Linux Zealots and The Media

I recently read commentary by John Dvorak of PC Magazine. Dvorak is a long time columnist and his views are usually to the point and worth a closer look. As much as I hate to agree with him the recent rumblings with LinuxWorld and O'Hara vs. PJ of Groklaw are the type of negative press that makes it hard to be a die-hard Linux user.

There seem to be a number of small camps that make up the Linux/OSS community. There are the ardent FSF proponents, I consider them the Stallman followers. There are corporate centric groups (Novell, RedHat, Mandrake) and then there are the radical groups (zealots). I have refrained from calling Stallman followers zealots because I think that many who really believe in the FSF/OSS movement are a bit more open minded. The zealot community however is the most vocal and often gets itself into flame war upon flame war about why closed source is bad and open source is superior. It is this myth that I think perpetuates the image of FSF/OSS community members as narrow minded elitists.

My own personal belief is that there are times when both types of software development is suited to a task. Closed source software is and I think always will be a boon to economic trends. They have a hunger and desire to create "the next big thing" which I think helps drive innovation. Open source development is a free thinking, unbound opportunity for people to learn, expand and also provide innovation. Do they have to be counter to one another? I don't think so. Where I do see people butting heads is in terms of standards. I don't mind what code you write in the underpinnings of something but if the digital age is going to grow by leaps and bounds, we need to agree to disagree on the creation method and focus instead of ways to provide open standards that everyone can COMMUNICATE with.

Be this in the form of open file formats (XML anyone?) or communication standards like the http protocol specs, we need ways to share information. Microsoft is considering starting up a new campaign centered around the slogan "It just works". How about we get past that, and look at "It just works together".

PS: I'm a long time user of RedHat and occasionally have been known to run Debian, SuSE, FreeBSD, MacOS, Windows (yeah yeah)