[Squeakfoundation]Notes on a NYC SqF-related meeting (Cees, Paul)

Paul Fernhout squeakfoundation@lists.squeakfoundation.org
Fri, 25 May 2001 19:19:40 -0400


Paul Fernhout wrote:
> 
> Cees de Groot was in New York for an IBM Linux tour (mentioned
> previously on the list) and he and I had a chance to meet in person and
> talk for a couple of hours on Squeak Foundation related topics.

I just remembered one very important issue Cees raised about duplication
of effort as often happens in Linux projects. In small projects or
commercial projects, one may want to avoid or reduce duplication of
effort. But in open projects supported by a community, duplication of
effort is not necessarily a bad thing. Duplication leads sometimes to
innovation. It usually leads to options. It can often lead to redundancy
(in a good sense) of skilled programmers, which avoids a single point of
human failure (from injury, fatigue, burnout, or license conflict). It
almost always leads to learning by somebody. So, we need to keep in mind
that it may be OK to have lots of duplicated efforts under the Squeak
Foundation as the Squeak ecosystem expands.

-Paul Fernhout
Kurtz-Fernhout Software 
=========================================================
Developers of custom software and educational simulations
Creators of the Garden with Insight(TM) garden simulator
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com