Simon Cozens wrote:
> Adam Turoff (lists.advocacy):
> >Because we tend to be engineers that prefer patches and working code to
> >marketing. Where would Java be if Kim Polese, Scott McNealy and Bill Joy
> >weren't on magazine covers at the rate of 12x/year talking about Java?
> >Probably as well known as Python, Perl or TCL.
>
> The question, though, is why they're there. However, I agree that our
> loyalties should lie fairly and squarely with the programmer. World
> domination comes from the bottom up, when programmers are insisting on
> Perl to their PHBs. *Then* PHBs will seriously look into it and find it
> sexy.
This brings up my favorite Heidi Wall quote, from TPC1.
Heidi: Which will win, free software or proprietary?
esr: In the short term, proprietary will win, but
free software will win in the long term.
Heidi: But what is the long term except for an endless
succession of short terms?
esr: [thinks]
esr: [thinks]
esr: That's true, but over the long term, there is time
for second order effects to accumulate, and it is
because of those second order effects that free
software will succeed in the long term.
I think Heidi was 16 at the time, and esr had given his second
public presentation of the cathedral and the bazaar that evening.
If we take the bottom-up approach for world domination,
we may need to wait a while. Huge marketing extravaganzas like
Java (and Linux) that take a top-down approach may be more
successful for a while to come.
> Worked for Linux.
Linux was playing in a different space. That could be why it took
less than nine years to get to where they are today. Also, people
like esr started planning the top-down sale of open source and linux
shortly after TPC1.
I'd argue that Linux is where it is today partially because of Perl.
After all, Tim O'Reilly and others have written at length about the
holy trinity of Linux-Apache-Perl.
Z.
