On 10/17/2011 11:19 AM, Robert Nesius wrote: > Hi Jason, > > First, let me tell you a little about a younger version of myself. Young > Rob was raised in a culturally conservative climate where "commie" was the > worst kind of slur you could sling at someone, to the point where "commie" > and "bad" were interchangeable in sentences. And REAL commies could not > fathom the superiority of our economic and political processes due to some > inherent flaw in their DNA. And Young Rob knew this because he lived in > rural Minnesota and when he turned on the TV to watch the evening news, the > news he and everyone else who was watching TV at that moment in time were > seeing - it was in fact the news from Fargo (NOT the SIN CITIES!). That > obviously meant culture and intellectual thought flowed from Fargo the way > it did from Rome at the height of another great civilization and empire. > Years later Young Rob learned of localized television markets and marveled > at his ignorance and ethnocentrism, but slept soundly at night knowing his > contempt for commies was still justified.. > > Linux and capitalistic ideals. I think Linux isn't quite the right context > for a conversation about Capitalism and choice. I think Linux is a very > useful context when you talk about distributed software engineering and > project management and the power of the GPL. But I think the concepts that > are more applicable to the ideas you're talking about are Freedom, the Gnu > Public License, and the Noosphere. > > First off, when I talk about Freedom, I'm talking about choice. Capitalism > is often conflated with the concept of freedom because you are considered > "free to make a profit". But not everyone's freedom's are being protected > in a capitalistic/"free-market" society - especially in a society where the > political parties are proxies for corporate interests who insist that > "freedom to make a profit" is "the most important freedom". > > As you noted, you have a lot of freedom and choices in the Linux world, and > that's thanks to the GPL, which is preventing people from taking choices > away from you. It was a lack of choice and freedom that inspired Stallman > to come up with the GPL in the first place. For Stallman, it was the lack > of choice regarding the software running on a printer he owned. I think the printer was actually owned by MIT (maybe a Xerox). RMS (later in this thread called RSM) was frustrated that he couldn't have access to the driver source code. > > As an aside - on a personal note, I find it ironic that one of the things I > hate the most - copyright - has done the most good for our society with > respect to protecting people's choices about contributions they make to FOSS > projects. > > Anyway - the GPL. It does world good, because it keeps people's > contributions in the public domain. Now take a step back and look at the > number of people who have contributed hours upon hours of effort to the > public domain via the GPL for no economic gain and ask yourself "Why would > they do that?" (Because they're stupid communists! HA! :) ). Well, maybe > look at this question from a historical context, because now becoming a > major contributor to a FOSS project can very easily lead to a job offer > because a lot of the big FOSS projects have corporations sitting behind them > selling services at an enterprise level. So - take away the "a very long > job interview" angle and what are you left with? Why are people motivated > to interact and contribute on these projects? > > Eric Raymond realized there was an id-friendly ego-stroke dimension to it > all as well. He coined the term "noosphere" and described some of the > motivations for developer activity on these projects from the point of view > of psychology and sociology in a paper entitled "Homestead the Noosphere". > I found it to be a very interesting read, and I think you would too if you > haven't read it yet. Especially since I think it speaks to some of your > motivations for working on Swift Linux. The word "noosphere" was coined by the French Jesuit paleontologist Teillard de Chardin and borrowed (possibly with an extended but very similar meaning) by Raymond. > > http://catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/homesteading/ > > Once you're done with that, I would suggest you check out "The Cathedral and > the Bazaar", which relates the FOSS development model to the Microsoftian > (among other corporations) models. > > http://catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/ > > Enjoy! > > -Rob > > Yes, the C and B is well worth reading but I get the impression that the author is trying to make a difference by being different. E.g. he makes a big todo about disagreeing with RMS about freeware vs. open source but the difference doesn't seem to amount to much other than stealing some of RMS's thunder. What Linux developers lack in love of filthy lucre they more than make up for in coder's vanity. M$ apps are often faulted for their feature bloat. This is a valid criticism. Added functionality for any application is doomed to be asymptotic (i.e. it gets significantly better, but more and more slowly). Since Linux is ultimately founded on the work of Ritchie, Kernighan, Thompson, Pike, et al. at Bell Labs, it can only continue to improve by remaining faithful to their philosophy of keeping things simple. Remember that back in the 80's some bosses were teaching their secretaries to use filters and pipes to accomplish everyday office tasks. Now, instead of feature bloat, the Linux community suffers from distro bloat, were everyone and his third cousin need to get their own idea of what Linux should be, with their own logo out there and only manage to further confuse potential new users. Ubuntu pretends that it has somehow outgrown the name of Linux just because its skin has a little more of a Windows look and feel. Meanwhile, basics things like Xmodmap are being tromped on by a whole slew of half-implemented "better ideas." My desktop is more configurable with win2000, Keytweak, w32 Emacs than with anything I've tried from Debian, Redhat, or Ubuntu. Get the basics working right first and you can worry about whether you're the next RMS or Torvalds later. Ed