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11/15/2005: "OSI, ESR, Halloween and Microsoft"

In Christian countries, the Cathedral was the source of ecclesiastical power, and to some extent it remains so today. As a political power, however, its role has gone from all but central to mostly non-existent. Nobody is building Cathedrals anymore.

In Islamic countries, the bazaar, (which is seldom, if ever, co-located with any related job-producing construction projects), remains the center of ecclesiastical power. To sell in the bazaar, you need a license from a Mullah. In Islamic Republics, the bazaar is therefore the center of economic power, period.

Its entirely probable that the religious overtones in his choice of the term Cathedral was Eric Raymond's allusion to what I and other see as his pointage to the outcry from RMS (Playing the Pope), versus the more freewheeling style of Linux development. We've already seen that linux has had to become much more disiplined about acquiring copyright assignments for contributions as a result of the SCO mess. If you want evidence that both the bazaar style and the term "open source" are easily corrupted and/or prone to self-destructive, dogma-inspired holy wars, you need look no further than Microsoft and its most recent moves.

Yes, Microsoft.

Back in mid-October, one of OSI's boardmembers, posted this to her blog:

We voted unanimously as a board in April 2005 to move historical materials such as Eric Raymond's "the Halloween Documents" and Michael Tiemann's "A Case for Open Source" to the authors' sites for maintenance and to re-focus our efforts on increasing professionalism and credibility for both OSI and for open source worldwide. Re-focusing our efforts towards a positive future has been very successful. This year we've been invited to participate in South America, Asia and Europe at conferences and in private consultations with governments and local businesses that are contemplating open source licensing or policy issues. The OSI Approved brand is increasingly recognized outside the US. This puts OSI in a much better position to serve a growing constituency.

Yet the documents didn't move until October 17, 2005

And when did Microsoft go public with their new shared source inititative, which includes the two licenses that may be "OSI compliant"? October 18, 2005.

And only after did Microsoft meet with "a quorum" of the OSI board.

In fact, Danese has never mentioned ESR's removal from OSI's board.

Consider this little bit of history from Microsoft's own mouth:

Q: Why didn't you submit the IronPython license to the OSI for approval?
A: The OSI has provided a much needed aggregation point for open source licenses but there are elements to the OSI website that are strongly anti-Microsoft. They have every right to hold their own opinions and to post what they will on their website. For the time being, Microsoft has chosen not to work with the OSI. As we continue to expand our collaborative development efforts we welcome any and all constructive conversations with the OSI and others about how the various elements of the software industry can work together more effectively. For example, we think that establishing some consistency among source licenses is a worthwhile objective. With >55 "open" licenses and counting, it is clear that property holders have strong opinions about how they would like to share their property. All individuals and organizations must be able to reserve the right to choose the source license (or write a new one) that will work best for them. Yet, there would be significant benefit from some consensus on a few archetypical licenses that were well understood by all parties.

"... but there are elements to the OSI website that are strongly anti-Microsoft." Hmm. Posted April 5, 2005. Hmm.

Lets continue:

Software licensed under the PSF, BSD, PHP or Apache licenses for example can be used in conjunction with the IronPython license. Software licensed under the IronPython license may not be combined with GPL code (in this regard both IronPython.


Yet Tim O. the book god (no friend of the GPL or FSF) thinks that fine.

Perhaps this is the source of ESR's "We don't need the GPL anymore".

Eric is a racist dumb-ass, now publicly ridiculed. The OSI board have either sold-out or are trapped by their approach of defining a set of "license standards" and then being forced by their own lawyers to apply these licenses to all comers. O'Reilly stands to sell more books, so they're all in-favor of the move. Meanwhile ESR doth protest too much.

This move by Microsoft is just more "embrace and extend", and does not represent a softening of Microsoft's postion. Microsoft is poised to move to market its way into 0wning the very term "Open Source", and will then use it to position against Free Software and the GPL. Eric and the rest of OSI (along with Linux Journal The Leading UNIX, Linux and Open Source Authority Since 1983 and a whole host of other poseurs) have all but handed the fight to Microsoft.

Microsoft hates the GPL and will do everything within its power to destroy it. Only the FSF and the GPL are left to stand in their path.