Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1997 11:42:29 +1030 (CST) From: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au> To: terry@lambert.org (Terry Lambert) Cc: nate@mt.sri.com, terry@lambert.org, jkh@time.cdrom.com, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Commerical applications (was: Development and validation Message-ID: <199701210112.LAA03749@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> In-Reply-To: <199701202359.QAA16714@phaeton.artisoft.com> from Terry Lambert at "Jan 20, 97 04:59:57 pm"
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Terry Lambert stands accused of saying: > > You're right that ELF is not precluded by these... yet ELF has not been > adopted; therefore there must be something else precluding it. Jordan > argues it's "warm bodies to do the work". A number of us who *are* > "warm bodies" dissent, citing other causes. Such as? Other than the "buried in festering spaghetti" argument, I think that "lack of warm bodies" is the only reason that anyone's raised that has any rational backing. > Again, you are incorrect. It is you who are resorting to Aristotilian > means... you are presenting a restricted set of two options because > you blindly believe those are the only options available. You are > excluding all other possibilities in order to argue for your point; > that is logical fallacy. St. Thomas Aquinas tended to this technique; > but good company does not ennoble bad logic. Erk, Terry, as a logician you ought to know better than to interpret someone else's conversational english as a closed definition of any sort. This basically sinks your entire argument; I for one read Nate quite differently to you, and I think you do him a disservice by that. > As far as prioritization goes: FINE. Establish a list of goals for > the FreeBSD project, prioritize them however you choose, *PUBLISH* > them so that people don't have to guess what they are, and then > *OBEY* the priorities you have established when you engage in your > decision making processes so that those processes do not appear > arbitrary and unfair to the external observer. These priorities have been published : 1) Have fun. 2) Do things that make FreeBSD good (this feeds back to 1) as well). As has been established by endless prior discussion, these are about the only two goals that mean anything to the contributors. You can colour the interpretation of 'fun' with money, percieved studliness, or whatever, but the basic shape remains the same. > I do. My rule that I expect others to obey is "don't do obviously > counterproductive things". It is *you* who wants a uniform definition > of obviousness. Unfortunately, it's subjective, so I simply can't > oblidge you... I can only try to educate you about things which I > see as obviously counterproductive so that you, too, will avoid them. > Hopefully, you will respond in kind so that I don't make "obvious" > mistakes either, and the value of our subgroup will be greater than > the sum of its members. In modern conversational english, you spell that paragraph "communicate". > Terry Lambert -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control. (ph) +61-8-8267-3493 [[ ]] Unix hardware collector. "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick [[
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199701210112.LAA03749>