On Friday 04 May 2001 00:56, Dave Winer wrote:
> BTW, for those who don't have the liner notes, the Microsoft comments about
> open source are almost certainly about IBM's marketing of open source
> programming against Microsoft's stuff in the .NET area.
Making for a real FUD-for-all. Not just vaporware, but vapor economics on
both sides.
This really seems to be a marketing war to no immediate purpose. It's not as
though either side has much of anything to sell, at the moment. It seems
early in the race to be jockeying for position. I suppose that IBM can sell
Linux/Apache/Samba servers against NT, but that's not exactly competing with
.NET.
My personal emotional reaction was revulsion at Eric Raymond's portrayal
today of the GPL and Stallman as unrepresentative of 'the Open Source
movement.' I agree. Open Source has nothing to do with Stallman's
idealism. It's sort of like a political party that wants to distance itself
from the idealism that gave it it's initial cachet, and I think it deserves
every bit of the credibility that that implies.
I'd personally like to see Open Source get trounced by Microsoft. After all,
once you have renounced idealism, what do you have left? The FSF and the GPL
can't be sucked-in that way. Yes, I have read the deadly dishing in
http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/opinions/3297/1/ It's too, too, true.
The GNOME situation is a mess. Having two companies entirely focused on it
has produced more problems and less results than KDE's much less commercial
model. I'd hate to see The Kompany spawn imitators and take KDE down this
path. On the other hand, I'd like to be gainfully employed in the Free
Software space. I seem to be 'eating my own dog food' lately, in the very
low calorie flavor.
Eirikur
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