On Sat, 2005-03-05 at 15:44, Todd Walton wrote: > On Sat, 05 Mar 2005 12:14:17 -0500, RBW1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > The good news... > > History is NOT over! > > http://tinyurl.com/3kkma > > Oh, I absolutely *love* this line: > > "A social or economic tipping point is characterized by a sudden burst > of mass sanity as mainstream public opinion abandons an unsustainable > mythology in favor of something closer to reality." > > I didn't so much like this: > > "Mr. Torvalds ... used this Robin Hood combination of ..." > > The comparison is completely without substance. Robin Hood was a thief. > > I don't agree with this either: > > "The open-source movement is just a faster, Internet-enabled > implementation of the much older academic tradition of peer review and > building on foundations laid by others." > > When I hear the really old-timers talk they seem to "get" the open > source thing, but they don't seem to identify with it at all. > > "Open source" is not "peer review". For one thing, in the open source > model, everyone is a contributor. Participants are not merely > reviewing for inaccuracies or minor suggestions, they're actually > creating the final product. In this sense they're actual peers, given > the fully equal status of potential contributor, vs the "older > academic tradition" in which one person or group of people is/are the > implementors, and others play the role of trusted assistant at best. > > In another sense, open sourcers are less "peer" than in the older > academic tradition. Potential contributors to any open source project > aren't selected based on credentials or pre-determined merit. Whereas > researchers in 1950s Bell Labs had to qualify for the job, "peers" > included only people who held a similar job or who had gone through a > defined training period and held a university degree of some sort. If > a trained monkey responded to light patterns and poked at a keyboard, > eventually resulting in a piece of code that just happened to work > wonderfully for the Freenet Project, the Freenet people would accept > it and it would make Slashdot. People would say, "Ooh, neat hack" and > go back to their Apple-lust. In open source, contributors don't have > to actually be "peers". > > Great article. Thanks RBW(?). I wish I had the skillz to write an > essay/article like that. > > -todd
I know it is a little all over the map but historic "tipping points" are usually not very clean and rife with mixed messages and confusion as the change is occurring. I think he may be on to something (tech revolution in CPU and ready and willing OS to take advantage) even though he engages in a good bit of myth mouthing regarding the creation and the causes. RBW -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
