Tuesday October 20, 2009 ☝ A Remarkable Reversal
It was a surprise to see Richard Stallman's signature on a letter to the European Commission calling on them to block the acquisition of MySQL by Oracle with its proposed acquisition of Sun. The surprise wasn't primarily because of that position.
[Continued on my personal blog]
Posted by webmink
( Oct 20 2009, 10:05:33 AM PDT )
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☞ Going With The Grain
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Fascinating to see Stallman admit that the GPL does not guarantee software freedom. Nothing new to see in this letter, which (unlike the article from Carlo Piana) fails to confront the consequences of its action.
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This issue is devoted to explaining open source to government standards people. It's a fine effort, well worth passing on to your favourite legislator's researcher.
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"Europeans and North Americans come at the commerce of FOSS differently, Europeans want to make a business from free software while not loosing its fundamental ethos while North Americans want to maximize the business exploitation of open source software and keep its nature, if it benefits them." -- Another analysis might be that the American approach sees open source as a "natural resource to be exploited" whereas the European approach sees software freedom as a resource to be cultivated in order to yield opportunity.
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"According to Matt, we should be thanking IBM for doing this: to my mind, IBM should be thanking the community for the contribution that has enabled it to recoup its investment so quickly" - reinforcing the point that every participant in an open source community is there out of self-interest of some kind, and that's not a bad thing.
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"For those who are trying to run an open source business, it is clear that pragmatism, rather than puritanical beliefs, is key to business growth." -- Yes, but sometimes there is a spark in those "puritanical beliefs" that embodies truth that should not be wantonly discarded just becuase a Puritan is involved. (The appallingly-named Gartner piece linked from this article is worth reading by the way.)
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Data from 451 suggesting that business models that go with the grain of software freedom (rather than cutting across it by attempting to retain company control) are coming to favour in the commercial open source space.
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Powerful arguments from an unexpected source (Carlo is one of the leading software freedom lawyers in Europe).
Posted by webmink
( Oct 20 2009, 05:07:17 AM PDT )
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