No disrespect to those that might be geekier than I've realized, but I don't know how any of you are reading this without knowing exactly what he is talking about from prior knowledge. These examples he is using are not vague. I can see how the arguments he is making aren't going to hinge on a complete or clear understanding of his anecdotes, but that has to diminish it to a certain extent, right? I don't know. I'm enjoying it, though. This was written the same year that I started programming as a kid and it's giving me the warm and fuzzies reading him talk about latest developments I had just barely started to notice.
Reading further.. ok, more vague, good. But still, I spent/spend/will spend hours of my life in open-source code repositories, bug trackers, and forums; not to mention witnessing and implementing the hacks of all sorts of geniuses. Nothing gets me hotter under the collar (partial lie) than the opportunity to come home from work and sit down with the nightly builds of some project I am passionate about using (I am, as it turns out, a terrible programmer).
Linus coppers his bets, too. In case there are serious bugs, Linux kernel version are numbered in such a way that potential users can make a choice either to run the last version designated "stable" or to ride the cutting edge and risk bugs in order to get new features. This tactic is not yet formally imitated by most Linux hackers, but perhaps it should be; the fact that either choice is available makes both more attractive.Just a note: virtually everyone does this now. It used to confuse the hell out of me, you get insane long strings of version numbers referring back to other versions that it built upon so that you know that it didn't include bugfixes from builds in between. The version of Google Chrome running on this computer is 11.0.696.25; the version you get from Google's Chrome download page is 10.0.648.204, while there were 20 nightly builds in the 12.x series in the last 24 hours available for developers. This is not even a good example, I have read some seriously confusing lists of builds before.
Also: nevermind what I said before about it getting more vague; this is super technical.
And perhaps not only the future of open-source software. No commercial developer can match the pool of talent the Linux community can bring to bear on a problem. Very few could afford even to hire the more than two hundred people who have contributed to fetchmail!Good call. I'd like to direct everyone's attention to this page on Apple's website. Yes, fetchmail is totally on there, too. And by golly, let's take a look right here on Microsoft's. Sort of reminds me of John's point about Reebok and the punk scene. There is a whole different conversation to be had right there, but I can see a picture of Lanier's smiley dreadlock framed mug so I'll continue reading instead.
Ok, done. I liked this:
I've participated in a number of elite, well-paid wikis and Meta-surveys lately and have had a chance to observe the results. I have even been part of a wiki about wikis. What I've seen is a loss of insight and subtlety, a disregard for the nuances of considered opinions, and an increased tendency to enshrine the official or normative beliefs of an organization. Why isn't everyone screaming about the recent epidemic of inappropriate uses of the collective? It seems to me the reason is that bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology.I think that Lanier and Raymond are making basically the same point. That is, collective projects are successful with strong voices and leaders in place to target the combined efforts of the many into a singular, cohesive whole.
I find it interesting that Lanier points out that Linux is different, but then complains that it's no good at making esthetic choices, something that I would generally agree with. It's also not entirely important for an operating system...
There's a whole hell of a lot more to be said, but my eyes are starting to close involuntarily so I will leave the Lanier portion completely purposeless for now... or forever, perhaps.
Really? You really think they are making the same point? You could be right insofar as Raymond qualifies his points in the body of the argument. Yet, his title (and the way his account has been taken up and extended) suggests something else, namely, a strong difference between projects with a central architect and projects characterized by self-organization and emergence. You could say, then, that his title undercuts his more reasonable argument (the one you position him as sharing with Lanier).
ReplyDeleteAlso, the emphasis on voluntary work done because it's fun, the importance of not assigning tasks but letting people choose them, the possibility for anyone to alter, revise, comment, and participate--these are crucial to Raymond and part of the participatory internet culture that spooks Lanier. At this point, from Lanier's perspective, combination into cohesive wholes is practically locked-out.
But then I'd say that this is where he underplays his own insight into lords and peasants--what you refer to as strong leaders and singular wholes are exactly what we are seeing and this is the problem--Mark Zuckerberg comes to mind.
I think Lanier may be completely inconsistent. He worries about lords and peasants and he worries about digital maoism, excessive collectivism. His infatuation with capitalism tends to block him from seeing that these are two sides of the same coin, not two alternatives. They might have been at one point, to be sure, but not now. With commercialization we got a mass situation of free choice, preferential attachment and diversity, which means power laws, which means hubs, when means the strong voices emerge through the process; or, the bazaar tends to become a cathedral (or our contemporary version--Wal-Mart).