Measure twice – cut once
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You don’t have to be a carpenter to know that it’s a lot harder to fix a mistake once the cut has been made. Hence true craftsman know all to well that proper due dilgence up front can save a lot of heartache down the road.
And so it is with reacting – or over reacting – to every story, rumor, or misrepresentation about the direction of GPL3 – the work in process update to the GNU General Public License version 2 that governs the use and distribution of some open source software. As GPLv3 is a work in process, we don’t speculate on its outcome. Others do, however, including a Reuters report yesterday that intimated dire consequences for Novell – citing Eben Moglen, the Free Softwware Foundation’s general counsel as the source of this conclusion.
Within hours, Mr. Moglen himself, in an email interview with Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of Linux-Watch, clarified his position and the Reuter’s story stating, “The actual quote he prints is entirely accurate, but his lede destroys the context and is making unnecessary waves.” In fact Mr. Vaughan-Nichols has a number of balanced views and articles on this topic that provide a fuller context for many of us to “measure twice and cut once” on this issue. On his site you’ll also find an interesting guest post by Bill Weinberg, a long time evangalist on open source licensing to business users, that’s worth a read.
On this issue as with so many others, it’s a good idea to take out your tape measure and use a pencil.
John
February 26th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
This is one more reason why traditional media are going to
lose ground to Web 2.0 approaches.
Take http://www.b2bmarketingpodcast.com for example. There leading
marketing heads speak verbatim and can be heard verbatim.
So what purpose does a traditional journalist actually serve
other than making complex subjects suitable for broadcast
to Joe Sixpack?
If the audience can understand the information in the raw then
why not give it to them in the raw? Web 2.0 makes it easier
to do that.
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:45 pm
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May 3rd, 2009 at 6:53 am
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