August 02, 2007
Conferences
OSCON, Eben Moglen and Open Source
Last week I was in Portland blogging OSCON for O'Reilly -- check out my posts covering Ubuntu Live!, The Executive Briefing and OSCON. Before the Executive Briefing I was looking forward to Tim O'Reilly interviewing Eben Moglen, a Free Software heavy weight who has defended many an open source hacker. Until that day Eben was one of my heros, but what came during the briefing surprised me a little, to say the least. Eben started telling Tim O'Reilly on stage that he had wasted 10 years with Open Source.
And from the words that Eben was using, I personally felt attacked. You see, my roots in open source can mostly be traced back to Tim O'Reilly's efforts. I created my network of Open Source friends at O'Reilly conferences and from that I created MusicBrainz -- without this network MusicBrainz may have never happened. And if it did, it would certainly look different today. Tim O'Reilly gave us the first $500 that I used to open a bank account for MusicBrainz.
I learned Perl, Python and JavaScript from O'Reilly books -- most of which were given to me by O'Reilly at excellent conferences or special events like Foo Camp. Tim O'Reilly has invested tons of money into Open Source centric companies, which employ open source hackers and let them get away from the drudgery of hacking on lifeless code in big companies. Yes, Tim has made some money doing so, but there is nothing wrong with that -- even RMS has said this.
To say that Tim has wasted ten years because he doesn't pander to your Free Software rigid ideals, your BS rhetoric, your GNU/Linux crap and doesn't worship at the altar of Mogen and Stallman is rude and insulting. I personally take offense to your words at OSCON!
UPDATE: I've removed the last line of the original post since it was probably a little uncalled for -- thanks for your words Tim.
Posted by Mayhem at August 2, 2007 12:13 PM
Robert,
While I appreciate your support, I think your last line is really inappropriate, and undermines what you are trying to say.
As Lao Tzu says:
A good man, before he find fault with a bad man,
First finds in himself the matter with the bad man.
I've stepped on Eben and Richard's toes by saying that the GPL risks becoming irrelevant if it doesn't come to grips with the world of software as a service. That obviously got Eben's dander up. But just because he made it personal doesn't mean that you or I should do so in return. So don't meet anger with anger.
Eben's personal attacks on me bothered me, yes, but what bothered me more was that Eben wilfully chose to brush a real and important issue under the rug under the guise of standing up for freedom. I've spent quite a bit of my career talking about the importance of freedom -- and warning of the new sources of lock in. Eben either didn't know that or chose to ignore it.
It was a bit like an activist warning about pesticides shouting down someone talking about global warming as wasting their time.
Again Lao Tzu, in the Witter Bynner translation that comes so easily to my mind:
People through finding something beautiful
Think something else unbeautiful,
Through finding one man fit
Judge another unfit.
Life and death, though stemming from each other, seem to conflict as stages of change,
Difficult and easy as phases of achievement,
Long and short as measures of contrast,
High and low as degrees of relation;
But, since the varying of tones gives music to a voice
And what is is the was of what shall be,
The sanest man
Sets up no deed,
Lays down no law,
Takes everything that happens as it comes,
As something to animate, not to appropriate,
To earn, not to own,
To accept naturally without self-importance:
If you never assume importance
You never lose it.
