The 'deeper why' of open source
thoughts.unicoder.io
thoughts.unicoder.io
Is it because they have this incorrect strawman notion of radical Stallmanism embedded in their minds when these words appear in their head, or because they're simply unaware?
Absolutely nothing against open source projects, but speaking about the betterment of society through open source software is puerile, given that open source is a purely pragmatic issue.
Given the betterment of society that has been created since that time, I think that your "puerile" comment is both too extreme and ill-informed. Yes, a lot of people out there are channeling Stallman, and maybe many of them are puerile hero worshipers, but Open Source does not rest on a foundation of Stallmanism. He was just one of many proponents of open publication, and groups which preceded him like IBM's SHARE followed the same well-established principles.
We do live in the age of perfectly kept records. The emails are there. The 1998 announcement of a source code release for Navigator, the described need for a more business friendly term for free software, and the creation of the open source initiative.
To be precise, Open Source rest on the creation made by Raymond, which in turn rest on the foundation of Free software, which in turn rest on Stallman, which in turn rest on the hacker culture of the MIT lab, which in turn rest on ... and so on and so on. Somewhere down there, IBM SHARE could be mentioned, and further down, Robert Boyle, and even further down, the medieval guilds, and before that, the library of Alexandria.
So instead of arguing the absurd argument that the Industrial Revolution somehow created "open source", use the perfectly kept record that its inventor made. Everything else will just sound as advocacy for your faith and revisionism.