Essay RFC delayed.

[Forrest J. Cavalier III]

From:          Alejandro Forero Cuervo <bachue at bachue.com>

ESR>       In your zeal to distance your doctrinal purity from the OSI's
ESR>       filthy but effective pragmatism, you are mainly succeeding in
ESR>       marginalizing both the FSF and yourself.  If you keep this up,
ESR>       you're going to end up ranting to an audience of one, in the mirror.
> 
> I believe more hackers would rather listen to Richard than to you, Eric.
> Perhaps your audience is bigger when you count them with your finger,
> but Richard is *far* from seeing himself in the situation you describe.
> There is a *huge* ammount of applications being actively developed that
> make part of the GNU movement. It's hard for me to understand how can
> you talk about the FSF marginalization.
> 

There are two totally different world-views and definitions of 
success here, obviously.  

Richard's success is being able to create and participate in
a community developing and using free software, where noone
is forced to use proprietary software.  (There is always a
free alternative to any needed proprietary software which works
just as well.)

It appears that this goal is nearly accomplished: Richard is
able to avoid proprietary software entirely.  The recent success
of GNU/Linux makes it easy to forget how recently the goal seemed
very far away, and Richard's views were very much "on the fringe."

The work of the FSF continues as "community building" -- growing the
membership and enlarging the pool of "free alternatives." Having
all software be free would be nice, but a community can have rules
and exist independently and separate from other communities with
other rules.  A sufficiently developed small community can be viable
regardless of the size and number of surrounding communities.

Eric's success is that no hacker must suffer using software that
is not open source, and therefore cannot be modified or improved
to serve the hacker better.  This is quite a different goal, because
it requires that NO community of proprietary software continue to exist. 

When Eric "wins", the FSF and community WILL BE "marginalized", because
the free software movement will be a very small part of
the universe of open software.  As long as the goals and development
of the free software community continue, "marginalized" is not
a derogatory term, as I see it.

Where the sparks fly between these two groups is when you consider
that individuals who are working towards "open source" don't necessarily
have the goals of Richard's movement in mind.  They may not consider
themselves (and may not act as) "good neighbors" in the sense of
free software.

Growing the free software community helps Eric's tribe.  Growing the
open source tribe doesn't always help Richard's free software
community. When idealogies are concerned, sometimes getting distracted by
the "good enough" idea (open source) will prevent the ideal (free
software) from being considered and taking root.

Richard has every right to insist that projects which are GNU projects
be publicized as part of the free software movement.  (Which is
what started this thread....)

In all of this, I think it is obvious Richard would still
prefer to see people outside the open source bubble move inside
it, even if they don't make it all the way to the ideal.  In
that sense, Richard is not at war with Eric, but he would prefer
that people not get distracted on their way to enlightenment.

Eric recognized that not everyone was going to move into
Richard's bubble, but that slighly relaxed requirements and
improved marketing of "open source" would "win the suits."

Convincing people outside to move inside Richard's bubble
was (is?) difficult.  That work needed the perseverance of
an idealist like Richard who can work towards a goal without
seeing much success for years.  It can be lonely work.

Convincing people outside to move inside Eric's bubble is
a bit easier.  Expanding the bubble to include the universe
requires the work of a pragmatist like Eric who sees success
and thirsts for more, who thrives and is encouraged by the
numbers of people joining the party.  The pragmatist who feels
lonely, or sees others "shirking" a responsibility will at least
be frustrated, or even give up in the end.

In this thread, Eric expressed frustration that Richard doesn't
(and didn't) settle for increasing the big bubble instead of clinging
to the ideal.  

Happily, for us hackers, we first have Richard and then Eric.
They are both brilliant.  Help them out when you can.

Forrest J. Cavalier III, Mib Software  Voice 570-992-8824 
The Reuse RKT: Efficient awareness for software reuse: Free WWW site
lists over 6000 of the most popular open source libraries, functions,
and applications.  http://www.mibsoftware.com/reuse/