Bruce Perens rejected from license-proliferation committee.

[Ben Tilly]

On 22 Aug 2005 15:09:22 -0700, Ian Lance Taylor <ian at airs.com> wrote:
> Russell Nelson <nelson at crynwr.com> writes:
> 
> > Ian Lance Taylor writes:
> >  > It will take those people a lot more digging to understand that
> >  > there is no real feedback mechanism from the community to the OSI.
> >
> > You realize that I merely have to reply to this email to falsify this
> > statement?  It doesn't matter what I say.  I could say "flibberty
> > flobberty foo" and I still prove you wrong.
> >
> >  > Why shouldn't the OSI seek to be more open to the community which
> >  > it claims to represent?
> >
> > Yes, we ought to reply to people's email.
> 
> Well, no.  E-mail which merely gets a reply is not a feedback
> mechanism.  E-mail which can actually cause something to change would
> be a feedback mechanism.
> 
> > (Ian, thanks for sending these softball objections.  The check is in
> > the mail.)
> 
> You're welcome.
> 
> >  > Besides, restaurants are a lousy analogy, since there are many
> >  > restaurants, but only one OSI.
> >
> > There's the FSF.  There's OSDL.  There's OMM, AES, and NFLX.  Oh,
> > wait, those are stocks that I own, but you know what I mean.
> 
> The FSF and the OSDL are, in my eyes, different.
> 
> >  > Nobody voted for RMS or Eben.  But that's OK, because they don't claim
> >  > to represent anybody except themselves.
> >
> > One of the reasons that I stay on the OSI board is that I feel that I
> > am the only representative of the individual self-supporting
> > developer.  I am representative without anybody having voted for me.
> > Why do people put such stock in voting?  Democratic representation is
> > no guarantee of quality of governance.
> 
> At the very least, democratic representation is a guarantee that if
> things go wrong, there is a way to change them.  It's just one way,
> it's not the only way.

And this seems to be working out very well in the USA, doesn't it?

Now that I've 

> >  > Do you really not see the difference between the FSF, which is
> >  > "dedicated to promoting computer users' rights to use, study, copy,
> >  > modify, and redistribute computer programs," and the OSI, which is
> >  > "dedicated to managing and promoting the Open Source Definition for
> >  > the good of the community?"
> >
> > Not particularly.  There are differences which I refuse to go into,
> > but this is an area in which we both claim to be representing the
> > interests of people we've never met.
> 
> The difference is that the FSF claims to be promoting certain specific
> rights.  They will do that for all people, whether or not any given
> person cares about those rights.  There are many organizations like
> this--e.g., Amnesty International, or the NRA, or the EFF.  These
> types of organizations are generally not democratic.
> 
> The OSI, on the other hand, claims to be an advocacy organization for
> a particular group of people.  There are also many organizations like
> this--e.g., a lobbying group for a trade, or a labor union.  What's
> unusual about the OSI, compared with other organizations of this type,
> is that although they claim to represent our interests, they don't
> actually try to find out what we care about.  Most organizations of
> this type have elections for representatives, or in some cases they
> have regular meeetings in which all the interested parties get
> together to agree on agendas and priorities.
> 
> To repeat, note that the FSF doesn't claim to represent our interests.
> They claim to support certain specific rights that they feel we should
> have.  What we care about is not relevant to the FSF; their mission is
> defined independently of what we want.  We can support them or not,
> but in general it won't change what they do.
> 
> (The OSDL, by contrast, is not an advocacy organization at all.)
> 
> Ian
>