Comments on: Dissecting words for fun and profit, or how to be a few years too late

By: Another hypocrite post: “Open Source After ‘Jacobsen v. Katzer’” | carlodaffara.conecta.it

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 12:19:35 +0000

[...] hides the same error already presented in other pearls of legal wisdom already debated here, the reality is that the entire frame of reference is based on an assumption that I heard the first [...]

By: Tarus

Tarus — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 15:12:15 +0000

I’ve been making a living on OpenNMS as a pure services company since 2002 with no outside investment. Now we are 8 people, growing, with strong revenues, all based on the business model of “spend less than you earn” and the mission statement of “Help Customers, Have Fun, Make Money”.

I’m the freakin’ poster child for pragmatism – it is the only way we have survived, but when I point out my accepted definition of open source is the one from the OSI, I’m labelled some sort of crazy purist, usually by open core companies that spout record revenues in one press release and the need to change their business model to be less open in another.

(sigh)

Before I was an EE I trained as a chemist, and both disciplines taught me to define my terms and to lay out arguments as simply as possible, without hyperbole, rhetoric and informal fallacies. While I don’t always succeed, you seem to, and you back your posts with data and logic, which is why you are so enjoyable to read.

By: cdaffara

cdaffara — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:18:28 +0000

Thank you! It seems that despite it being a “fun” piece, lots of people appreciated it. And as for the purist, in many cases (not all, of course) the one that frame the debate as purists-vs-pragmatists are those that are not willing to make clear what their business model is. I also met so many “open source” companies that are absolutely not open at all…

By: Tarus

Tarus — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:05:43 +0000

What a nice post to wake up to on a Friday morning. I thought I was the only one in this business with a penchant for pointing out informal fallacies in arguments (and I too am an EE).

As a person who gets labeled a purist simply for referring to the OSI’s Open Source Definition, it is nice to see someone else bring a little sanity to the discussion.