The Battle Between Purists and Pragmatists 213
Glyn Moody has a thoughtful piece taking a long look at the never-ending battle between pragmatists and purists in free and open software. "While debates rage around whether Mono is good or bad for free software, and about 'fauxpen source' and 'Faux FLOSS Fundamentalists,' people are overlooking the fact that these are just the latest in a series of such arguments about whether the end justifies the means. There was the same discussion when KDE was launched using the Qt toolkit, which was proprietary at the time, and when GNOME was set up as a completely free alternative. But could it be that this battle between the 'purists' and the 'pragmatists' is actually good for free software — a sign that people care passionately about this stuff — and a major reason for its success?"
Re:Purist and pragmatist (Score:4, Informative)
No matter how much create comfort we add to this world ( and don't get me wrong, we've added a lot ), the ultimate dysfunction of the human being is that they want utopia. As good as it is, it's never enough. In Buddhist terms, this is usually called "Suffering", but I think a better term is "Anguish", because it's more of a mental-emotional state then physical pain, which 'suffering' implies.
So yes, the purists changes the world, and this is 'progress' in the physical sense, but I don't know that this necessarily engenders enjoyment of life to its recipients. I spent some time with an indigenous family in the Amazon for a summer field school when I was in college. They basically lived in plywood, thatched-roof huts. They had the typical family/society drama, they always complained about not having enough food, clothes, and goods from the town, and not having access to medical care, but their day-to-day life seemed like a big, casual party. They were always gathered around the fire, cooking their next meal, making jokes, laughing. They would walk to take the bus into town, go hunting, wash their clothes in the river, and work in their gardens. It was a shock for me to get back and interact with my friends, whose main topic of conversation seemed to be the utter injustice of a traffic incident or a snafu at a bureaucratic office, and how it totally ruined their day. Then in the weekend, they would watch a mega-blockbuster movie with crazy special effects, and feel ripped off because there was some nonsense thing in the plot. For all the conveniences and entertainment we had, day-to-day life had more anguish for my wealthy western peers! It really sucked hanging around them initially.
So the world will always suck, if you have that attitude, no matter your material circumstances. If you enjoy yourself, life will be good. I think the pragmatists enjoy themselves more. There's a Buddhist saying that goes something like "The world is awash in thorns. You cannot cover the world in leather, but you can cover your feet in leather."
Re:Problem with pragmatism (Score:4, Informative)
I just re-read your comment, and got no clue what you mean by this.
The debate I saw is that Linux should use a Free SCM, to avoid precisely what happened with BitKeeper. I don't remember people speaking against the concept of a distributed SCM and don't see why would they.
IIRC, Mercurial for instance existed back then and was considered, but rejected because performance wasn't good enough.
Re:Problem with pragmatism (Score:3, Informative)
Git is certainly interesting, but I doubt half the people who use it really understand how it works. Maybe if it was started in less a dire situation it could have been more user friendly.
Thats where Mercurial [selenic.com] comes in.
Within OSS there were these cascading projects. With Arch close to the beginning. Along the way different things are tried and the DSCM field is refined. I think git is a step along the way.
Re:Good for both! (Score:4, Informative)
Qt was sort of open at release (you could download and read the code but it still all belonged to Trolltech) but had a different licence to the GPL. They went through a variety of licence alterations until I was clear that their opponents would never even read the licences so it had to be GPL or nothing.
Without the purists ... (Score:5, Informative)
As a 'purist' in this sense myself, I feel somewhat justified in claiming that without the purists, there would never have been such a pragmatist movement as there is now. Let's face it: in all likelihood, if I were a pragmatist, I'd be using proprietary software tools to write programs and share information--because that was, and perhaps still is, the easy option. Purists, on the other hand, reject compromise when that compromise will eventually result in their freedoms being restricted.
Actually, free software is the pragmatic option: it guarantees that, in the future, I'll be able to code using free, compatible tools. Software that compromises on freedom will eventually fall into the trap of convenient, non-free, proprietary software that will eventually restrict my freedom in the future to write and share and change programs in an upstanding, moral way.
My two cents.
Re:Life is not infinite, so I go with the pragmati (Score:4, Informative)
This is *not* their position. RMS and his colleagues worked on computers with proprietary software to create the GNU operating system. They are saying it is better to use free software if free software exists that does what you want to do. They understand you using proprietary software if an alternative doesn't exist, although they would want to advise you about the risks of lock-in that you are running.
Their argument is that if you are *creating* software then you should offer it under a Free Software license. The creators and extenders of software are the people they are appealing to.