10 out of 37 postings censored here. Really hard work for 'elite' censors. And you better never again complain about PJ removing postings from her blog.

I have reviewed every single hidden post in that diary (all of them from PRs), and given them all the rating I think they deserve.  In most cases, that was 2, which is my normal rating for an utterly worthless post.

Not one of them detailed any F/OSS contribution made by a PR - the topic of the diary.  Not a single one!  Most of them were just whining about the hidden posts.

Furthermore Mikey went on to split hairs about stallman claiming that stallman was only a member of the free software community.

As Jeff has pointed out, Stallman would not agree that Mikey was splitting hairs. Stallman is very keen to distance himself from Open Source, for example:

We are not against the Open Source movement, but we don't want to be lumped in with them. We acknowledge that they have contributed to our community, but we created this community, and we want people to know this. We want people to associate our achievements with our values and our philosophy, not with theirs. We want to be heard, not obscured behind a group with different views. To prevent people from thinking we are part of them, we take pains to avoid using the word ``open'' to describe free software, or its contrary, ``closed'', in talking about non-free software.

(From the Essay 'Why ``Free Software'' is better than ``Open Source'''

I suppose in that case we should subtract any GPLed code from the contributions of the ipwars community. The GPL is free software after all.

You know perfectly well that a public domain code is not open source.

Mikey has already shown that PD code is free software according to the FSF's definition.

Other people have mentioned very specific projects they worked on so we can measure and judge their contribution. Why is it a crime to ask harlan to be specific too?

It isn't.  I rated both the post asking the question, and this one, a 3.  Other people have marked them down, I guess, because there is a PRs who has been hectoring Harlan for some time, so any PR who is felt to be having a go at him (or at us generally about ratings) is likely to be suspected of trolling.

Nevertheless, both posts remain visible at this time (and were visible before I rated them).

What a wonderful idea. Let's lay it out on the line.

Let's show the world how much it has benefitted from all the contributions you  guys have made.

So colonel open sourced a dead JDBC driver in 2002. In the announcement he says " This is pretty much a "dead" project as I have not upgraded it in several years." Meaning it was dead several years before it was open sourced. Still better then nothing I suppose.

It looks like he contributed a few patches to two more projects (how many lines colonel? and what did your patches accomplish?).

Finally he says he wrote something or another that wasn't code and it may or may not have influenced some unknown people at IBM.  That's pretty impressive.

I have a suggestion for you guys.

Mono, Colonel, br3n, harlan, mikey. Let's gather all your contributions to FOSS and then compare them to PJ or Stallman or perens. Ok maybe that's not really fair. Stallman and Perens do more in a day then you guys do in a year. Let's just compare them to PJ's contributions OK?

I've got a better suggestion.  Why don't we gather up all the PRs contributions to F/OSS and compare them to the Colonel's, Harlan's, Mikey's etc.  (Dunno who Mono is supposed to be.)

We can put together a web site and ask people to vote. The web site would contain links, one to a google search on GL and  others to a google searches on ipw, mono, mikey, zen, br3n, and harlan. Finally we would provide a link to this diary entry showing all your wonderful and important contributions to the FOSS movement.

Then it's a just a matter of putting together a simple poll and advertising the site on slashdot, yahoo, and such.

People can judge for themselves who has done more for FOSS. ColonelZen or PJ.

Thanks Sunny for this space.

To me it means that I can use the code in my toolbox or for a client without worrying overmuch.  Of course a client needs to know what license provisions apply (which in turn means I have to find out the client's intentions for the code before starting).  

But by and large F/OSS just means I have the source code and can use it, with the basic understanding that I have to pass on the source to anyone who gets to use the finished product.   Beyond that I don't much care.

FSF and OSI ... a pox on both your houses!  Ok there are some places where the fine distinctions may be meaningful.  Those who care can go .... argue with themselves!

Of course public domain is F/OSS.   I can get the code, I can use it, I don't have to worry.  By my standards it's F/OSS.