Tuesday at OSCON, the Open Source Initiative (OSI) has continued the celebration of 20 years of open source. A blog post at the OSI reflects on how Open Source fits in with pre-existing intitiatives.
Open source did not emerge from a void. It was consciously a marketing programme for the already-15-year-old idea of free software and arose in the context of both the GNU Project and the BSD community and their history (stretching back to the late 70s). We chose to reflect this in the agenda for our celebration track at OSCON.
But that doesn't mean its inception is irrelevant. The consensus to define open source at the VA Linux meeting and the subsequent formation of OSI and acceptance of the Open Source Definition changed the phrase from descriptive to a term of art accepted globally. It created a movement and a market and consequently spread software freedom far beyond anyone's expectations. That has to be worth celebrating.
Wikipedia's entry on Open Source provides a great deal of information on its origin and application in multiple fields besides just software.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 19 2018, @03:06AM (2 children)
I don't get it.
Either:
- you really need that code, so that code is important to you (and your question about "what it is so important" is misplaced); *or*
- indeed, that code is not "so important" for your work/hobby and can be replaced, thus, why are you complaining?
What's the name of that psychological phenomenon when someone can hold as true two contradictory positions without blowing their mind? Cognitive dissonance?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 19 2018, @11:18AM (1 child)
The position in a professional setting is: occasionally, a piece of GPL code would meet one corporate objective while simultaneously violating multiple standing rules.
As a cog in the machine it is frustrating, like wandering through the desert potentially dying of thirst and coming upon a well labeled: drink this and you have a chance of dying from a lawsuit in 5-10 years.
As a hobbyist, I have precious little time to work on my own code in the first place, and I hate lawyers, so I will not use my hobby time to give them work or value.
Where's the contradiction?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 19 2018, @02:20PM
sounds like the easiest course of action would be to change the corporate policy ;)