This column maintains that maybe it’s time to move on from Mr.
Mundie: “Still, enough is enough. In its approach to the situation,
the Economist welcomed the Mundie-induced volleys as “sharpening”
the debate. OK. It’s sharp. Time to move on.”
“…On the other side we have comments from many
high-profile Linux advocates. Last week we saw a clever and
somewhat astounding publicity stunt by Bruce Perens, the author of
the Open Source Definition and now employed by HP. Perens wrote an
open response to Mundie that was signed by 10 of the open source
and free software world’s favorite talking heads. To me, the great
feat of this letter was getting everyone from Richard Stallman to
Tim O’Reilly to agree to a single statement.But rather than feel buoyed by this show of strength, I feel
sorry that such a meeting of minds was wasted on a defensive
reaction to Microsoft. There’s something unsettling about allowing
Redmond to control the agenda of open source advocates.”