Essay RFC delayed.

[Ean R . Schuessler]

On Fri, Aug 27, 1999 at 04:57:01PM -0400, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> > You know, I think that this is where I must totally disagree with you.
> > Your contention that corporations have no notion of civic duty is both
> > a simple minded stereotype and fundamentally untrue. The notion of shared
> > public infrastructures is neither new nor unappetizing to large
> > organizations.
> 
> If you're so smart, why aren't *you* the person the Wall Street Journal calls?

Ah ha, I see. So you are saying that corporations have no notion of civic duty
because you are quoted in the Wall Street Journal? I guess I should
have spent less time building free software based systems for Fortune 500 
businesses and more time on the phone to the press.

> Wake up, man.  The percentage of people who can be reached by
> arguments that aren't founded in selfishness is *tiny*.  You and I
> both happen to be among them -- but I know I'm in a minority, and you
> apparently don't.  

So we should recast our movement in their selfish minded terms? I think 
perhaps you are the one who is asleep, and dreaming to boot. You
delude yourself as to the true forces at work here. The press is the
distorted reflection of reality, not the other way around. You were a 
convenient interpreter for these events, not a messiah.

In 1993 you could already buy production Linux CDs off the shelf of
retail stores, complete with X, gcc, emacs and all sorts of other
gadgets. Thousands of programmers and millions of users rapidly swept
into the movement because of sheer interest in Linux as a way to solve
problems and have fun.  Several years later, you came and wrote a fairly 
interesting paper detailing this process and subsequently took credit 
for it having occured.

Free software is a shared infrastructure, just like spoken and written
languages. It propogates because it is a convenient tool for
manipulating and passing information and because its replication is
less resource intensive than its benefits. It is a weather pattern, it
is a storm that was waiting for the right set of initial conditions.

You are like a weather man trying to take credit for the hurricane.

If you want to blame anyone, you can blame Stallman for doing the rain
dance on faith for years before the shit hit the ground. Or, if you
feel pragmatic you could blame Andreesen for trying to take Netscape
back to its roots after it became Wall Street's golden child. Of
course, you'll take credit for persuading Netscape as well. Never mind
the fact that it started out free.

I would stop arguing with you, but its so much fun!

-- 
__________________________________________________________________
Ean Schuessler                                 A guy running Linux
Novare International Inc.                  A company running Linux
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