7 ms·

It's amazing that someone could consider Stallman one of their heroes and not be aware that calling him the "father of open source" would piss him off. edit al

It's amazing that someone could consider Stallman one of their heroes and not be aware that calling him the "father of open source" would piss him off. edit also this is from 2016, which is why recent events were not even hinted at.

mastazi 5y ago
That's true, the first time I learned the difference between Open Source and Free Software, it was by reading something that Stallman wrote many years ago on the FSF website. He's always been very big on making that distinction.
- garmaine 5y ago
  To be fair, "Open Source" basically coined to mean "free software, but not as Stallman means it."
  - mastazi 5y ago
    Yes, I've heard before that the expression "free software" predates "open source". Thanks for clarifying.
    - bawolff 5y ago
      Predates is understating it - it was kind of a major dispute at one time. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
  - kragen 5y ago
    This is absolutely not true. Stallman was in the group of people Cced on the email that day to get their support for using the newly-invented term "open source". He took longer than most to respond, and when he did, he responded negatively (and fairly aggressively, as I recall). But many long-time supporters of the FSF in that email discussion were totally in favor of the proposal, and it came as a surprise to me that Stallman wasn't.
    - kubanczyk 5y ago
      I believe you. But it's not a stretch to say that "open source" was coined to mean something different than "free software" and it could be a proverbial hill to die on, ideologically. Source: http://www.catb.org/~esr/open-source.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/open-source.html Even if it was surprising, it was more than just a whim. As you see, Raymond didn't see it as disturbing or incomprehensible.
      - kragen 5y ago
        Your source does not support your claim. On the contrary, it explains that the intended difference is rhetorical rather than ideological or semantic.
    - garmaine 5y ago
      The term “Open Source” was coined by Christine Peterson in the context of a discussion about a source available project which did not meet RMS’ viral conditions for “free software.” Peterson suggested “open source” as an alternative phrase, and it spread from there.
      - chrisseaton 5y ago
        > The term “Open Source” was coined by Christine Peterson I think this has been shown to be something of a myth. The term clearly predates when she claims to have coined it. http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/fall96/0269.html http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/fall96/0269.html
        andrewshadura 5y ago
        If you carefully read the email you linked you'll see the context is different and open source (and definitely not open source software) is not used as a term on its own.
        chrisseaton 5y ago
        Yes the term didn't have exactly the same meaning, but that's sort of the point. The term Open Source, as a term related to software code access, predated the OSI and Peterson. They took an existing term which other people were already using, claimed it for their own, and started trying to tell people how to use it. They even tried to trademark it!
  - greyman 5y ago
    Exactly. I have nothing against RMS, but in my eyes he is just a typical leftie person - makes up an own definition of something, and then runs around a tries to convince everyone that his definition is the only correct one and the term must mean exactly what he claims it means.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      Since he made up not only "an own definition" but pretty much the whole idea and concept of Free Software, I'd say that yes, the term actually does mean exactly what he says it means and nothing else.
  - bitwize 5y ago
    As I like to say it, in Lisp terms open source and free software are EQUAL but not EQ. That is, they are defined to mean the same thing but have different underlying reasoning. Open source really is just free software with sexier marketing. ESR and RMS were close friends, once, before RMS went full CWC. Based on ESR's blog posts I would guess his perspective to be that yes, proprietary software is inherently evil, but you can't say that if you want to win hearts and minds in the real world. You have to talk up the practical, bottom line advantages: how is releasing the source code under a liberal license going to contribute value to our company and to society at large? And how can you make money while doing this? That will get the ear of mainstream society, especially decision makers in government and business. Not Stallman's wear sackcloth, eat bugs, and cry into the wilderness approach. The Eric Conspiracy's plan worked a little too well, and thanks to sexy marketing corporations have embraced open source and now have a vast library of code with which to do nefarious things unheard of in the era when Microsoft was the evil empire.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    > To be fair, "Open Source" basically coined to mean "free software, but not as Stallman means it ... ... i.e. let's not really care about the 'freedom' bit." There, FTFY.
cgio 5y ago
Is it fair to say though that, even though unintentionally, he is the father of open source? I wonder whether free software is just his “favourite”.
- sjansen 5y ago
  The two terms imply fundamentally different motivations. Free Software came first, with the motivation being maximizing user freedom. The term Open Source was created as a marketing hack in response to the observation that open collaboration lead to higher quality software but Free Software was being misunderstood as "cheap software". While many Open Source advocates appreciate the freedom it provides, in the early days the focus was almost entirely on quality as they tried to increase awareness. Richard Stallman's reaction at the time made it very clear he felt that Open Source was trying to hijack his mission to provide user freedom and replace it with corporate value as the new goal. (I suspect rms still does, but I stopped watching him tilt at windmills about a decade ago. We owe him a lot for laying the foundations that made F/OSS possible, but we owe just as much to many other early contributors, including Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond for the Open Source marketing hack that built on that foundation. Not to mention Netscape, Mozilla, & IBM for demonstrating that F/OSS was for more than just "long haired hippies".)
  - kqr 5y ago
    Free software is not strictly about maximising user (singular) freedom -- it's about maximising freedom for the transitive closure of users. Not just me, but my users, and my users users, and so on. For me considered as the end user, free software constrains my freedoms. Free software goes beyond individual users, for the bettering of mankind
908B64B197 5y ago
> also this is from 2016, which is why recent events were not even hinted at. Wasn't the cancel Stallman movement pretty much... an anonymous blog post and nothing else?
- bitwize 5y ago
  It was decades of stories and complaints from women about his bad behavior, as well as men who have worked closely with him and covered for him during that time. Now the bill has come due, and no one will cover for him because he hasn't learned. The best thing anyone can do for him is to let him face the consequences he brought upon himself.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    Other than this anonymous blog post https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec210794 https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21... and some comments he made on a mailing list that were completely twisted, what exactly did he do wrong?
    - geofft 5y ago
      Well, hold up, let's clarify what's meant by "do wrong." A lot of people deeply involved with the free software and open source movement(s), including people who worked at the FSF, had been unhappy with him as a leader for a long time. https://wingolog.org/archives/2019/10/08/thoughts-on-rms-and-gnu https://wingolog.org/archives/2019/10/08/thoughts-on-rms-and... (GNU project maintainer, summarizing - with links - views of other GNU maintainners) and http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html (long-time FSF staff, Conservancy cofounder, and 2021 FSF awardee) are good places to start reading. Or see how FSF staff unionized (unusually for tech!) to protect themselves from him (https://twitter.com/paulnivin/status/1374532930400227328 https://twitter.com/paulnivin/status/1374532930400227328 , https://twitter.com/NovalisDMT/status/1172573166956437505 https://twitter.com/NovalisDMT/status/1172573166956437505). It's true that that blog post (which was not anonymous, there's a name on it???) is what catalyzed something to actually happen, and you can dispute whether the blog post by itself merited anything. And - largely because these were things that a small group of people were trying to handle internally (did you know that the FSF staff are unionized?) - there didn't seem to be much public discussion beyond that one blog post. The GNU maintainers' mailing list is private, the discussions between FSF board members are private, etc. So, it certainly looked to the casual observer like it was a single blog post. But that wasn't the reality.

mastazi 5y ago

That's true, the first time I learned the difference between Open Source and Free Software, it was by reading something that Stallman wrote many years ago on the FSF website. He's always been very big on making that distinction.

garmaine 5y ago
To be fair, "Open Source" basically coined to mean "free software, but not as Stallman means it."
- mastazi 5y ago
  Yes, I've heard before that the expression "free software" predates "open source". Thanks for clarifying.
  - bawolff 5y ago
    Predates is understating it - it was kind of a major dispute at one time. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
- kragen 5y ago
  This is absolutely not true. Stallman was in the group of people Cced on the email that day to get their support for using the newly-invented term "open source". He took longer than most to respond, and when he did, he responded negatively (and fairly aggressively, as I recall). But many long-time supporters of the FSF in that email discussion were totally in favor of the proposal, and it came as a surprise to me that Stallman wasn't.
  - kubanczyk 5y ago
    I believe you. But it's not a stretch to say that "open source" was coined to mean something different than "free software" and it could be a proverbial hill to die on, ideologically. Source: http://www.catb.org/~esr/open-source.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/open-source.html Even if it was surprising, it was more than just a whim. As you see, Raymond didn't see it as disturbing or incomprehensible.
    - kragen 5y ago
      Your source does not support your claim. On the contrary, it explains that the intended difference is rhetorical rather than ideological or semantic.
  - garmaine 5y ago
    The term “Open Source” was coined by Christine Peterson in the context of a discussion about a source available project which did not meet RMS’ viral conditions for “free software.” Peterson suggested “open source” as an alternative phrase, and it spread from there.
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      > The term “Open Source” was coined by Christine Peterson I think this has been shown to be something of a myth. The term clearly predates when she claims to have coined it. http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/fall96/0269.html http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/fall96/0269.html
      - andrewshadura 5y ago
        If you carefully read the email you linked you'll see the context is different and open source (and definitely not open source software) is not used as a term on its own.
        chrisseaton 5y ago
        Yes the term didn't have exactly the same meaning, but that's sort of the point. The term Open Source, as a term related to software code access, predated the OSI and Peterson. They took an existing term which other people were already using, claimed it for their own, and started trying to tell people how to use it. They even tried to trademark it!
- greyman 5y ago
  Exactly. I have nothing against RMS, but in my eyes he is just a typical leftie person - makes up an own definition of something, and then runs around a tries to convince everyone that his definition is the only correct one and the term must mean exactly what he claims it means.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    Since he made up not only "an own definition" but pretty much the whole idea and concept of Free Software, I'd say that yes, the term actually does mean exactly what he says it means and nothing else.
- bitwize 5y ago
  As I like to say it, in Lisp terms open source and free software are EQUAL but not EQ. That is, they are defined to mean the same thing but have different underlying reasoning. Open source really is just free software with sexier marketing. ESR and RMS were close friends, once, before RMS went full CWC. Based on ESR's blog posts I would guess his perspective to be that yes, proprietary software is inherently evil, but you can't say that if you want to win hearts and minds in the real world. You have to talk up the practical, bottom line advantages: how is releasing the source code under a liberal license going to contribute value to our company and to society at large? And how can you make money while doing this? That will get the ear of mainstream society, especially decision makers in government and business. Not Stallman's wear sackcloth, eat bugs, and cry into the wilderness approach. The Eric Conspiracy's plan worked a little too well, and thanks to sexy marketing corporations have embraced open source and now have a vast library of code with which to do nefarious things unheard of in the era when Microsoft was the evil empire.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > To be fair, "Open Source" basically coined to mean "free software, but not as Stallman means it ... ... i.e. let's not really care about the 'freedom' bit." There, FTFY.

cgio 5y ago

Is it fair to say though that, even though unintentionally, he is the father of open source? I wonder whether free software is just his “favourite”.

sjansen 5y ago
The two terms imply fundamentally different motivations. Free Software came first, with the motivation being maximizing user freedom. The term Open Source was created as a marketing hack in response to the observation that open collaboration lead to higher quality software but Free Software was being misunderstood as "cheap software". While many Open Source advocates appreciate the freedom it provides, in the early days the focus was almost entirely on quality as they tried to increase awareness. Richard Stallman's reaction at the time made it very clear he felt that Open Source was trying to hijack his mission to provide user freedom and replace it with corporate value as the new goal. (I suspect rms still does, but I stopped watching him tilt at windmills about a decade ago. We owe him a lot for laying the foundations that made F/OSS possible, but we owe just as much to many other early contributors, including Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond for the Open Source marketing hack that built on that foundation. Not to mention Netscape, Mozilla, & IBM for demonstrating that F/OSS was for more than just "long haired hippies".)
- kqr 5y ago
  Free software is not strictly about maximising user (singular) freedom -- it's about maximising freedom for the transitive closure of users. Not just me, but my users, and my users users, and so on. For me considered as the end user, free software constrains my freedoms. Free software goes beyond individual users, for the bettering of mankind

908B64B197 5y ago

> also this is from 2016, which is why recent events were not even hinted at. Wasn't the cancel Stallman movement pretty much... an anonymous blog post and nothing else?

bitwize 5y ago
It was decades of stories and complaints from women about his bad behavior, as well as men who have worked closely with him and covered for him during that time. Now the bill has come due, and no one will cover for him because he hasn't learned. The best thing anyone can do for him is to let him face the consequences he brought upon himself.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  Other than this anonymous blog post https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec210794 https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21... and some comments he made on a mailing list that were completely twisted, what exactly did he do wrong?
  - geofft 5y ago
    Well, hold up, let's clarify what's meant by "do wrong." A lot of people deeply involved with the free software and open source movement(s), including people who worked at the FSF, had been unhappy with him as a leader for a long time. https://wingolog.org/archives/2019/10/08/thoughts-on-rms-and-gnu https://wingolog.org/archives/2019/10/08/thoughts-on-rms-and... (GNU project maintainer, summarizing - with links - views of other GNU maintainners) and http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html (long-time FSF staff, Conservancy cofounder, and 2021 FSF awardee) are good places to start reading. Or see how FSF staff unionized (unusually for tech!) to protect themselves from him (https://twitter.com/paulnivin/status/1374532930400227328 https://twitter.com/paulnivin/status/1374532930400227328 , https://twitter.com/NovalisDMT/status/1172573166956437505 https://twitter.com/NovalisDMT/status/1172573166956437505). It's true that that blog post (which was not anonymous, there's a name on it???) is what catalyzed something to actually happen, and you can dispute whether the blog post by itself merited anything. And - largely because these were things that a small group of people were trying to handle internally (did you know that the FSF staff are unionized?) - there didn't seem to be much public discussion beyond that one blog post. The GNU maintainers' mailing list is private, the discussions between FSF board members are private, etc. So, it certainly looked to the casual observer like it was a single blog post. But that wasn't the reality.