's bigger than Napster, Inc. That's cool. I'm also finding the Napster people listen better than any future-smoking-hulk has. There's a sharpness over there, a grace, that I've not seen before in this industry.

Yeah, the nice thing about the Napster team is that they don't claim to have done anything more than address a perceived need in a particular fashion. They're clear about the motivation (too hard to find MP3's on the web) and the inspiration (search engines). That even kind of motivates their technology choices (centrailized directory). They don't claim to have a foolproof business model; I don't get the impression they're mostly trying to seduce investors. That's refreshing. They're respectful to "competitors" such as Gnutella and FreeNet. That's refreshing too.

Personally, I hope they win the battle (between the Courtney Love piece and Hillary Rosen's digging the RIAA into a deeper and deeper philosophical hole, there's zippo love lost between me and the RIAA at this point; I'm one step away from boycotting CDs altogether and the pittance that makes it to the artists are the only reason I might not). On the other hand--much as I hate to say it--Napster might be even more successful as a martyr to the RIAA than they would be as a going concern either totally off the hook (doubtful) or settling MP3.com style (slightly less doubtful).

Anyway, you bet I'm still here. No other "tech news source" covers the social ramifications of the industry nearly as well; Frontier, Manila, ETP etc. are brilliant and I keep pointing friends and family to ETP for those who want to do cool stuff without becoming HTML junkies; and finally I respect and admire your willingness to put yourself out there and not hide behind a lot of must-wear-Userland-CEO-hat nonsense. So thanks for that!

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