squeak program delivery, etc
Alan Kay
alank at wdi.disney.com
Thu Dec 3 19:40:50 UTC 1998
Dwight --
A very apt comparison!
Cheers,
Alan
-----
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
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