“There are two worlds in software today… I… look at both
models of software development and then propose a new model which
combines the best of both.” — Paul Johnson
“Within hackerdom there are two philosophies justifying free
software; the ideological and the economic.
- The economic side is principly represented by Eric Raymond. He
holds that open source software is good because it is more
efficient. If it were less efficient than closed source software
then it would represent an immoral waste of resources, and so
should not be pursued. - Richard Stallman is firmly on the ideological side. He holds
that “software hoarding” is inherently wrong, and that free
software is therefore a moral imperative regardless of whether it
is efficient in economic terms.
This debate is sterile because it rests on a hypothetical
situation: a world in which open source software production is less
efficient than closed source production. As many essayists before
me have pointed out, the advantage is with open source software and
this is not going to change.”