Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 18:47:22 -0600 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: mavery@mail.otherwhen.com, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: FreeBSD and memetics Message-ID: <4.2.0.32.19990419171213.03ed5730@localhost> In-Reply-To: <199904191711.MAA26033@hostigos.otherwhen.com> References: <4.2.0.32.19990419093753.0454e490@localhost> <19990418080429.A37740@holly.dyndns.org>
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Mike Avery has raised many good points here. >If you compare OS's to religous movements (5), religous movements >rarely rely on a single way of getting converts. Even churches work >hard and in varied ways to get visitors through the door, and to keep >them in the fold after that. Advertisements, special programs, >personal testimony, booths at fairs, billboards, television programs, >courting the news media for coverage all have their place. And none >of them are enough by themselves. If we want to grow, are we doing >enough? As a newbie, I don't know, I just want to raise the question. There are, indeed, many modes of advocacy, just as there are many modes of advertising. To understand why, it helps to see FreeBSD's situation from the perspective of "memetics" -- a set of useful ideas based on concepts from the fields of sociology, psychology, genetics, and comparative religion. Memes, to sum up the concept in a sentence, are mental constructs -- ideas or cultural elements -- which spread, compete, and evolve in a manner akin to that of the DNA in genes or viruses. Religions, brand loyalty, the "cultural" aspects of operating systems, multi-level marketing schemes, and aphorisms may all be said to be memes. (For a good introduction to the subject, see Richard Brodie's book "Virus of the Mind," ISBN 0-9636001-1-7.) The hardiest memes have more than one vector, just as the hardiest viruses do. (The Melissa virus, the fastest-spreading virus in history, used three vectors: e-mail to familiar correspondents, template infection, and file infection.) In fact, they work best when they have multiple propagation mechanisms with varying degrees of aggressiveness. Linux has this characteristic: among the mechanisms by which it propagates are the radical lunatic fringe (Richard Stallman), "pragmatic" advocates (Eric Raymond), a cult hero (Linus Torvalds) who garners press attention and general admiration, and corporate marketing (Red Hat Software and its cluster of allies). Some would say that Linux and FreeBSD are themselves memes, but to be more precise, they are each surrounded by a cloud of them. The "culture" of an OS, its user experience, its vocabulary, the consistent logic of its commands and architecture (in the case of FreeBSD, shared by all of the BSDs), its user community and the interactions within it, and brand loyalty to it are all memes. One of the reasons that Linux has done so well is that its memes -- in some cases by design, in some cases by accident -- give it some particularly adaptive traits. You might say it has "good memes" in the same way you might say that an unusually healthy person has "good genes." (1) FreeBSD, on the other hand, lacks some of the "good memes" of Linux and also has some maladaptive ones. One of the things about memes is that, good or bad, people tend to cling to them. We see this in the case of religion: humans will continue to embrace religions such as the cults of Branch Davidianism, Jim Jones, etc. even if it results in destruction. FreeBSD, and some members of the FreeBSD project, appear to be clinging to what I see as some maladaptive memes and resisting change. (This is a natural tendency.) At the same time, I believe, they are failing to develop for FreeBSD the new memes it needs to compete in the "software ecosystem." Mike's message describes some of these. Mike also makes the point that my questioning of some of these maladaptive memes has resulted in hostility from a few people. This is often true of memes; they tend to manifest as "touchy subjects." When a detached observer points out that someone's irrational but deeply heartfelt loyalty to, say, a football team or an odd religious concept (e.g. "Don't you think it's kind of a bad idea to undergo castration and then take poison so your soul can hitch a ride with aliens hiding behind a passing comet?"), one is often greeted with hostility even if the comment makes a great deal of sense. I think that this is what's happening here. (2) Some people on the list have even gone as far as to interpret these hostile RESPONSES to my messages as meaning that I myself have been intentionally hostile, which I haven't. I'm merely playing the part of the detached observer who, not having that particular meme, can see from the outside that it is maladaptive. One FreeBSD meme that seems to be pervasive, especially in FreeBSD's "inner circle," is a notion of "ownership" in proportion to the extent of one technical contributions -- that is, a consensus that one is not entitled to point out *any* of FreeBSD's memetic problems unless one had authored or worked on some substantial portion of the code. (I wonder if my attempts to contribute technically to FreeBSD were, in fact, rebuffed because the incorporation of my code would, in effect, grant me the "ownership" that was considered a prerequisite to doing this.) It seems to me, however, that a requirement that one make large technical contributions before one could comment on memes related to advocacy is itself a maladaptive meme. (FreeBSD's greatest memetic problems are almost entirely orthogonal to technical issues.) In any event, I didn't feel that it was a good idea to attempt to contribute in a climate where my proposed contributions were greeted with such intense hostility. So, I resigned from the advocacy list and committed the time I had reserved for FreeBSD advocacy to other pursuits. Now, again, on this list, I see similar hostility. But since I *must* remain on the "chat" list in order to catch issues which are important to me as a system administrator, I hope (as Mike does) that we can avoid the name-calling and reframe the discussion in a way that will be more productive. Can we talk? --Brett Glass P.S. -- By the way, Mike made one minor factual mistake in his message. I'm not an employee of InfoWorld, nor have I ever been one. I wrote a very popular column as an independent contractor for the magazine for 8 years, after which time it was abruptly cancelled. Some say that it was due to my published observations about Microsoft's behavior in court. Others say that it had to do with a cultural change in InfoWorld; that the magazine was moving toward appealing to the "pointy-haired boss" and away from the people who actually did corporate IT. In any event, I'm now writing for many other publications, including the ZDNet Help Channel and BoardWatch. (1) Some of Linux's memes, by the bye, were actually designed for a different purpose that which they ultimately serve for Linux. For example, the GPL was designed by Stallman not to make Linux popular but to annihilate commercial software. However, the rhetoric associated with it serves to attract those who are dissatisfied with Microsoft's products and/or its dominance in the industry. The power of promising a clear alternative to the growing disaffected class of Microsoft software users cannot be underestimated. (2) No, I'm not comparing the beliefs of any of the FreeBSD team to this sort of whacko religious cult. However, I *am* making the point that a perfectly innocent observation that seems like common sense to the detached observer can be heresy to -- and thereby invoke an extremely hostile response in -- someone who is "infected" by a particular meme. 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