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The Commercial Bear Hug Of Open Source

Posted by Scott_Ruecker on · 6 comments
Forbes; By Dan Woods
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While there is never any shortage of hope in the world of technology, perhaps the largest gusher in the last 20 years came from two words: open source, a term that is too large for one column (too big for most books, in fact). This week JargonSpy takes a trip back in time to understand how many of the hopes and dreams for open source ended up creating a world just like the one we always had. To reduce the scope of our discussion to a digestible size, we must add a qualifier, so this week we are going to look at "commercial open source."

[Lookout, major lapse in research ahead. - Scott]

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Comments (6)

Granted, I only skimmed the article, but I didn't see any lapse in research. All I see is a man taking many words for stating the obvious: Companies love open source, put loads of money in it and make loads of money from it.

Welcome to the year 2000.
He skimmed way too much for me..too much.

You are right on the money with the Welcome to 2000 thing though. ;-)
Quoting:He skimmed way too much for me..too much.


Ah, is that what you meant with your byline. I was expecting a piece that was simply plain wrong in good Forbes/Enderle style.
Hense the word 'lapse', I hadn't been able to use that word in an while..it felt good..i guess 'lack' would have been a better word, but still..

;-)
The article is actually pretty good for the synopsis it covers. The first paragraph accurately states that open source as a term is entirely too broad to cover in most average sized books. The second paragraph delineates a section of open source to look at "commercial open source" that the author then properly defines for the casual or uninformed reader.

He stated his goals/topic and accurately met his target without any real positive or negative spin. Job done and done well.

The real crime here is Dana's response. Where he puts words into the article that just arent there. He vilifies Mr. Woods for inverting RMS beliefs, when in fact RMS wasn't even alluded to in the article. He blasts Mr. Woods again for insisting on calling it "commercial open source" when even a casual reading of the first two paragraphs would have shed light on the fact that defining that term was the goal.

Dana, in his response, must have really had a need to try out his mint flavored shoes, its the only reason I can think of for him sticking his foot in his mouth this badly.
Quoting:Woods, for some reason, insists on calling open source “commercial open source,” when the whole idea of open source was that it would be commercial.
That is beyond a doubt the stupidest thing that could have come out of his mouth. Neither GNU or Linux set out to be a commercial entity. Linus' original license before adopting the GPL pretty much guaranteed no commercial exploitation at all, and from his own mouth it was a toy/hobby that maybe 15 or 20 people in the whole world might find interesting enough to play with.

The only rewritting of history and of facts going on here, isn't being made by Dan Woods, but by Dana.

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