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Story: My response to Richard Stallman

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Some more clarifications..................................

> In fact, he wrote that the entire
> goal of the Free Software Movement
> is to ensure that the needs of users
> are elevated to equivalent to the
> rights of developers in the software
> social contract.

That's doublespeak. It's a fancy way of saying "what's important for developers is really important for the general public, and we are thus HELPING those less enlightened customers to get what they really need." In other words, the needs/wants of (some) developers are being made the standard. I don't agree with that in the least.

Regarding pillorying, I'm not talking about open source developers not sharing a bench in the lunchroom with proprietary developers. I'm attacking the premise that its a good idea for all software to be free (as in gratis, which as I explain is the ONLY thing software as such can be in a GPL universe). That kills software companies. To some, that's no big deal, but I think it's dangerous because software companies are the best entities to integrate new technology in ways customers can use.

A world where the IT world is relatively static can expect to have LOTS of open source and free software. In a fast-moving, dynamic IT market (and I still think it is, and my monday article gives one example), however, you need lots of experimentation, which takes money, and LOTS of close interaction with real customers. Open source, being mostly a creation of highly-technical volunteers, has had a harder time of meeting regular user needs.

Open source makes sense to me in core code that doesn't change all the time. TCP/IP would make little sense as proprietary code. In areas where there's lots of flux, though, we NEED proprietary code to generate the revenue to grease the skids that bring technology into the hand of normal users.

Open source is good. But just as you shouldn't eat nothing but Gruyere cheese, you shouldn't have nothing but open source / GPL...and that IS what Stallman advocates.

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