On Sat, 03 Feb 2007 20:07:42 +0530, Anant Narayanan said:
>> i dont think our main weakness is money. Our main weakness is that
>> we dont like to make waves, we want to be popular and friendly with
>> everyone, so we dont protest - we compromise and get trampled over.
>> The only way to face a bully is to stand up to him.
> Not so. I think at-least 70% of FOSS hackers do what they do because
> they simply enjoy it. A large majority of improvements in any FOSS
> software is a result scratching-your-own-itch, not to make something
> easier for the "end-user". No question of "facing" any bully here
> when we aren't even competing with anyone.
> What this means is that, a lot of us don't really care if Linux has
> a major market share or not. We use it because we like it; and we
> don't really care whether the rest of the world uses it or
> not. Quoting Manoj from #linux-india "I don't want more users; I
> want more developers who can help me".
This was part of a recent epiphany I've had: For me, free
software is a dining philosophers solution. On
http://blog.einval.com/, Steve McIntyre says that he works on free
software because
a) He needs a good OS for personal use, (Quality)
b) He relishes the control that writing your own OS can bring (Control)
c) He can trust the OS and the people who create it (Trust)
d) He likes the stability. (Stability)
I find that the same motivations also apply to me -- but there
is more to it than that. I went the gentoo route back in '92-93 time
frame (well, well before there was a gentoo), by gathering and
compiling all the software I needed on my SLS box. But I rapidly
realized that even just compiling my own OS was taking up _all_ my
time, and I could not actually _do_ anything with it because of that.
I can't do it all myself -- so I picked up the fork with a bunch of
other people with similar goals, and we help each other.
Just like dining philosophers.
> If someone chooses to use Windows Vista; too bad. I don't want to
> waste my energy in trying to convince him not to.
The only reason to seek users is that that is a potential
pool of future helpful diners. While it is nice to have such a pool
around, it does not seem to be worth a whole lot of energy investment
unless there is some indication that those people are likely to pick
up a fork at some time, and feed back.
So, please pick up a fork. Any fork.
manoj
--
Above all things, reverence yourself.
Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://www.golden-gryphon.com/>
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C
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