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Yeah I never felt proprietary was the cathedral, more like GNU was the target there.

Yeah, it's weird how this anti-GNU piece became interpreted as a pro-Open Source piece.

The main thing I learnt from ESR was that you can, actually, do worse than Crazy Uncle Stallman.

But we got "Everyone Loves Eric Raymond", which made me feel less like the odd one out!

ESR got pretty nutty after 9/11. Or maybe he was always nutty and I wasn't paying attention.

I did enjoy reading his blog though, well mostly the comments. And then it just died a few years ago and never came back. I always wondered if the “database server” issue mentioned was just an excuse to stop blogging.

At least GCC. But proprietary vs. open was the common understanding.

I'm probably mistating my "never felt" earlier. At the time it was the common assumption for those on slashdot (incl me) who had heard all the soundbites but not actually read it. It was only a bit later I realised it was about contrasting styles of running floss projects.

Understandable though, by the time it came out, the battle lines had shifted from Linux vs GNU to free/open vs proprietary anyway.

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