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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems - News Only
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To: Rusty Johnson who wrote (15)2/23/1999 3:20:00 AM
From: Rusty Johnson  Read Replies (2) of 36
 
Moderating the Revolution

Upside
By Sam Williams
February 17, 1999

"Insurrection has proved to be imperative and urgent--constitutional illusions and school exercises in parliamentarism become only a screen for the bourgeois betrayal of the revolution."

V.I. Lenin (1905)

The date on the e-mail invitation read Feb. 11, 1999, but to high-tech observers with a taste for the crypto-Marxist undertones of the open-source software movement, last Thursday's CityJava meeting was yet another case of déjà vu all over again. As the latest installment in Sun's attempt to sell the community-source model, the event attracted about 140 Java developers, not all of whom were prepared to sing Sun's praises.

Forget the San Francisco setting. For two hours, audience members traveled back to the days of 1903 London and the Second Party Congress. Instead of Bolsheviks vs. Mensheviks, however, this time open-source hardliners waged rhetorical war on Sun and the more moderate "community source" advocates over the future of the Java programming language.

The evening's key debate topic: Sun Microsystems, counterrevolutionary agents or running-dog lackeys of the bourgeois oppressor state?

"Open source only works if you're willing to give up control," said Jamie Zawinsky of the Mozilla.org project, throwing the first Molotov cocktail in what would eventually become an evening-long barrage against Sun. "[Community source] is set up to keep Sun at the top of the food chain, and frankly I don't think Java will survive under that model."

upside.com
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