[TUHS] John Sundman's takes on Evgeny Morozov, Open Source, et al

[TUHS] John Sundman's takes on Evgeny Morozov, Open Source, et al

[Clem Cole]

My apologies  if some find this as spam, but I suspect this group might
also find this a worth while read.

Full discloser, I have known John since 1983 or 1984 (I do not remember
when we were co-worked at the firm he talks about in
the article [Masscomp].   I have also read of number of his books and liked
them.   In my role as President of USENIX, I allowed John to hawk his books
at some of our conferences, but other than buying his books, I have
never given him $s.


http://my-thoughts-exactly.wetmachine.com/the-meme-hustler-hustler-evgeny-morozovs-stupid-talk-about-tim-oreilly/?goback=%2Egde_63734_member_245994140

Clem

Note:  I predated John at Masscomp (and I think he left for Sun before I
left for Stellar).
Many of you know that MSCP
 was an early 1980s a start up with a lot of ex-VMS/VAX guys  (that
predated Sun and actually did $20M in business the year Sun did it's first
$1M)..   Tim, Janet and I shared a card table as our first desk.   I think
John and Steve did get hired until we expanded to the 2 bldg in Littleton
and kicked SW out.    Everything in the piece WRT to Masscomp I will valid
as true, and like John; when I have run into Tim in the past few years I'm
not sure he recognized me either [although unlike John, I do still exchange
christmas cards with Steve Talbot and just two weeks ago got an email from
Tim about something else].

I completely agree with John's point about about Eric Raymond too BTW.  And
John  makes a side bar, that "open source" being co-opted from the 60s.
He's stumbled on that right.   I have always said the "father" of Open
Source was the late Prof Donald O. Peterson (aka dop) from what he did in
the late 1960s.  But that's a story for another time.
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[TUHS] John Sundman's takes on Evgeny Morozov, Open Source, et al

[Ronald Natalie]

I had no great love for Tim O'Reilly dating back to when he put my HOME telephone number in one of his early books on UUCP without even the decency of dropping a phone call or email to ask if it was alright.   Even so the whole Morozov is appears to be the drek from someone who was hardly even on the fringe of what he's writing about wanting very hard to be in side.    I suspect I know more about Eric Raymond and RMS then he does.   Both were regular visitors to my house (unfortunately) during the eighties.

Nice hearing from you again, uh Clem, didn't know you ended up at Stellar for a while.   I have an amusing story on that.   We had brought both the Stellar G1000 and the Ardent boxes (and even the Oki box) in to the government to show what a commercial imagery application could do on standard high performance hardware.   As a result I had to port (and we sold to a few people) Motif libraries for both boxes.   One afternoon, Stardent called and stated they needed their loaner machine back.   I loaded up it up in the shipping case (it was a tradeshow box) and put it out by our dock door.   Stardent ceased operations the next day.

About a year later I'm out of the dock and notice this monster is still there.     Then the director of sales calls me in the office.  On the phone is a guy who wants Motif for the G1000.   I laugh.   He says "yeah, I know they're out of business."   I say "Today's your lucky day, I still have one."   I powered up the thing and sent him a tape.   Gratis (we'd gotten out of the Motif biz by then).    Eventually one of my coworker lopped the wise PC  off the top of the thing for some purpose of his.   One of the boards persisted for a long time as a wall hanging in our conference room.