on Fri, Apr 13, 2001 at 10:33:03AM -0400, Jaldhar H. Vyas ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > On Thu, 12 Apr 2001, Karsten M. Self wrote:
Red Herring #1: > > Development isn't rivalrous in consumption. > > No? One of Microsofts favorite tactics is when some startup comes up with > a innovative idea, to announce they are going to have something similar. > It may not appear for another year or so (or ever) but in the mean time it > kills the other company because everyone waits for Microsoft. Marketshare and revenue are rivalrous in consumption, development is not. Microsoft's project doesn't effect the ability of the developers of other product, it affects the ability of its marketing and sales departement. It's called cutting off the air supply. Proprietary software is FUDdable in this regard, in that a credible doubt of future viability of a system can be raised through the prospect of a possible dominant competing product. Free software isn't susceptible to this because software development transcends the corporate wall. The product(s) of my former employer, Zelerate, are now being developed by a newly formed company and as a SourceForge project, with involvment of prior employees, users, and community, despite the near total collapse of the company itself. Microsoft understands this very well, as does IBM. See the Halloween Documents and IBM's current Peace, Love, GNU/Linux campaign. Red Herring #2: > Doesn't happen in the open source world? Remember a web browser > called mnemonic? It attracted some interest at a time when there were > no free web browsers. Then Mozilla was announced. Mnemonic > effectively died as developer attention shifted to the new project. You've just shifted the ballgame. In fact, this is the opposite of the original problem. Mnemonic wasn't killed by rivalrous consumption (too many users overwhelming development, which we've already stated doesn't occur). It was killed by a competing _free software_ project, with a more credible development path, stealing developer mindshare. This is a different problem. It's also an efficient use of resources. Note that the mnemonic sources and project page are still available -- unlike proprietary projects, which very often simply die. So...It's not dead, it's resting®. ;-) Red Herring #3: > > Support and bandwidth are. > > I'm repeating myself. > > Ok, I'll concede that. The point is they are not factors which can be > overlooked when talking about "Linux." Without an influx of new blood in > these areas, as Linux grows it will deteriorate. As GNU/Linux grows, support networks evolve. In the beginning was comp.os.minux. There are currently about two dozen so comp.os.linux.* groups. I find 368 newsgroups (or descriptions) containing "linux". There are LUGs around the world. GNU/Linux is an evolving system, both technically and in its infrastructure. It grows when it adapts to Red Herring #4: > > Sorry? > > > > I've been known, dumb, lazy person that I am, to change subject lines > > ;-) > > > > There were a couple of sentences missing there. What I'm trying to > say is that it is a good thing and it should be formalized. There > should be designated people who go around changing subject lines. > This would be a good way to manage a large volume of information. I > doubt such a system would ever be instituted on debian-user but other > mailing lists might want to consider it. Centralized management of list data and practices is not feasible. The only way to do this would be through a moderated list, with a moderator (or moderators) who were responsible for rewriting and/or modifying every subject line that comes through. This is labor intensive and doesn't scale particularly well. Better alternatives are the various "Traffic" digests of list activity, the (sniff -- now defunct) Debian Weekly News summary letter, etc. Moral suasion, pressing people to supply meaningful subject lines, etc., is another tack. But it's a mode of persuasion, not of compulsion. Red Herring #....waitaminute, that's not a fish! One more Red Herring and we'd have a Dorothy Parker novel. Pity. > > > > At some point, mailing lists grow to a size that's no longer > > > > manageable. Depending on the topic, this may be several hundred > > > > to several tens of thousands of users. At this point, some form > > > > of subsetting of the list becomes essential. > > > > > > > > One of my side interests is in developing the filtering tools > > > > and algorithms to aid in sifting through such data. Kuro5hin > > > > (see sig) is a partial implementation of same, MeatballWiki is a > > > > site at which some related discussion is occurring. > > > > > > > > > > Have you seen the Everything engine? That might be promising. > > > > Interesting, yes. But a closed circle -- I don't believe it allows > > external links, at least in default config, and this is a Bad Thing®. > > PerlMonks is Everthing2 based, IIRC. Wiki is very similar. > > I thought it did allow external links but I haven't played with it too > much yet. (no time you see :-) My data is also about 6-9 months old. At the time, E2 didn't allow external links. -- Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? There is no K5 cabal http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ http://www.kuro5hin.org
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