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ESR's "The myth of the fall"

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  ESR's "The myth of the fall" wjwlsn <ibillwilson@gmail.com> - 2014-03-04 13:11 -0800
    Re: ESR's "The myth of the fall" "Julio Di Egidio" <julio@diegidio.name> - 2014-03-04 23:31 +0000
    Re: ESR's "The myth of the fall" Hils <hils@saynotospam.net> - 2014-03-05 04:19 +0000

#1248 — ESR's "The myth of the fall"

From the fake-history-is-as-good-as-forgetting department:

Eric Raymond has written a new blog post (on 2014-Mar-02) that explores
some of the history of free software, open source, and what existed before.
Titled "The myth of the fall", he contends that the "hacker culture" of
today has been misled by a myth that there was some kind of "free and
open software Eden" that fell due to the rise of commercialization, with
proprietary systems and software, when in fact, such an Eden had never
really existed prior to the rise of Unix-inspired systems and frameworks.
Furthermore, he argues that buying into this myth, and failing to recognize
what it took to get to a world where "open source" is a widely used and
accepted philosophy, risks a slide back into a world that is more closed,
commercial, and proprietary.

"http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5277"

Tim O'Reilly expands upon this theme with a blog post of his own (on
2014-Mar-04), and argues that the way to prevent that slide is to "...work
assiduously to find ways in which open data and cooperating systems create
more value than closed, proprietary data."

"http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/03/reflections-on-eric-raymonds-myth-of-the-fall.html#more-59599"

Note: the many comments to esr's blog post provide a lot of interesting
history and anecdotes from the history of computing, and are possibly
more interesting than the blog that spawned them.

-- 
I drive a '74 AMC Hornet in my dreams. Also, I really like cheese.

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#1250

"wjwlsn" <ibillwilson@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:f2a2afaa-9d12-4cfc-be39-295463a9b43f@googlegroups.com...
>
> From the fake-history-is-as-good-as-forgetting department:
>
> Eric Raymond has written a new blog post (on 2014-Mar-02) that explores
> some of the history of free software, open source, and what existed 
> before.
> Titled "The myth of the fall", he contends that the "hacker culture" of
> today has been misled by a myth that there was some kind of "free and
> open software Eden" that fell due to the rise of commercialization, with
> proprietary systems and software, when in fact, such an Eden had never
> really existed prior to the rise of Unix-inspired systems and frameworks.
> Furthermore, he argues that buying into this myth, and failing to 
> recognize
> what it took to get to a world where "open source" is a widely used and
> accepted philosophy, risks a slide back into a world that is more closed,
> commercial, and proprietary.
>
> "http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5277"
>
> Tim O'Reilly expands upon this theme with a blog post of his own (on
> 2014-Mar-04), and argues that the way to prevent that slide is to "...work
> assiduously to find ways in which open data and cooperating systems create
> more value than closed, proprietary data."
>
> "http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/03/reflections-on-eric-raymonds-myth-of-the-fall.html#more-59599"
>
> Note: the many comments to esr's blog post provide a lot of interesting
> history and anecdotes from the history of computing, and are possibly
> more interesting than the blog that spawned them.

All totally beside the point (including Stallman's, of course).  In the good 
old days technologies where proprietary but open, and there were those few 
tech guys who could *hack* into operating systems and programs and even 
electronics to take a given system and make it do things that it had not 
been originally conceived and put on the market for, or even sometimes just 
to make it do the same things but better.  These were hackers, from an epoch 
that indeed finished when producers started closing their systems, mainly 
for commercial reasons, while the very idea of hacking was soon to be 
hijacked.

There were in fact articles/books on the above, with anecdotes and all, that 
I just cannot remember anymore.  I have spent maybe an hour searching the 
web and this is the only link that I have been able to find providing at 
least a bare hint, and anyway only available on the wayback machine:
<http://web.archive.org/web/20090328121928/http://www.robson.org/gary/writing/hacker.html>

There may be more, there must be more somewhere, maybe in some dusty corner 
of some bookshelf or who knows: searching the web is just pretty useless, as 
along the time we have been literally flooded with the fake meanings of 
hacking and of many more things.

Julio
 

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#1253

On 2014-03-04 21:11, wjwlsn wrote:
> 
> From the fake-history-is-as-good-as-forgetting department:
> 
> Eric Raymond has written a new blog post (on 2014-Mar-02) that explores
> some of the history of free software, open source, and what existed before.
> Titled "The myth of the fall", he contends that the "hacker culture" of
> today has been misled by a myth that there was some kind of "free and
> open software Eden" that fell due to the rise of commercialization, with
> proprietary systems and software, when in fact, such an Eden had never
> really existed prior to the rise of Unix-inspired systems and frameworks.
> Furthermore, he argues that buying into this myth, and failing to recognize
> what it took to get to a world where "open source" is a widely used and
> accepted philosophy, risks a slide back into a world that is more closed,
> commercial, and proprietary.

The open source model will continue to work for a great many software
projects regardless of what happens in the commercial software world.
The commercial software world will continue because it's profitable, not
necessarily for coders but for lawyers, accountants, advertisers,
investors, and rentier capitalism generally. Sooner or later in many
organisations, decisions about software (and hardware) procurement are
made by people who either don't know what the fuck they're doing, or who
are using the opportunity to launder money to their friends.

> "http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5277"
> 
> Tim O'Reilly expands upon this theme with a blog post of his own (on
> 2014-Mar-04), and argues that the way to prevent that slide is to "...work
> assiduously to find ways in which open data and cooperating systems create
> more value than closed, proprietary data."

"Create more value"? Micro$oft and Adobe can both claim to be "creating
more value", for their investors. Challenge that notion of "value" and
you'll likely be labelled an anti-business communist.

The most effective way to prevent any "slide" may be to go on the
offensive, publicising the shortcomings of closed software in general
and rentierware in particular, hacking and cracking it and publishing
the exploits.

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