Re: [DotGNU]"Open source" is not what we do here

[Matthew C. Tedder]

> Linus has the right to express his opinions.  We have the right to say
> they are foolish and harmful and that he is doing a disservice to the
> free software community.

Yes... I had previously ignored and was thus unaware of the BitKeeper
application.

By being maintainer of the Linux kernel, he carries some social
responsibility that he
is not appropriately managing.  Perhaps someone could make a Free client
application
at least, for the BitKeeper.  I don't know anything about that application
so I don't know.

But I do know that our own integrity depends on us, not anyone else.  And
we'll
disagree on many things as we always have so these are things that we can
and should protest against.  But I personally will not slam him as a person,
just as a
person who needs some more enlightenment.

Perhaps we should attack what he is doing but be careful not to attack him,
personally.
When you attack a person, the only natural tendency is to become defensive.
Therefore
a better approach is often not the most obvious.  You don't want to increase
their
stubborness...you want them to open their minds in order to change their
thinking.

That's just my own opinion, as we are all alloud to have one.  Please don't
ever mistake
my opinions for anything counter to the basic principles of the Free
Software Movement.
I am perfectly and stubbornly loyal to those principles and have studied
them a great deal
in coming to such convictions.  However, I might likely differ greatly in
terms of approaches
toward promoting such social change.  I believe that putting a great deal of
thought into
how one implements social change is also crucial.  It's crucial in terms of
both
accomplishment and a moral mandate to be one eligible for doing so.  For
example,
Marxism had some great points against capitolist wrongs.  But even if their
solution was
technically and morally better, the bloody and anti-freedom methods in which
it was
claimed to be applied robbed any sense of morality from it.  Frankly, I
think Marx was  a
genius in terms of seeing and criticizing the wrongs of capitolism, but he
was not
creative in either engineering a solution nor its implementation.

The RMS "genius" (perhaps just an obvious thing twenty years ago), was in
seeing the
wrongs as they took shape, but also in the creativity of developing a
solution.  In terms
of its implementation, however... I feel it could be better..  But with
freedom and
diversity, I am confident the answer will find itself.

--Matthew
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