[plug] Looking for a quote

[James Devenish]

Hi,

In message <1087624417.3185.31.camel at latte.internal.itmaze.com.au>
on Sat, Jun 19, 2004 at 03:53:38PM +1000, Onno Benschop wrote:
> Linux is important to me because it represents a new method of
> developing software, a new way of sharing knowledge and a new
> avenue towards our collective future. Without Open Source, each
> developer is doomed to repeat the mistakes of their predecessor
> without even knowing that they did so. Open Source makes it
> possible to build on the shoulders of giants. Linux is the most
> visible aspect of Open Source success today.

Can I make a suggestion: is it possible to begin that paragraph without
implying that "open source == Linux"? The first sentence suggests to the
casual reader that Linux "is" or "was the start of" open source / open
collaborative development. I think that informed readers would have
sufficient flexibility in their interpretation of "represents" and "new"
to understand the correct meaning of your paragraph. However, I feel it
is a significant misconstruction for lay readers, and may promote other
such misconstructions.

PS. You can probably tell from my remarks that I were a Linux advocate,
I'd probably be a bad one ;-)