Infrequently Noted

Alex Russell on browsers, standards, and the process of progress.

Perspective

So after receiving a keyboard-lashing from myself and others regarding some comments he made, Chris has walked a lot of it back and bravely noted where his new perspective conflicts with the old. It takes guts to do that.

My original comments were born of my frustration the internecine strife that seems to follow every discussion about OSS licensing. It's one of the reasons that I was so grateful for Dion's 100-point scale for judging community because it helps put all of this stuff into a perspective that lets you evaluate what's more likely to be good for a broad audience from what's more likely to hurt people along the way. There will always be both individual and corporate involvement in OSS, and both are good things, but neither are unalloyed forces for lightness and right. They've got down-sides. OSS communities and hackers should be honest about them and evaluate them on the merits and likely outcomes. It took me a long time to come to that perspective and it's and one that I'm happy to see Chris weighing. Kudos to him for taking it in stride.

Correction: I wrongly attributed the 100-point scale to Ben instead of Dion. Totally n00b mistake. My apologies.