My name is Shlomi Fish and I am a user, developer and advocate of open-source software. I also use commercial software, if I need to, but usually don’t enjoy using it quite as much as the open-source equivalents. I am also a firm believer in Objectivism and Neo-Tech.

You can learn more about me by visiting my homepage.

I once searched Google for “objectivism open source” and came upon an article on Open Source written by an Objectivist in a three part series about the Microsoft trial. However, the article proved to be inaccurate and showed a general misunderstanding of what open source was all about.

This article aims to be a better attempt at the job, from someone who is an insider of the open source world.

An early incarnation of this document was written (and is available) in DocBook/XML, and was rendered into HTML, PDF, and Word RTF using the DSSSL stylesheets, OpenJade, and Jadetex and TeX. The process was managed using GNU make and the files were uploaded using the rsync program. The text itself was edited using the Vim text editor. This took place entirely on a Mandrake Linux 9.1 system.

A later version was converted to use the DocBook/XML XSLT stylesheets, and rendering to the final PDF forms using Apache fop. It was later converted to DocBook 5, which is the new and improved DocBook standard.

All of the above are open source software.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License - The Attribution License Version 2.5 or greater. Year of Copyright is 2003.

Thanks should go to Nadav Har’El and Omer Zak for reviewing the early drafts of this document and supplying some useful corrections and comments. Thanks also to Einat Ya’akobovitch for inspiring some further additions to the document.