From owner-freebsd-chat Thu Feb 20 8:15:31 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BCC6837B401 for ; Thu, 20 Feb 2003 08:15:28 -0800 (PST) Received: from stork.mail.pas.earthlink.net (stork.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.188]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 910DB43FB1 for ; Thu, 20 Feb 2003 08:15:27 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from tlambert2@mindspring.com) Received: from pool0094.cvx21-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net ([209.179.192.94] helo=mindspring.com) by stork.mail.pas.earthlink.net with asmtp (SSLv3:RC4-MD5:128) (Exim 3.33 #1) id 18ltM3-0007k8-00; Thu, 20 Feb 2003 08:15:24 -0800 Message-ID: <3E54FEB1.377B0103@mindspring.com> Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 08:13:37 -0800 From: Terry Lambert X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Paul Robinson Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Open source (was RE: Hi!Dear FreeBSD!) References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-ELNK-Trace: b1a02af9316fbb217a47c185c03b154d40683398e744b8a479b6e6216e8f7d23143bb83bc97d42dd93caf27dac41a8fd350badd9bab72f9c350badd9bab72f9c Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Paul Robinson wrote: > > 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. I was personally thrown out of Boy Scouts for being Catholic instead of Mormon; does that count? Primates are social animals; the majority of them will tolerate nearly anything to be accepted as part of a group. > 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. Tolerance of people by the group is the most important factor here. One of the most common anti-BSD claims is "BSD is elitest" -- it being a complaint about group tolerance of individuals, rather than individual tolerance of the group. OpenBSD is a really poor example. I can explain the NetBSD/OpenBSD split very easily in terms of overdriving a reward margin; it's a deceptively simple set of mathematics. It was very much an individual decision by Theo, with almost all the trigger actions being in his hands, at the time. I think in terms of "group splits", you really have to think in a different context: it is not about group acceptance or tolerance, it's about control, direction, margin, and rate. If you measure it in these factors, it makes it a lot easier to understand, and it accounts for more than just a simplistic model of "NetBSD/OpenBSD", it also accounts for "386BSD/NetBSD" and "386BSD/FreeBSD" (this last is mre properly "FreeBSD/386BSD"). It's all about the volatility introduced by strange attractors. For example, the recent denouements in the FreeBSD camp can be traced back to driving forces in the mailing lists -- intentional marginal pressure to incite stress forces, by people with interests counter to those of the project. I wouldn't claim that they were commercially motivated without verifiable evidence, but let's say "I am suspicious" at this point, and leave it there for now. The problem with a broader understanding of a class of systems is a broader understanding of what it takes to preturb them from any given equalibrium state. The act itself can be either benevolent or malevolent, depending on the perpetrator. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message