[CLUE-Talk] Whoa! Thems is figtin' words!

[Jeremiah Stanley]

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> Sounds like things have gotten personal.  However, I would think that
> as the founder of the FSF and GNU, Stallman does have a right to
> express his opinion.  There are so many packages in GNU that the
> comment above is laughable.

I agree that some ego's got bruised. But I don't agree that Stallman has
the power to influence the other developers on the project to pull away
from the current lead. If he/she no longer wants the job then someone else
will step up I'm sure. There are lots of programs that fall under the GNU
umbrella (thank god!), some of them being more prolific than others.
Which, if I had a project that was taking so much of my time as to disrupt
my life (do I code to live, or live to code?) I would most likely put it
in the hands of GNU. But, in this case it sounds like he was coerced into
joining and posting there for 'benefits' other than free space and
bandwidth.

> Seriously, if the maintaniner of glibc is so unhappy, then either:
> 1) fork the code and let the best project win, which is a a Bad Idea
> (tm) because the glibc libraries are so important

Yes, a fork would be disastrous.

> 2) Deal with RMS's idosyncrasies

This may be easier said than done. Most times on a mutinous crew the
captain will execute the parties involved in leading the mutiny.

> 3) Stop working on the project.

This sounds like what will eventually happen. It would be a shame though
to see someone get so tired of dealing with the politics of a big project
that he leaves what he worked so hard for. It would also be a shame for
this is an open source project. Why is that important? Because, people
contribute to these project for one of two reasons: they need it, or it is
fun for them. I fall mainly to the second part, I do it for fun. It is a
blast to be able to squash a bug in some code. That is why open source
development works, it's fun.

Linus wouldn't have made a kernel if he wasn't having a blast working on
it. He was exploring and learning, I've read some biographical material on
him and he tells a story where he was so happy with his work on getting
psuedo terminals working (pttys) that he told people that had no idea what
he was talking about.

> My 0.02 ---

Thanks!

JStanley
- -- 
Every so often, I like to go to the window, look up, and smile for a
satellite picture.   -- Stephen Wright
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