Krishwords

Matt Asay in his dramatically titled post Open Source Discrmination says that the open source community’s “non-readiness” to accept Microsoft into OSI fold is discrimination. Let me make one thing clear in the beginning. Out of the five licenses Microsoft submitted to OSI, three of them restrcited the code to be run only on Windows machine. This restriction goes against the very open source philosophy it claims to embrace.

Let me now take on Matt Asay’s characterization of discrimination with a real world example. US is a fairly democratic country with an open approach to immigration. Let us say a person from some foreign country wants to immigrate into US. Let us also say that the person has all the necessary credentials that will qualify him to immigrate into US. But if the person talks about attacking US and provides moral support to people interested in attacking US, would you still want this person to get in saying that he is just using his first amendment rights and he hasn’t done anything illegal? Even though he might be eligible for US immigration legally, don’t you think US will not want him to get in because he doesn’t respect the spirit of US as a country? This is the case with Microsoft too. Even though 2 out of its 5 licenses, submitted to OSI’s consideration, were valid in terms of the letter of the law (in this case Open Source Licenses), the actions of Microsoft is against the spirit of Open Source Philosophy. Like how we will suspect that immigrant about the possibility to create trouble against US, open source supporters will suspect Microsoft on the possibility of the company causing trouble to the open source movement itself. This suspicion for not following the spirit of open source philosophy is not discrimination. It is a mere suspicion. I hope Mr. Asay could understand this difference and not ridicule the people, who want to ensure that the letter and spirit of open source is protected at all times. Open source is against discrimination but its community is suspicious of Microsoft based on its past (and current) actions. I hope that media personalities like Mr. Asay and Mr. O’ Reilly don’t compromise on the core values of open source in their enthusiasm to see Microsoft embrace open source. The community will definitely accept Microsoft into their fold provided Microsoft embraces open source for the letter and spirit of open source.

Tags: OpenSource, Opensource, Microsoft, Matt Asay, Tim O’ Reilly