There are a lot of people in the corporate world who need to be convinced that open source is a good thing. We won’t change their minds with overthrow. We will change their minds by competing fairly on their playing field, sometimes by their rules, and offering better products and services. We won’t always meet our ideals with every product or service.
Tom Igoe
LATEST
We are all compromisers. Did you tweet vicious language about MakerBot from your iPhone or iPad? Are you reading this on a Dell, a Sony, an HP laptop, a Blackberry phone? Then you bought a closed source product. What kind of a fundamentalist are you? I know I’m a terrible one, because, as much as I disagree with Apple’s corporate strategy, you can have my MacBook Air when you pry it from — strike that. You can have it when the newer, shinier one comes out. When that happens, I’ll be even happier if Apple takes a step in the direction of openness. Probably won’t happen, but, like the dog that goes happily to the front door when the doorbell rings even though it’s never for him, I am an idealist.
One dynamic that happens in a lot of idealist communities: we praise our opponents who make even a small step in our direction, but we attack our own mercilessly when they make even a small step away from us. It’s counter-productive.
Tom Igoe in defense of open-source innovation and polite disagreement – the most lucid, thoughtful take on the recent MakerBot controversy.
