Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 08:13:37 -0800 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Paul Robinson <paul@iconoplex.co.uk> Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Open source (was RE: Hi!Dear FreeBSD!) Message-ID: <3E54FEB1.377B0103@mindspring.com> References: <IPEDKJGCDFHOPEFKLIDHOEKFCCAA.paul@iconoplex.co.uk>
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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
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