Re: Documentation Standards was Re: [ox-en] UserLinux
- From: Rich Walker <rw shadow.org.uk>
- Date: 12 Dec 2003 13:16:11 +0000
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
On 9 Dec 2003 at 6:10, august wrote:
If you think commercial capital is incentive to do things faster, I
would ask you then, what's the rush?
It's nothing to do with getting it done faster. It's about getting
people to do the same thing.
Volunteer projects need a core of about four to six lead programmers
to agree on a direction and steer it the right way. Agreement is easy
when it's an obvious step forwards.
The more innovative and radical the step forwards, the less chance
for agreement. And therefore, volunteer based production is
inherently conservative and tends towards conformity. Hence why Linux
clones other systems rather than ever doing anything new.
"Therefore" - I do not think that word means what you think it means
[In~igo Montoya, The Princess Bride]
Your logic keeps being flawed.
An open source project has much more chance of undergoing innovation,
because the innovator can just code up the innovation and distribute as
a patch to those interested. In the event that the innovation is seen to
be an advantage, it can be incorporated. Agreement beforehand isn't necessary!
I was going to list some examples of superior innovation, but after
thinking about BitTorrent, Freenet, the open community re-development
and enhancement of the "Gnutella" protocol, scaling an OS from the 68000
to the biggest mainframes, the Debian *process*, public CVS
repositories, public bug tracking, sub-24-hour response to security
holes, Emacs, and MergeMem, I realised you weren't going to call them innovation.
Now if you can pay people you can pay a group to do a job whether
they think it's a good idea or not. *That's* why capital injection is
necessary for step-change innovation - it creates coherence.
The history of capital paying for innovation is pretty poor. If you
observe what actually happens in the history of technology, you'll
notice that micro-projects are the source of innovation; capital only
chases an area after a first version has been brought to market.
I think commercial intersts are inherently very populist (in a bad
way) and un-innovative. If you analyse the UI of the two popular
operating systems, you can see that it makes very base assumptions
about its users.
About the sole step-change innovative thing Microsoft ever has done
was to make software a mass market commodity. By making Office and
Windows like they did, they have become the world's richest company.
I think the key realisation for them was that the most important thing
for a software-ownership-company was a marketing department.
I also suspect that the NT kernel is step-change innovative - the DDK
certainly suggests it. However, it's hard to be sure.
No, those who know VMS say it has some ideas from VMS, but not the best
ones.
cheers, Rich.
--
rich walker | technical person | Shadow Robot Company | rw shadow.org.uk
front-of-tshirt space to let 251 Liverpool Road |
London N1 1LX | +UK 20 7700 2487
_______________________
http://www.oekonux.org/