The Collaborative Software Community Awarded

Andy Tai writes "InfoWorld awards the "Collaborative Software Community" (including the Free Software/Open Source community) the Industry Achievement award for 1998. O'Reilly accepts the award on the behalf of the community. Nick Petreley names many important people of Free Software in his award story, including RMS, Linus, ESR, Larry Wall, John Ousterhout, Alan Cox, Jon (maddog) Hall, Robert Young, Jeremy Allison, etc." Suppose this should be in the same article as the next one, but hey, they're both important. They can each have their own story today.

RMS should not be mentioned

[Trepidity]

Depending on how you count it, I run 2% to 20% GNU software. That is not anywhere near enough to make me let him fuck up the nice "Linux" name.

Well, you also run less than 20% "Linux" software. The Linux kernel makes up an extremely small portion of your operating system, so it's even more ludicrous to call the entire OS "Linux" than it would be to call the entire OS "GNU."

O'Reilly

[citmanual]

I love O'Reilly and really think they are a great company. But, are they really the spokescompany of the Open Source Revolution, per se?

I'm sorta sketchy on their involvement in the whole thing. I love their books, but I kinda wonder about them sometimes.

O'Reilly?

[Bruce Perens]

I'm still trying to figure out why O'Reilly would be accepting the award. It's very ironic.

Bruce Perens

O'Reilly?

[Bruce Perens]

I would have suggested Linus or RMS. Tim O'Reilly has never actually written any "collaborative software". Why not call it "free software" or "Open Source" rather than "collaborative software"? For the same reason they gave the award to O'Reilly - it's really an award for his trying to dilute the concept of Open Source and suck money from it.

Bruce

O'Reilly?

[Bruce Perens]

I would have suggested Linus or RMS. Tim O'Reilly has never actually written any "collaborative software". Why not call it "free software" or "Open Source" rather than "collaborative software"? For the same reason they gave the award to O'Reilly - it's really an award for his trying to dilute the concept of Open Source and suck money from it. "Collaborative software" is Open Source without the messy ethics of the people who wrote it.

Bruce

RMS most definitely *should* be mentioned

[Raul Acevedo]

I disagree, I think RMS most definitely needs to be mentioned. You can make a very convincing argument that Linux would not be anywhere it is today without RMS, because without RMS we wouldn't have the GPL nor the GNU tools. The GPL and GNU software are a major foundation of Linux and its success.

Think about it: RMS embodies a culture of sharing, of openness, that most good hackers and programmers that I've met share. Not everyone is as extreme as RMS, but most programmers that truly love programming for its own sake understand where he's coming from. RMS has helped kept this tradition alive. You don't have to be as extreme as he is, but his extreme views are necessary because overall they inspire people to be more open and collaborative than they would otherwise.

Even if you disagree with him philosophically, technically RMS is responsible for GNU, and that in and of itself is a remarkable achievement. Without GNU, Linux just wouldn't have made it this far so fast. Heck forget Linux; GNU's contribution (and thus RMS') to UNIX software development is immense.

I understand why people have a problem with him---I've worked with him in the past, and I've seen his stuborness firsthand---but I definitely think RMS is not only one of the great hackers of our time, but also one of the great philosophical contributors of our time (w.r.t software). It is important not to understimate how significant the GPL, and his resulting push for GNU software, has been to the advancement of Linux in particular and software development in general.
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