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Date:      Thu, 20 Feb 2003 12:35:58 -0000
From:      "Paul Robinson" <paul@iconoplex.co.uk>
To:        "Terry Lambert" <tlambert2@mindspring.com>
Cc:        <chat@freebsd.org>
Subject:   RE: Open source (was RE: Hi!Dear FreeBSD!)
Message-ID:  <IPEDKJGCDFHOPEFKLIDHOEKFCCAA.paul@iconoplex.co.uk>
In-Reply-To: <3E544D66.4065A126@mindspring.com>

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Everything I would say in response about the OS issues is summed up here:

http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=2857&page=all

I think this basically agrees with a lot of what you're saying, but you're
mixing into the argument issues around programmer motivation that they
aren't discussing here. I agree with pretty much everything you said on
that. The issues around evolving code can be kind of summed up (or at least,
it's a starting point), here:

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/2/13/9212/42643

And I think both of these sum up what I would say in response to a lot of
what you said, in condensed form. To be honest Terry, I know how I would
respond in full but i think the best format for all that would be a book,
and we don't have time. :-)

In summary, I think we're in agreement on most of this.

Except this:

> Teenagers are brillinat examples of group conformance: "I want to
> be different, just like everyone else!".  8-).  What group you join
> is dictated primarily by who tolerates your presence best.

What group you join is dictated by who *you* tolerate the presence of best.
What group you *remain in* is dictated secondarily by who tolerates your
presence best, but primarily who you think you can tolerate the best on a
long term basis.

Sometimes people end up warping your values to fit in to remain in the group
(nobody who starts to hang around with crack heads think they will become
one themselves, unfortunately living in Manchester, UK, I can attest they
are nearly always wrong), but ultimately you will stay in those groups who
you prefer to hang around with. Put it this way, how many people do you know
who were thrown out of the Boy Scouts for being too old but who wanted to
stay in the Boy Scouts? How many left because they didn't want to do that
stuff any more? Same thing.

If you want to bring this back into a BSD-related thread, Theo didn't start
OpenBSD because he had no choice: he couldn't tolerate NetBSD core anymore,
and they couldn't tolerate him. Now, if you want to be a commiter to OpenBSD
you have to understand the fact that Theo is in charge. If you can tolerate
that, you'll be fine. If you can't, chances are you'll head over to Net- or
Free- instead. If Free- throw you out, you know you can still hang around.
It's not about what the group tolerates. It's what you tolerate.



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