"Yes, but the same hypothesis applies: those with the most extreme opinions (about FOO or BAR) will have more extreme opinions about non-FOO or non-BAR, creating noise of dubious value. "
If one wants a tool to do a job, why would that person have more opinions about tools not in that category? They just want that kind of tool. If FOO and BAR are competing, then it is different because BAR is like non-FOO. But that's not about being opinionated, that's about protecting an investment. FOO and BAR don't need to represent an ideology, just some random goal that for whatever reason the supporters happen to grow a community around. "And that would allow the middlings to be both productive _and_ there primarily for the sake of being part of the community, with little skin in FOO or BAR. Unless what you're saying is that, in your experience, the hypothesis does not hold ... that, perhaps particularly where $$ isn't the measure, the extremists can have only extreme opinions about the 1 thing and that it's the cohesion of the extremists that predicts success?" If FOO and BAR represent ideologies, cohesion can help. For example, I would always choose to work on GPLed software rather than not if my intent is to make it free. In practice, that would typically mean to add-value to someone else's tool. My selection criteria is the philosophy behind the GPL, not the details of the tool itself (provided the tool is technically adequate). I know other people that can't imagine adding value to another person's tool. While they might give their work away, they would do it for promotional or egotistical reasons. They don't have this community's ideology. If FOO and BAR represent different kinds of strong technical preferences then that could explain why cooperation around multi-aspect software is harder. There's too much to fight about. But then consider loose cooperative efforts like Hackage, or CTAN, CPAN, CRAN, etc. each representing millions of lines of code. To say these aren't multi-aspect is absurd. They are very, very high dimensional, interdependent, and open-ended. So I'll return to the view that proprietary mainstream user-facing software holds its place not because it is multi-aspect, but because its aspects are well understood and curated (and as Roger points out the marketing and product development are intertwined). Emacs is user facing but in contrast users come to appreciate Emacs rather than Emacs coming to appreciate (pander to) its users. Emacs is what its developer base wants it to be and everyone else can get lost. Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
