On Dec 17, 2006, at 8:54 PM, R. Scott Belford wrote:
Jimen Ching wrote:
On Sun, 17 Dec 2006, Nakashima wrote:
Over the years, I've witnessed exceptional acts of generosity,
cooperation and community within HOSEF and LUAU. However, the
level of bickering has surprised me.
Are you sure you're living in Hawaii? Level of bickering is
surprising? Are you not monitoring the Rail Transit debate? Are
you not monitoring the Hawaii K-12 education debate? If you have
a group of people that has more than 5 people, you'll have
bickering. Is this a surprise for you? Where are you from?
The person you are referring to is a lifelong resident of this
beautiful island, and I think it is reasonable to be surprised that
a mailing list about FOSS could become so childishly petty. This
is quite different than transit, education, or other issues that
are neither free, voluntary, nor inherently cooperative.
Children are wonderfully honest. They can teach us as much as we
teach them.
To a child, just seeing, just doing is truth. In a child's mind,
when you are hungry, eat.
When someone is hungry, give them food.
Being an educator, not a geek (in the positive sense), my rose-
colored expectations lead me to believe there would be a greater
sense of community. I hope HOSEF and LUAU can evolve into a
strong, positive force for change.
I don't know what's going on. I've been reading this list
continuously, but somehow, this issue came about and I missed the
beginning or something. What exactly is the issue?
Jim, just to clarify; HOSEF is not LUAU and LUAU is not HOSEF.
LUAU predated HOSEF. If you want to know HOSEF, just visit its
website. As for LUAU, this is it. If you're reading this email,
you're part of LUAU.
HOSEF and LUAU are part of the whole, and therefore part of each
other. In many, many ways, HOSEF is LUAU and LUAU is HOSEF.
If the parents of a thousand children are praised, those thousand
children will rejoice.
If one makes offerings to the parents, he makes offerings to their
thousand children as well.
How is it that this list is managed and sustained? The charitable
entity called HOSEF was created and named on this mailing list.
Everyone was invited and encouraged to participate. After its
creation HOSEF adopted LUAU, with the blessing of its former
manager, and aside from the occasional bruised ego it has been a
very good relationship.
The people who feel strongest about the independence of LUAU have
done nothing to preserve it. No one stepped up to provide hardware
or support for this list when it was asked for many, many years
ago. Until a few hard drives were funded one day at McKinley, the
entire dual athlon 4U server currently at UH was from my pocket.
Instead of gratitude or appreciation there has been resentment.
They also surf, who only stand and wait.
Thanks to a whole host of folks, namely Ed Orcutt, LUAU was born.
Thanks to Warren Togami, LUAU was revived. Thanks to Brian Chee's
willingness to host us and Vince Hoang's willingness to
administrate us, LUAU exists. A history of sorts is here
http://www.hosef.org/wiki/LUAU_history
Many have done much, but those who have only posted questions,
seeking assistance have contributed as well.
LUAU doesn't have a leader, there's no phone number, there's no
monthly meetings. There's no treasury. LUAU, at the end of the
day, is just a file with a list of email addresses on someone's
computer. Apparently, at the moment, it's lists.hosef.org. Note;
this doesn't mean HOSEF _owns_ this list. The list used to be
hosted on an ICS computer, that doesn't mean ICS owned the list.
If you want to learn some history about LUAU, do a search in the
archives.
Correct. HOSEF does not "own" LUAU. HOSEF is the entity that has
managed and sustained LUAU. Jim is correct that HOSEF=LUAU, and
you are correct that LUAU is not owned by HOSEF. LUAU does not
magically exist, though, and there is real work and sacrifice
behind this thing so many take for granted.
There is no owner. There is no owned. How does one own a community?
Nothing stops 1,000 groups from starting their own lists, each called
"LUAU", but the whole is greater than the parts. Well all
intuitively grasp this truth, so the list has not been forked.
There is no owner. There is no owned. How does one own software?
Before you answer, consider a world where mathematics are property,
owned by people. In this world, every time you want to do anything
useful: build a house, make a boat, start a bridge, devise a market,
move objects weighing certain numbers of kilos from one place to
another, your first stop is at the mathematics store to buy enough
math to complete the task which lies before you. You can only use as
much arithmetic at a time as you can afford, and it is difficult to
build a sufficient inventory of mathematics, given its price, to have
any extra on hand. You can predict, of course, that the mathematics
sellers will get rich. And you can predict that every other activity
in society, whether undertaken for economic benefit or for the common
good, will pay taxes in the form of mathematics payments.
The productization of knowledge about computers, the turning of
software into a product, was, for a short, crucial period of time at
the end of the 20th century, the dominant element in technological
progress. Software was owned. You could do what you could afford, and
you could accomplish what somebody else's
software made possible. To contain within your own organization a
sufficient inventory of adaptable software to be able to meet new
circumstances flexibly was more expensive than any but the largest
organizations seeking private benefit in the private economy could
afford to pay.
If you could make as many loaves of bread as it took to feed the
world, by baking one loaf and pressing a button, how could you
justify charging more for bread than the poorest people could afford
to pay? If the marginal cost of bread is zero, then the competitive
market price should be zero too. But leaving aside any question of
microeconomic theory, the moral question of what should be the price
of what keeps someone else alive if it costs you nothing to provide
it to them, has only one unique answer. There is no moral
justification for charging more for bread that costs nothing than the
starving can pay. Every death from too little bread under those
circumstances is murder.
We find ourselves now in a very different place from where our
parents stood. You live there, I live there, my other friends live
there. It's a place where the primary infrastructure is produced by
sharing. The primary technology of production is unowned. The
effectiveness of that mode of production in the broader society is
now established. Plus or minus the couple more years left before
Microsoft fails entirely, we have proven either the adequacy or final
superiority in crass economic terms of the way we make things. We
have brought forward now the possibility of distributing everything
that every public education system uses freely everywhere
to everyone: true universal public education for the first time. I
can show how free software, plus commodity hardware, plus
electromagnetic spectrum that
nobody owns, can build a robust, deep, mesh-structured communications
network which can be built out in poor parts of the world far more
rapidly than the twentieth century infrastructures of broadcast
technology and telephones.
We have begun proving the fabric of a twenty-first century society
which is egalitarian in its nature, and which is structured to
produce for the common benefit more effectively than it can produced
for private exclusive proprietary benefit. We are solving epochal
problems.
If the owner of lists.hosef.org one day says: "I'm tired of this
free/open source software non-sense, I just want to surf the waves
for the rest of my life." That's fine. This happened before, but
LUAU survived. It'll survive this one as well, if it happens.
I'll volunteer to host it myself if need be.
Interesting. Your volunteer time to help Julian and Vince
administrate LUAU is always welcome. Your time to install the soon-
to-be donated hard drives would be appreciated. No individual has
the ability to dump LUAU.
There is no "this one", there are only things which are now, things
which are past, and things yet to come. One thing is all things,
one of us is all of us.
Having said all this; HOSEF members have every right to post on
LUAU, as long as it is related to free and open source software.
I haven't seen anything yet that HOSEF members have posted that
isn't related to free and open source software. Thus, I have no
reason to complain.
So, what is the problem? Who's bickering? What are they
bickering about?
Misunderstandings happen. We clarify ourselves and we move on.
What, we haven't seen heated debates on LUAU before? When people
are passionate about something, heated debates will occur. This
is free and open source software. It's all about the passion. No
one is getting paid for this, so what else is there if not passion?
What else is there if not passion? How about civility and respect.
remove the ego, and civility and respect are present.
"The kind of seed sown
will produce that kind of fruit.
Those who do good will reap good results.
Those who do evil will reap evil results.
If you carefully plant a good seed,
You will joyfully gather good fruit."
Dhammapada
Software is creating roadways that bring people who have been far
from the center of human social life to the center of human social
life. Software is making
people adjacent to one another who have not been adjacent to one
another.
Jim
(sections of the above are lifted from a recent speech by Eben Moglen)
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