To: Thomas Lord <lord@emf.net>
Subject: Re: [OT] Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Re: community spirit
References: <200411010336.iA13af6p023128@xl2.seyza.com>
	<20041101141701.GB9161@puritan.pcp.ath.cx>
	<87wtx51w70.fsf@beeblebrox.rfc1149.net>
	<20041101144826.GD9161@puritan.pcp.ath.cx> <41867B20.1020608@melon.dk>
	<2982EA60-2C38-11D9-8C6F-000393CFE6B8@spy.net>
	<4186917E.3030209@melon.dk> <20041101232959.GA25080@hezmatt.org>
	<87ekjcswdn.fsf@tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <418765A9.2040206@diku.dk>
	<878y9kpfcm.fsf@tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
	<200411022006.iA2K6Q1n036262@xl2.seyza.com>
	<87y8hinbq1.fsf@tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
	<200411041938.iA4Jc4UX055425@xl2.seyza.com>
Organization: The XEmacs Project
From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>
Date: Sat, 06 Nov 2004 16:32:17 +0900
In-Reply-To: <200411041938.iA4Jc4UX055425@xl2.seyza.com> (Thomas Lord's
	message of "Thu, 4 Nov 2004 11:38:04 -0800 (PST)")
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>>>>> "Thomas" == Thomas Lord <lord@emf.net> writes:

    Thomas> The bloated crazy approach is promoted in the industry

It's not yet proven that it's crazy from an economic standpoint, nor
have you ever really explained what you mean by social risks that make
make the kinds of software engineering that you disapprove of "crazy."

    Thomas> press in the form of which projects get the most attention
    Thomas> and in terms of what kind of attention they get (and, as a
    Thomas> matter of history, that press attention does /not/ follow
    Thomas> consumer uptake -- it precedes it).

Marketing 101.  ho hum.

    Thomas> One very famous old-school programmer said to me once,
    Thomas> slight paraphrase, "I've never managed to fix [those
    Thomas> execs] -- I doubt you will either."  He seemed to me to
    Thomas> have slipped, very largely, into a hopeless cynicism.

Name names.  I know enough about the famous old-school programmers,
and they're varied enough individuals, that it would be useful to know
who.

    Thomas> When first generation says "I'm not sure you can fix X",
    Thomas> where X is obviously of central importance, to the second
    Thomas> generation: that's nothing but a priority challenge.

The obvious is not always the true.  If it really is of central
importance to others, an entrepreneur can find ways to make a profit
(in whatever terms he measures profit) from it.

    Thomas> Stay tuned.  My multi-media document format is shaping up
    Thomas> nicely, recently (at least the infrastructure and
    Thomas> structure for building it out).  And that's being done as
    Thomas> part of the Arch project which it will begin to benefit
    Thomas> shortly and amply.

Uh, why bother?  Nobody is going to use it except for you and a few
other Arch developers.  The current use of your idiosyncratic format,
which requires people to build non-standard tools, has caused the docs
to suck.  Only people who care more about tla than getting their other
work done are willing to work on the docs, and I see no reason why
that will change.

For that reason you should IMHO switch to a format that at least one
other major project uses for document sources even if they all suck,
because it will allow (at least some) casual Arch users to particupate
in improving the part of Arch whose bugs they are most expert on---the
docs.

    Thomas> To the degree that /my/ design approaches can be said to
    Thomas> represent those of a larger community and/or a specific
    Thomas> and plausible design mentality -- my team has been
    Thomas> consistent very, very badly outspent and out-promoted,
    Thomas> often disrupted, often ripped off, often treated quite
    Thomas> rudely: we never stood a fair chance to compete.

As far as I can tell from public utterances, yours and others', you've
never tried to compete on the established field of play.  Instead,
you've refused to play by the rules, and left the game.  The action is
up to you, but proceeding to bitch about not having access to the
resources available in the game is childish.

    Thomas> There is /no/ way for those execs to behave rationally in
    Thomas> their check-signing ability unless they are able to dig,
    Thomas> pretty darn far, into actual code and code designs.

Your imagination has failed you.  They do it the way that any
organization does it: they recruit experts (that they trust to keep
_their_ goals in mind) to do it for them.  As far as I can tell from
the published record, you have no interest in their goals and refuse
to compromise with them, and therefore you are not qualified for such
a position.  Pity, that....

    Thomas> Where does that leave such willfully ignorant execs in my
    Thomas> moral calculus?

Well, since you ask: it should leave them _outside_ of the _moral_
calculus.  Evaluating others is not moral behavior: moral evaluations
are first person, "I/we should/should not do ...".  Of course it is
often necessary to morally evaluate others' _behavior_, in order to
determine whether "you and me" can become "we" in the moral calculus.

In the case in point, if you believe that what "such execs" are doing
is harmful and immoral, you should become an entrepreneur and acquire
the resources needed to do something about it.  That's what rms did;
that's why rms is justly considered a great man.  If you don't, well,
then you share the moral responsibility for the debacle you predict.

-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.


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