Re: Bertrand Meyer challenges some open-source assumptions.
On Wed, 31 May 2000, Jeff Licquia wrote:
>On Mon, May 29, 2000 at 06:39:14PM +0200, Henrik Eriksson wrote:
>> On http://www.sdmagazine.com/features/2000/03/f4.shtml there is a very
>> interesting article called "The Ethics of Free Software" by Bertrand Meyer a
>> famous guru in objectorientation.
>
>I posted a rebuttal in the talkbacks. Basic points:
>
> - He asserts many "absolute truths" in ethics that are actually
>rather hotly debated.
>
> - Perfidious ad hominem attacks.
>
> - Redefinition of the word "free" to suit his argument (proving the
>old maxim that you can make anyone say anything you want, given ex
>post facto editorial control of the dictionary).
>
>Were he not some famous developer publishing in a so-called
>"respectable" magazine, it would likely end up being treated as the
>confused rant of yet another clueless observer.
The fact is that he is not a clueless observer. He is a developer of
commercial software which was never particularly popular because GNU C++
better suited the needs of real software developers.
When I was at university they briefly had an Eiffel programming course, it
was regarded as a fairly pure language but of no use in the industry so C++
replaced it. Now the community-source licensed Java has replaced much of the
C++ subjects. Eiffel got squashed between open source GCC and
community-source Java.
Now Bertrand gets his 15 minutes of fame through slandering the entire open
source community (I'm sure that most of the people here never heard of him
before).
Russell Coker
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