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Re: Freedom Zero
What I like about all this, now that Microsoft has joined the conversation — and moved quite a distance in doing so — is that we seem to have hit a conversational reset button. We're all going back to (Freedom) Zero and revisiting the whole permutive fan, from RMS' original definitions, to the Gnu and OSI definitions, to the various OS and university licenses, to various shared source licenses, to fully restrictive commercial ones, and various combinations of all the above. The big question for me right now is how the open source leaders get their heads and their rhetoric around the larger development bazaar, which includes both Microsoft and a host of independent developers (we owe a thanks to Dave for vetting that last one as the best inclusive term). Something I said at one of the breakouts last week seemed to wake up the room, so I'll say it again: There is a big difference between scratching your own itch and scratching a customer's itch. With all due credit to open source developers (without which we wouldn't have the Net or the Web we have today) Microsoft has the advantage of a lot more experience scratching customer itches. If we dont' give them credit for that, and watch what they're doing right now that's good for customers whether we like it or not, we're blinding ourselves both to a significant reason for Microsoft's success, and to even more significant opportunities for scratching customer itches that Micrsosoft just plain can't. The choice is between an ecosystem and an egosystem. That goes for both sides of last week's debate.
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