about BerliOS

[E L Tonkin]

Hi,

Excuse me for joining in on this one, but it seems to me to be getting a
little childish. A few factual points also appear to be getting lost in
this discussion.

On 15 Jul 2001, Werner Koch wrote:
> I see no reason to talk about about a specific person; I don't think
> this is appropriate.
 
As an aside: *somebody* bought up the subject of personalities... maybe
that wasn't 100% appropriate either? ;-)

Gregorio Robles wrote:
> > 	Schilly is the main maintainer of over 15 (fifteen) applications (the
> > most famous one is cdrecord)

> I didn't talked about coding but about philosophy, thus it is
> irrelevant how much software Jörg wrote.

"Actions speak louder than words".

> > 	_All_ of them have been released under the GPL. (free software, not
> > Open Source)

> The GPL has nothing to do with the Open Source or Free Software
> debate.  It is just a contract.

Funny, I'm sure I read on www.fsf.org...

"The GNU General Public License, or GNU GPL for short.
This is a free software license, and a copyleft license."

> > 	Is that a fault? I see more _personal_ aspects in your argumentation
> > than points talking about free software. Schilly's contribution to the
> > free software community is _very_ big. Please, take that in notice!
> 
> You named Jörg not I; however I can see no contribution by him to the
> Free Software community; he is doing Open Source.  

You're wrong.

cdrecord and the rest of Schilly's software are GPL'd. Therefore they are
undeniably contributions to the Free Software community. The spirit in
which he GPL'd them is largely irrelevant; they're GPL'd, ergo they're
Free with a capital F. AND Open Source, coincidentally.

Whether the person themselves contributes socially to the Free Software
community is also irrelevant to this judgement.  

> > 	"Open Source" is what BerliOS got the money for. Yes, it's a real
> > problem, that politicians get in panic when you tell them "free
> > software" :-(. I hope you're working hard at FSF-Europe to change this.
> 
> Many (but not all) still talk about Open Source but I have never seen
> one panicking over the term Free Software - try it yourself.

Haven't you? Can't you remember the recent fuss about a certain Microsoft
calling the GPL "pac-man like", a "Threat to the American Way", "viral",
and "at its worst, piracy of intellectual property", etc? Funny.

Try these links, refresh your memory:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-6322264.html?tag=tp_pr
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-6322264.html?tag=tp_pr
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/cn/20010622/tc/microsoft_license_spurns_open_source_1.html

Open Source survives as a movement because it's very much less
in-your-face and antagonistic than the Free Software ideals. It's also
more distributed. The term 'open source' covers a multitude of 
licences, activities, and movements. 

Not to mention that, as measured by the ideals of the FSF, it's less
right, too. One thing that we all have to understand: though we may want
to see the perfectly right (by our standards), it's still better to be
half right than entirely wrong.

Em

// OLDSIG "All bad art is the result of good intentions." - Oscar Wilde 

/* START NEWSIG */ Processor: (n.) a device for converting sense to
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