On Sunday 17 March 2002 17:23, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote: > "Anyone who says you can have a lot of widely dispersed people hack away on > a complicated piece of code and avoid total anarchy has never managed a > software project." -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum, 1992, writing to Linus Torvalds.
He could still be right. Is it fair to describe what Linus is doing as `managing'? (-: A similar situation arises in education. People can't see how homeschooling can even compete, given the `decisive disadvantages' of no central planning, no huge resource base, no standardisation, and are invariably amazed to discover that the average homeschooled child is miles ahead (typically around 20 percentile points in any given subject) of the average systematised child, and that with far less hours devoted to actual classwork. What Mandrake is attempting to do, with great success, is ride the chaotic creative wave, but also keep the still water of systematisation and standardisation under their keel. I think it works like the modern Americas Cup yachts: the still water is pumped out through the hull and forms a thin, lubricating and protecting skin there; the rest of the ride is wild. (-: Cheers; Leon
