In the news: Eric S. Raymond shifts to Ubuntu

[Eric Dunbar]

On 21/02/07, Pavel Rojtberg <pavel at madman2k.net> wrote:
> Christian Pfeiffer Jensen schrieb:
> > https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-February/msg01006.html
> >
> > [quote]
> > This afternoon, I installed Edgy Eft on my main development machine --
> > from one CD, not five.  In less than three hours' work I was able to
> > recreate the key features of my day-to-day toolkit.  The
> > after-installation mass upgrade to current packages, always a
> > frightening prospect under Fedora, went off without a hitch.
> >
> > I'm not expecting Ubuntu to be perfect, but I am now certain it will
> > be enough better to compensate me for the fact that I need to learn
> > a new set of administration tools.
> >  [/quote]
>
> [wikipedia]
> Critics in the free software movement have accused Raymond of
> "hijacking" the free software movement. His rejection of the moral and
> ethical arguments of Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation
> in favor of a less idealistic (though arguably more pragmatic)
> market-friendly stance has stoked political tensions in the community.
> [/wikipedia]

Political tensions are stoked whenever you get absolutists (aka
extremists) involved. I suspect the author of said piece was one of
those extremists given the lack of nuance -- the shade grey simply
doesn't exist in that mind set :-( :-( :-(. You're either "with us" or
"you're against us".

The most important part of ESR's post is:

"The culture of the project's core group has become steadily more
unhealthy, more inward-looking, more insistent on narrow "free
software" ideological purity, and more
disconnected from the technical and evangelical challenges that must
be met to make Linux a world-changing success that liberates a
majority of computer users."

It has to be able to liberate computer users, not provide some
ideological solace to a few nut jobs who'd like to "stick to their
principles" (the same type of problem as what exists with too many
devout religious individuals who'd rather stick to their
perverse/perverted principles than live in the real world with real
problems, real people, real suffering and real solutions).