brainstorms

Wednesday May 11, 2005

open-source effort is a terrible thing to waste...

there are many acts of stupidity that leave me nearly speechless, and the recent FSF/stallman calls for a fork of OOo (thus avoiding the "java trap") and a rewrite of java are amongst them. this clumsy eWEEK article has the sordid details.

when one is speechless, one's mind is moved into unfamiliar spaces. in this case, i had to think hard about the nature and role of FSF, and about new and creative open source projects in computing, two things at increasing odds with one another.

i no longer think FSF deserves the support and energies of computer scientists and open-source hackers.

in open-source computing, we are not supposed to waste our valuable resources in the increasingly irrational battles against each other and each other's licenses; we are supposed to be professional and smart, and we are supposed to produce good computing solutions to real problems that matter. we are here to make a difference, not slobberingly rework those things that already made a difference.

on the other hand, as my hero kenneth galbraith once put it, if all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.

related reading: robert j. sternberg, why smart people can be so stupid
yale university press, 2002.