In a move that some may have sensed was coming, Eric S. Raymond - one of the co-founders of the open-source movement - has joined the Freespire Leadership Board. Raymond believes desktop Linux is entering into a critical period, noting that historically, users have shifted operating systems during periods of fundamental changes in hardware platforms. He believes the PC vendors' embrace of 64-bit computing will provide desktop Linux a unique window of opportunity, which if missed, may not come along again for many years.
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Member since:2006-01-01
You know I can't figure that one out, either. Other than name recognition from his behavior during the dot bomb era, I fail to see what he has to offer. I don't think that name recognition is as useful outside of Slashdot as the board of Freespire might think. It certainly isn't going to make any large OEM say, "Well now that they have Eric Raymond, I think we can do business with these guys."
The "co-founder" bit was pretty funny. Though compared to the usual deluded self-promotion of Eric Raymond by Eric Raymond I would say that it is pretty tame.
Member since:2005-11-14
I don't think that name recognition is as useful outside of Slashdot as the board of Freespire might think.
Getting bonus points with the Slashdot crowd would be good for Linspire at this point, but ESR isn't gonna help there. Everyone has already realized that he has absolutely nothing to offer, and has stopped making sense a long time ago.
After his trolling on Fedora lists I'm glad he's found a different path. Linspire and him are a great match: they both don't understand what Free Software is about, and they will both not understand why systems like Fedora, SUSE, Ubuntu and Debian will always be more popular.
Member since:2005-06-29
Member since:2005-07-06
You know I can't figure that one out, either. Other than name recognition from his behavior during the dot bomb era, I fail to see what he has to offer.
I certainly can't figure it out. Since he confidently proclaimed KDE to be dead two or three years ago, and we all know he's right, maybe he'll be able to screw Freespire and Linspire up royally and get them to switch?
His Cathredal and Bazaar book made sense on its own terms, but it seems that ESR is having real, excruciating difficulty trying to think his way through ways in which desktop Linux can reach success. He has continually fumbled around for years about letting people develop proprietary drivers and software on Linux, for free no less (one of the reasons KDE was supposedly dead), for years without thinking of what the point of open source software would be, supporting the existing open source software we have and getting people to write open source drivers. Yes, it's possible to do the latter - it's just a question of demand. His message has become very confused amongst a lot of rhetoric.
The 64-bit thing, I just can't see the opportunity there. Apart from drivers, existing 32-bit software just works on a 64-bit architecture, and it's certainly not the shift that we had from 16 to 32-bit in the 90s. I just can't see where the window of opportunity is. It's not as if a Linux desktop system is going to be the only working 64-bit OS in existence.
Essentially, what's got to happen is that a desktop Linux system is going to have to tick all the boxes in terms of functionality, it's going to have to be given away free and someone is going to have to engineer a business model to allow them to do that. Nothing less will do.
Member since:2005-06-29
I'd rather have Raymond than Stallman...god forbid Stallman starts singing his Free Software song...
http://www.gnu.org/music/free-software-song.ogg
Member since:2006-01-01
Member since:2006-01-01
Member since:2005-07-24
What can ESR bring to the table?
An ego the size of a planet?
He certainly has that. But self-important windbag that he may be... he is right, you know.
If the ipod generation can't use an OS for the things they want their computer to do, that OS is not going to take off on the desktop. The problem with appealing to people's better nature is that they often either don't have one, or don't care enough to apply it to the things you would like for them to apply it to.
If Linspire can make devices "just work" that cannot "just work" in other distros for licensing reasons, I say "go for it"!
Nothing wrong with giving new users a stepping stone on the way to settling on a distro they can call their own.
As to his statements about GPL. Well, I happen to like the GPLv2. However, even its most staunch advocates cannot deny that GPL has its problematic side.
There is room for debate about the its relative pros and cons.
Member since:
2006-01-28
ESR sure has an extraordinary opinion of himself. I had to laugh when I read this nonsense: "One of the co-founders of the open-source movement."
The "Open-Source" movement did not need to be founded because it existed well before ESR or anyone else tried to give a business-friendly name to it. In fact, it wasn't even ESR himself who coined the term "open source". The only useful thing that ESR did was writing "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", which is a pretty good book in its own terms.
But he is been living off his self-infatuation for too long and needs to be called on it. What can ESR possibly do for Freespire/Linspire? What is significant about him joining anything?
Had this been Linus, Richard Stallman, Bruce Perens, A. Seigo, Waldo Bastian, T. de Raadt, that would have been interesting and significant.