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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) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 19 2018, @11:44AM
I am not the proprietary sir. I am the schmuck stuck working for a living because I don't have a place where I can get food, shelter and medical care without a J.O.B.
I understand that there are millions of people around the world who live in a fairy land where they can spend all (or some significant part) their time doing whatever they want and not worry about a thing so mundane as a paycheck, and some part of that population writes and shares code. And, sure, there are even people paid big professional salaries by real corporations to work on GPL code, but they are even more fancifully rare than the independently, if not wealthy at least self-sufficient. Call it jealousy if you like, maybe it is jealousy, but from this side of the "has to/doesn't have to" work for a living divide, it just looks like a bunch of spoiled kids having a fancy party where they make their own rules about a fanciful utopia where all code is free and then turn around and smack people with lawsuits when they get the means and opportunity.
The world is as it is because of how we got here, and I don't think we would have gotten to where we are today without GPL. Structurally, it has enabled the Linux OS to thrive in the world as it was and has become. I do think that GPL has a place, however twisted (because the world itself is deeply twisted, so it's entirely logical that practical constructs within it will be equally so...) in the operating system, especially the kernel and I would wish up through the hardware drivers stack. In my fairy-land, all those licenses would be BSD/MIT equivalent and people would just share and share alike because it's better for everyone. I understand all too well the reality of corporate, IP protection, traditionalist greed and how GPL is fighting fire with fire on this front. Getting closer to the applications layer, LGPL starts to make more sense, and many of the applications oriented libraries have migrated there (Qt and GMP come immediately to mind, but there are many others...) I'm on board with LGPL where it makes sense, which (as the L is sometimes used) is in the Library Level.
The reason I champion MIT is: freedom to practice. If I publish an algorithm, or even a patent-worthy description of an algorithm, or protocol, or other "innovative" whatever that might be patented "for use in X", as an application in X and diligently develop it, that won't stop the big money players from patenting it tomorrow, but it will stop them from attempting to enforce that patent when the publication and practice history comes out (usually in pre-discovery before suits are even filed.)
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