Modify Colors
One of the most painful parts of writing this blog is the necessity to read mainstream news sites trying to describe free software. For example, this CNN article titled “Microsoft takes on the free world”:
(All emphasis has been added.)
“But now there’s a shadow hanging over Linux and other free software, and it’s being cast by Microsoft (Charts, Fortune 500). The Redmond behemoth asserts that one reason free software is of such high quality is that it violates more than 200 of Microsoft’s patents.”
If Microsoft issuing a press release casts a shadow on free software, I don’t think free software has ever seen sunlight. That’s not the point, though.
It doesn’t take long to tell this is going to painful:
“The conflict pits Microsoft and its dogged CEO, Steve Ballmer, against the “free world” – people who believe software is pure knowledge. The leader of that faction is Richard Matthew Stallman, a computer visionary with the look and the intransigence of an Old Testament prophet.”
I very much object to the idea that Stallman leads everyone who is part of the “free world.” Actually, I object to the idea that you can define a “free world” at all. Is every Firefox user part of the “free world” or only people who write code?
“(Stallman insists that “GNU/Linux” is the proper name, and he refuses to give interviews to reporters unless they promise to call it that in every reference. In part for that reason, he was not interviewed for this article.)”
Why am I not surprised… We haven’t even hit the halfway point and the “free world” is already sounding like a bunch of bickering idiots.
“Popularly, “open-source software” became an umbrella term for all FOSS, but, again, Stallman bars reporters from using it that way as a condition of being interviewed.”
No comment. Moving on…
“Thus there is a schism in the free world between the more business-oriented advocates of open-source software – who simply think that community authorship makes for better, cheaper software – and the more ideological champions of free software proper, who see themselves as advancing a social movement.”
I actually have to complement the author or figuring this out. A lot of people just figure everyone worships Stallman.
“Linus Torvalds – a near-deity in the FOSS community”
A deity? Really? I agree with a lot of what Torvalds says, but I wouldn’t call him a deity.
“(Torvalds has gravitated toward the business-friendly open-source camp of the FOSS world and has openly criticized Stallman’s agenda in some contexts. In a March e-mail interview with InformationWeek he wrote: “The Free Software Foundation [Stallman's group] simply doesn’t have goals that I can personally sign up to. For example, the FSF considers proprietary software to be something evil and immoral. Me, I just don’t care about proprietary software.”)”
Once agian, I appreciate that this article includes another point of view. Many don’t.
“In free-software circles, though, the Microsoft-Novell entente was met with apoplectic rage.”
Sadly, that’s an understatement.
All in all, I have to give Roger Parloff, who wrote the article, some credit. I have read similar articles that made it sound like “free software advocates” were all part of a cult, whose leader was Stallman.
Mainstream news sources look for someone who can serve as a representative of the “free world.” The problem is that there is no one who can do that. Most authors end up finding Stallman, who is perfectly happy to talk like he represents everyone involved in free software projects, as long as you only talk about GNU/Linux, not Linux.
This is a difficult problem to solve. Even if you substituted a different person in as the figurehead for free software, an equal number of people would be dissatisfied.
How would you want to see free software and the people involved in it described?
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Actually there are quite a few journalists finding their way to Mark Shuttleworth/Ubuntu too.
In general, if you follow main stream media and it hits upon a topic you actually know something about, you will find that they write mainly nonsense about it. This goes for environmental issues, economy, politics, religion, and software too.
lol