To: Thomas Lord <lord@emf.net>
Subject: Re: [OT] Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Re: community spirit
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Organization: The XEmacs Project
From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 15:43:23 +0900
In-Reply-To: <200411102018.iAAKIxfC093558@xl2.seyza.com> (Thomas Lord's
	message of "Wed, 10 Nov 2004 12:18:59 -0800 (PST)")
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>>>>> "Thomas" == Thomas Lord <lord@emf.net> writes:

    Thomas> In the preppy culture I experienced, "attitude" is a class
    Thomas> of (intentional) behaviors which is usually distinguished
    Thomas> from "behavior" in general.

Ah.  You mean like http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/Tools/Attitude/.
That's not what I understood from the context, though.

    Thomas> Re: "ignorant execs" --- i thought it was a fair term
    Thomas> since it was a willful ignorance that I was referring to:
    Thomas> "management by people skills" contrasted with "managment
    Thomas> by sustained study of the engineering field".

The issue is not whether it's "fair" or not.  The problem is that it
is symptomatic of your general inability to understand where they're
coming from, which leads to complete communication breakdown when you
tell them something that contradicts the conventional wisdom or that
they are unwilling or unprepared to hear.

Also, "management", when used to refer to executives' work, is
_inherently_ an activity that uses people skills, not engineering, and
certainly not "sustained study."  Argue that the world would be better
off without management (in this sense) at all, OK (though I disagree
strongly, it's arguable), but the link of people skills to what execs
do is practically definitional.

    Thomas> Some important decisions they make are actually very
    Thomas> difficult technical problems --- to which they throw up
    Thomas> their arms and make a "people skills" decision.

That's not a real decision.  It's true that, other things being equal,
a technically competent exec is far better than an incompetent one,
but at the exec level it's suicidal to emphasize technical skills over
people skills.  The most you can do is suggest in hindsight that the
decision should have been delegated to a technically competent person,
but that delegation itself is inherently a people skills decision.

    Thomas> Part of my (informal) job is to help defeat the craziness
    Thomas> and preserve the good parts of what they do.  And I have
    Thomas> the scars to show for that.

This is Hubris.  It's not surprising that you ran into Nemesis.[1] ;-)

    Thomas> It weakens my case, when spoken at /this/ level of
    Thomas> abstraction, that I have personally been too often at the
    Thomas> receiving end of such "supression"

Not at all.  The weakness in your case doesn't have to do with the
possibility that you're personally biased because it happened to you.
Anybody with an open mind can (and will) get past that.

It's that you pay no attention to how organizations with more than one
powerful member get their work done when they do get any done at
all,[2] and what the constraints are that make it difficult when they
fail.[3]  Maybe you do know, but your public utterances certainly
provide no evidence.

I don't say that you need to accept those realities as _right_, but if
you can't work within those constraints or understand that they are the
starting point for any effort toward reform, I see very little chance
that you'll have much effect.

    Thomas> In other words, at every stage, arch has built upon (and
    Thomas> had little choice /but/ to build upon) certain foundations
    Thomas> that I laid against all conventional wisdom in the several
    Thomas> years proceeding.  I laid those foundations on first
    Thomas> principles, not in anticipation of arch.

If I were unsympathetic, I'd reply, "Surely you don't want me to
conclude that the main difference between arch and subversion is the
former's use of rx and hackerlab vs. the latter's use of standard C
library facilities!?!" and leave it at that.  But let me continue the
thought, "I gather I'm to conclude that because you're the guy who
wrote arch, which even the Barry McLoys of this world admire, I should
respect your opinions about the importance of rx and hackerlab,
especially since they're intimately bound to the history and practice
of arch development."

Well, I do, and I'm willing to wait for further clarification.  _But
I'm an academic._  I don't need to get product to the customer before
The Competition releases their version.  It doesn't surprise me that
people who are more interested in being rich than right go ahead and
do what _they_ think is most likely to make money at the time, nor can
I disagree with their decision to do so based on their apparent goals.

    Thomas> If there's one thing missing [...], it's a big thing:
    Thomas> conveying the joy and excitement at the tantelizing
    Thomas> prospects of what more rational R&D investment can
    Thomas> deliver.

What makes you think they don't know?  What makes you think that they
will care?  "Human" and "hacker" both start with "h", and "hacker" is
(AFAIK) a subset of "human", but really, "hackerness" is almost
entirely unrelated to "humanness" except as an example of a rather
productive frontier of humanness.  There's a whole world of fun,
profit, and excellence that is almost entirely independent of whether
the software is perfect or not.

    Thomas> /That/ is what the i'd-like-to-get-them-in-a-room and
    Thomas> a-few-quiet-hours-could-fix-this stuff is about: those
    Thomas> guys are just in danger of missing the party boat, that's
    Thomas> all.

Haven't you read the reply cards?  They seem to say, "I regret that I
cannot attend your very intriguing party, but unfortunately I seem to
have a prior engagement on my calendar, and therefore decline your
most kind invitation.  Sincerely yours, ...".


Footnotes: 
[1]  To steal a line from Fred Brooks.

[2]  I suspect that Andrew will chime in here to say that he's never
observed it in real life.

[3]  And here to remark that there are infinite numbers bigger than
aleph-null, and we're going to need them.

-- 
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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