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

OSS religion in USERland? C'mon!

Author:Walter Ludwick
Posted:9/8/2000; 3:07:43 AM
Topic:OSS religion in USERland? C'mon!
Msg #:20984
Prev/Next:20983 / 20985

Much as i have tried, it's getting rather hard to ignore this issue of "what does OpenSource really mean?" and all the religion that comes out around that, but i feel there's a perspective - not adequately represented here to date - which really should be understood, because it's a common one.

First, let's get the mandatory self-disclosure out of the way: i have no religious affiliations when it comes to software licensing. My interest in technology is neither love nor money; to me, software is just stuff i have to work through in order to get from where i am to where i really want to go next. Now THAT may be about either love or money (i'm happiest when i'm getting plenty of both), but software for me is just a means, never an object or source of love or money in and of itself. Whenever i can get what i want without having to tap any keyboards or be party to any software agreements, i am always happy to do that. (As my wife so often reminds me, the most direct path to the fulfillment of my desire is not as a rule computer-mediated! ;-)

I think this makes me what might be called a pragmatic USER of software -- a consumer, not a producer. I mean, insofar as being a "ProSumer" in the information economy is what this great UserLand community is all about, i am certainly part of that. I just mean that i don't compile code, i don't generate executables. I don't issue any software license agreements. Does this make me a "tourist" here at UserLand? I don't know... but i suspect that if it does, i'm by no means the only one.

I am, i must confess, a parasite, in that i've taken much more from this UserLand place than i could ever hope to give back. I've gotten much utility from Manila/ Express, and am getting TONS of value out from RadioUserland. I've never bought a Frontier license - not because it costs too much (ha!), but because i literally wouldn't know what to do with it. Really, i've gotten so much value just by connecting my garden-variety web-browser - and now this magical RU beta -to Frontier services that UserLand provides gratis... i find myself looking for the "tip-jar." In fact, i DO own a Zope/Apache server (among others), and when David Brown finishes his wonderful ZopeFish glue-ware, i wonder when or why i might ever have reason to buy a Frontier server. But i'm quite prepared to pay for Frontier services, if anyone out there is prepared to help me get more out of them and address some unique requirements -- like trying to serve syndication needs of some people that don't want to mess with RSS, even in "simple" 0.91 form! (If anyone gives good tutorial on this topic and has time avail, please e-mail me.)

I'm straying into personal concerns, so i'd better stop. On behalf of what i will dare to call "the silent majority" (i.e. us back-benchers in this war of words among you tech-wizards that tend to hold sway here), i just have to say this: i've got no SW licensing religion, but i hold a strictly pragmatic POV on all SW licenses and business models. My pragmatism leads me, when i hear someone knock one clearly valid approach right out-of-hand, to suspect that their motivations may be inconsistent with mine - especially when they wrongly impugn the motivations of others.

Dave, instead of bashing Richard Stallman and his followers, i would encourage you to try to understand and respect the motivation behind the GPL. The spirit that conceived and birthed it was not un-generous; in fact was exactly the opposite. I'm tempted to recount the history, but i know you know it very well. As a primary contributor in a great software-sharing community, ripped-off and ripped apart by cutthroat corporate interests, RMS created the GPL because he believed it was the only way to develop a powerful set of tools that would always be free. That was a necessary precondition to the birthing of this only real competitive alternative to "Windows everywhere," because if any of the industry titans could have hijacked the GNU/Linux software, they most certainly would have done so by now. As a beneficiary of that legacy, i for one am truly grateful. I think for any of us beneficiaries to call our benefactors mean-spirited would be... well, a bit mean-spirited. Dontcha think? |/|/ (wludwick@mail.walmar.com)

There are responses to this message:

This page was archived on 6/13/2001; 4:56:34 PM.

© Copyright 1998-2001 UserLand Software, Inc.