[LINK] Linux deviation impedes developers

[Tizard, James (IEPO)]

>Developers of free software have (much like the rest of the community) a
>diverse range of politcal views on the right and on the left.

Diverse is the word. A lesson from the Internet is that people who might
seem close or familiar in some senses can in fact come from a very different
space indeed...
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/geeks-with-guns/
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/guns/

James Tizard

-----Original Message-----
From: Damien Miller [mailto:djm@mindrot.org]
Sent: Friday, March 23, 2001 3:37 PM
To: Chirgwin, Richard
Cc: link@www.anu.edu.au
Subject: RE: [LINK] Linux deviation impedes developers


On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, Chirgwin, Richard wrote:

> Damn, I thought my filter software got rid of blasphemy!
>
> Oh I am so sick of people being so damn stupid. Having found the field
> relatively uncontested, the open source community has decided to start
> playing against itself.
>
> Can I blaspheme some more?
> 1) Too much open source coalesces around The Gurus. And they're just
> clay-footed humans like the rest of us: prone to ego, and liable to pursue
> agendas based on who they like and don't like. The meritocracy of open
> source is already giving way to an egotocracy.

I don't think this is remotely true. The vast majority of free software
developers (in my experience) don't pontificate or attempt to link their
work to extraneous agenda.

What _major_ free software projects are lead by people with seperate
agenda? How many of these use their software to further their agenda?

I can't think of any clear examples off the top of my head. The closest
would be Richard Stallman (who is not particulaly involved with
development these days AFAIK) and various information-must-be-free crypto
projects such as freedom.net.

> 2) Any time any commercial entity touches the open source world, it has to
> put up with /. abuse.

The rabble that is Slashdot is pretty good at abusing free software
projects too. Come to think of it, they are _very_ good at abusing
Slashdot itself :)

> 3) It's also time to untie what's good for software from the various
> hippie-gun nut-socialist-individualist political agendas. Nobody cares
> whether open source is an expression of (variously) free love, the right
to
> bear arms, anti-capitalism, or the supremacy of the individual. Most
people
> want stuff that works.

Developers of free software have (much like the rest of the community) a
diverse range of politcal views on the right and on the left.

People seem to want to ascribe a political agenda to "free software", but
it doesn't have one.

-d

-- 
| Damien Miller <djm@mindrot.org> \ ``E-mail attachments are the poor man's
| http://www.mindrot.org          /   distributed filesystem'' - Dan Geer