Dwight --

A very apt comparison!

Cheers,

Alan

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At 6:42 PM -0000 12/3/98, Dwight Hughes wrote:
>Mark Guzdial wrote:
>>
>
>> >     Dan Ingalls has pointed out that in an Open Source Software of modest
>> >size -- and particularly one that tries to be self-disclosing (as we hope
>> >to do a lot of in the next year) -- one or two savvy people are all it
>> >takes to be independent.
>>
>
>>
>> I suggested that they build the consistencies and better ways and
>> documentation themselves.  I made a contrast similar to Alan's, but in
>> terms of respect.  Standards and closed languages implicitly say, "We have
>> this covered.  People smarter than you have already figured it out.  Just
>> take our way." And if bugs appear, the answer is, "We will fix it for you.
>> Soon. Really."  Squeak (and other Open Source efforts) are implicitly
>> saying, "You are smart, too.  You can figure this out and improve it.
>> Please share what you have done because then we'll all be better off."  The
>> former path respects the programmer as a user, while the latter path
>> respects the programmer as a peer.
>
>A comparison I like to use is that open source is to closed source as
>science was to alchemy. Science is built by sharing knowledge and
>discoveries openly so the work of anyone can be built on by everyone
>else -- alchemists hoarded their knowledge and discoveries, each to
>himself - his knowledge dying with him, so each generation started anew,
>and no one got very far. When products or their companies die they take
>many person-years of knowledge and discoveries down the drain with them,
>which gets laborously reinvented to a greater or lesser degree of skill
>again and again and again.
>
>-- Dwight