From: Nick Busigin
To: ask_tim@oreilly.com
Subject: Meeting of leading free-software luminaries
Tim,
In April, you hosted a meeting of "leading free-software luminaries". I was very surprised to find that Richard Stallman was not in your group. Please comment.
Best regards,
Nick
Nick,
The meeting was originally planned as a small group of local free software leaders, to discuss how we could work together. We didn't invite RMS because he wasn't from the Bay Area! We figured we'd be doing follow-up meetings that would involve a wider group.
Once word got out about the meeting, it became a big media event, and the absence of RMS from the meeting seemed a bit out of place, I will admit.
We have invited RMS to participate in the Open Source Developer Day tutorial we're holding Friday 21 August, the day after the Perl Conference. The purpose of this tutorial is to spread the word of Open Source and free software to people who've heard about it, and want to know more about the mechanics of running an open source project, the business models that work with free software, and the differences between the various kinds of free software licenses.
It isn't clear yet whether RMS is willing to participate. He has some long-standing antagonism towards O'Reilly because we aren't willing to copyleft our books. We like to think we're on the same side of the table as he is, but he doesn't seem to feel the same way about us.
--Tim
