Date: Mon, 02 Sep 2002 08:17:02 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Joshua Lee <yid@softhome.net> Cc: dave@jetcafe.org, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why did evolution fail? Message-ID: <3D7380EE.A37DFF03@mindspring.com> References: <200209011802.g81I2N144217@hokkshideh2.jetcafe.org> <3D72E44E.CB303FAE@mindspring.com> <20020902105118.21bffb18.yid@softhome.net>
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Joshua Lee wrote: > > The BSD community is roughly self-assembled around the issue of > > license, just as the Linux community is roughly self-assembled > > around the issue of license. > > Funny, I always thought the self-assembling of the community was around > the fact that BSD is the best Unix-based OS available, not because of > the license which is only a small part of why its the best. :-) Then again, > I'm a hacker, not a lawyer or philosopher. Every Open Source OS advocate thinks that's how their community came about. Actually, that belief is an emergent property of people who have already selected a community. It's an effective defense against "buyer's remorse". It's not limited to Open Source Software; it's also something you see with regard to car brands, or, in extremis, specific makes and models. The real question is "Why did you subscribe to the mailing list?"; that was the decision that self-selected you into the community (at least as long as your answer isn't "to harvest email addresses" or "to troll"... 8-)). It's like the initial confusion about web browsers: they were going to "guide" (read: "control") your "Internet experience" (read: "where you point your eyeballs"), and depend on resetting the default home page to some portal-play site, when you installed the browser. Everyone bought into this; even the Netscape that was shipped on the Whistle InterJet as part of the software you could install, because the InterJet was a network gateway, was eventually adulterated to point at some IBM portal site. Never mind that it was a dialup device, and by pointing the initial browser page to the net, you forced the link up any time someone started a browser (in much the same way that starting Netscape Mail brings up the "Start Center" page in the message display portion of the screen, and forces your link up). What actually happened is that people picked their own home pages; a lot of them picked "about:" or "blank:" or "intranet": things that did not bring the link up. The pertinent take-away from this is that you can't pick people's Schelling points for them: they will pick what they will pick, and the only "stickeyness" will be as a result of a reluctance to admit that their first decision was not optimal... which people are really reluctant to admit. Actually, there would be a huge business model in stomping the registry entrys for all browsers default start pages to your own portal site, each time you run, if the whole idea of forced Schelling points worked. McAffe would be giving away their anti-virus software to get loaded into your system tray each time you booted windows, so they could sell your eyeballs to the highest bidder. Fortunately, people don't actually work that way. 8-). -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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