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From: Nate Williams <nate@mt.sri.com>
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To: chat@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: I'm outta here
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[ Because this is -chat .... ]

> Here's a clue for all the needful:  anytime you need to build yourself
> up by attacking some other person, entity, or project, you're along the
> path of failure.

I've gotta jump in here, just to get Sean's goat. :)

How do you then propose we 'improve' on a person/entity/prjoject etc..,
without taking a critical look at the process/code/goals.

One person's attack is another person's constructive criticism.  Can I
not 'criticize/critique' another entities business practices with the
intent on doing things differently.

Or, more on a technical note, often doing things 'better' requires
looking at what another person has done, and improving the things they
do badly.

Case in point, in a project I was working on, the previous programmer
had a construct of the type (in Java).

for (int i = 1; i < vector.getSize(); i++)
   doSomething(new Integer(vector[0]), vector[i]);

Was this wrong?  Of course not, but after running it through a profiler,
it turns out that this code was used *ALOT*, and was a bottleneck.

So, I recoded it.
Integer index = new Integer(vector[0];
int size = vector.getSize();
for (int i = 1; i < size; i++)
   doSomething(index, vector[i]);

Now, this isn't a big deal, and probably not worthy of criticism, but
I have fixed *STUPID* errors in programmers, and in my position as
technical lead, pointed to them the error of their ways in the vain hope
that somehow this kind of dumb mistake wouldn't happen again.
(Hopefully I communicate better in person than in email. ;)

I see much of the discussion (if you take out some of the rhetoric and
name calling) as someone's attempt to 'educate' others of the pitfalls
of the GPL that occur due to idealism.

Finally, just so anyone assumes I'm not revealing my bias.  I do not
think the GPL is evil, but neither do I think that most people who use
it on their code understand the true nature of what putting their code
under the GPL means.

And no I won't go into details, since most of those 'reason' have
already been spelled out, amidst the name-calling and other rhetoric by
both sides. :)



Nate


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