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11/21/2006: ""Open Source" is dead, says El Reg"

The Novell-Microsoft deal certainly shows Redmond's desire to draw a line between the "free"and "open" communities. In an interview on Friday, Bill Gates was effusive in his praise for the "purity" of Richard Stallman, the original author of the GPL.

Did the term "Open Source" mean anything, any longer?

"They're going to have to co-opt a new vocabulary," thought Moglen, "because the old vocabulary just died on them."

"I agree with you. This was the week 'Open Source' ceased to be a useful phrase because it denoted everything up to and including Microsoft's attempts to destroy free. Language is subject to this problem. Since the beginning of time uprising movements have taken pleasure in perverting the language of criticism used against them by the ancien regime - the 'brave beggars' of the Netherlands, and Yankee Doodle, and the Whigs and the Tories - it's all the same terms of dis-endearment turned into a weapon. But the game is also played by modern propaganda in the other direction - by turning language into the property of the guy on top: Fox News "Fair & Balanced (tm)".

"What Microsoft did to 'Open Source' was what Stallman always said could be done to it: first you take the politics out, and when the veal has been bleached absolutely white, you can cover it with any sauce you like. And that's what Microsoft did, and 'Open Source' became the sauce on top of Microsoft proprietarianism. And once that process has been completed they have to go after the next vocabulary."

And now?

"So now they're going to try the hard work of cracking 'Freedom'. Free, well that means stuff you don't pay for..."

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