[Ubuntu-be] Nieuw lid.

[Marc Portier]

Bram Biesbrouck wrote:
> Op maandag 24 juli 2006 16:46, schreef Marc Portier:

<snip thx="for the background and explanation"/>

>> -marc= (who gets nervous when open source is claimed to be a (more)
>> dogmatic and/or moral Way of Anything. IMHO the movement has more then
>> enough merits on the level of honest common sense, simple pragmatics and
>> pure effectiveness that it can do well without the various attempts at
>> replacing Religion :-)  Let it not close our eyes to reality...)
> 
> I think I'd like to contradict this, since I do am a (heavy) open-source 
> believer. Every since I read Stallman's GNU Philosophy and ESR's Cathedral 

Well, Bram,
I don't see a contradiction, and who said I wasn't a (heavy)  believer?

The two points I was trying to make:

1/ there is too often more believers then do-ers, and the latter tend to
be more willing to accept compromise and be pragmatic in order to
actually achieve something, and in my experience are more willing to
make a distinction between principles and tactics

2/ 'believe' in the religious sense is not what OSS needs (most) IMHO.
The bad kind of religious believe is accepting too much axioms/dogma's,
not accepting any criticism and blind for facts of life that don't fit
in the crafted vision of "reality"

So I'ld rather chose to 'believe' in open source because it actually
works (for me), because I can understand how the mechanisms behind it
make it more adaptable to reality, because it appeals to my common sense...

I like it more to be a logical consequence then a required upfront
conviction...  Although I realize that is not a black-and-white thing.
There is probably a blend of both pushing us all in day-by-day
advocating OSS.


Anyways, what triggered me actually was the unbalance between the
applause your initiative deserves and the less then helpful comments you
were receiving.

(uhoh, that is not unlike last time I spoke up here:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-be/2006-May/000238.html, looks
like I'm becoming a grumpy ol' man after all, and actually far less
pragmatic then I'm trying everybody to believe :-))

> and the Bazaar (must have been 1999), I truly believe open-source is the 
> right future for any software development. But I guess I'm more of a open 
> source-adept then I'm a free-software one. Differently put, Bruce Perens says 
> more to me then Richard Stallman...
> 

same here.
(and I actually had the pleasure of meeting both, so I can testify it's
good for the movement that there is people of different
types/motivations/believes advocating the same thing)

take care and happy hacking,

-marc=
-- 
Marc Portier                            http://outerthought.org/
Outerthought - Open Source, Java & XML Competence Support Center
Read my weblog at                http://blogs.cocoondev.org/mpo/
mpo at outerthought.org                              mpo at apache.org