June 14th, 2007
The era of open source negotiation
It is just possible the latest exchange of notes between Jonathan Schwartz and Linus Torvalds signals the start of a new era in business.
Call it the era of open source negotiation.
Taking the notes at face value, Linus has concerns about Sun’s strategy as well as GPL V. 3, and Schwartz wants to deal on them, face-to-face. The way he has chosen to signal that willingness is through a blog post, much like this one. He concludes:
And to prove the sincerity of the offer, I invite you to my house for dinner. I’ll cook, you bring the wine. A mashup in the truest sense.
Is there anything wrong with that? Maybe Torvalds will follow-up with a blog post of his own. Or Jim Zemlin, Linus’ boss at the Linux Foundation, might follow up with a phone call. The point is we have a public invitation to dialogue, between institutions, couched in the informality of a blog post.
Cool.
Or this could just be a one-off. Aren’t negotiations supposed to be more structured than this? Do they have to be? Can this technology really signal the start of a new era on business communications?
We report, you deride.
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Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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