By David Warsh, Globe Columnist, 03/04/99
The following is an online update of David Warsh's Sunday column, "The Evangelist," which discusses the Open Source technology movement.
To observe the tides of hype - Windows Refund Day in February followed by the Linux World extravaganza in San Jose this past week - is to be humbled by the recognition of the great forces at work in the opinion-making world. They hardly float my little boat. I wrote about Eric Raymond last Sunday because Technology Review brought him to town for an advertiser breakfast and I needed a fast column, not because I was closely monitoring any of the deeper events. He was on my list, just like Edward Prescott and Peter Senge and Richard Stallman. News is what happens near a newspaper reporter.
Looking back, I would have included more about Bruce Perens' resignation from the Open Source Initiative on February 18. Parens is one of those behind the Debian distribution of Linux; he founded Software in the Public Interest (SPI.) He joined OSI in hopes of introducing Free Software to the non-hacker world. He expanded the Debian Social Contract into the definition of Open Source Software adopted by OSI. Last November the membership of SPI rebelled, arguing that Perens had no right to give to OSI a mark that had been collectively developed;
Free Software advocates view Raymond as egomaniacal, insecure and undependable. (OSI has no membership; board seats are by invitation only.) Caught between contending factions, Perens quit OSI. (There is only so much you can say in a column, even a long one, without without changing the focus. See the announcements and extensive discussion at http://slashdot.org/articles/99/02/18/0927202.shtml
It is difficult to write about the significance of technical controversies like these for a general audience before the grooves are worn by coverage. Often I have written initially about the groove-makers themselves. For instance, last December I wrote about publisher Tim O'Reilly after he four-walled Esther Dyson's newsletter to boost the movement. On his way out the door at OSI last month, Perens described O'Reilly as ''one of the leading parasites of the free software community'' according to Eric Raymond. That gives you a sense of the tenor of this highly-charged political debate.
I am a layman, not a hacker. Like any columnist, I depend on a relatively few smart people to alert me and help me find my way. I rely heavily on the specialized press. See the felicitous piece on this topic by Thomas Scoville at http://opensource.oreilly.com/news/scoville_399.html, for example; as always, the best coverage is at slashdot.org. I plan to stay on the Open Source/Free Software story, however, for the disagreements within the hacker community and the computer industry are of very large consequence for society at large.
