Re: [OT] Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Re: community spirit

[Thomas Lord]

    > From: Zenaan Harkness <address@hidden>

    > > The bloated crazy approach is promoted in the industry press in the
    > > form of which projects get the most attention and in terms of what
    > > kind of attention they get (and, as a matter of history, that press
    > > attention does /not/ follow consumer uptake -- it precedes it).  That
    > > industry press is in turn controlled by members of the same social
    > > clique of execs who are checksigning for the crazy approach:  Does it
    > > make me paranoid to think that the press and those execs share a
    > > common reality-perception bug wrt. how software works?

    > I was just about to say that - I think there is a belief that the way
    > they are going is the quickest/ cheapest way to create what users (other
    > corporates in large part) want/"will pay for".

One way to re-express my point is that the belief, which you describe,
is essentially a scientific hypothesis.   Yet the acceptance of the
belief was, most decidely not, arrived at using the scientific
method.  Not even close.  My gosh, those executive bozos are
completely medieval in their approach to software rationality ("If it
float's like a duck, it must be a witch....").


    > > Such frugal and serendipitous parsimony is great (and lucky) when it
    > > works ("ain't i clever?") but it is a sentimental fantasy to believe
    > > that such cleverness should compete, alone, against the market and
    > > social forces constructed by the current checksigners.  Such

    > Simple greed and/ or "perception of need for financial survival" of
    > respective signers. Unfortunately.

No, I think the sentimental fantasy is far more psychologically
complex than "simple greed" although an "non-reflectively recognized
greed" is an element of it.

A lot of them (those nasty and fabled execs) appear to think they are
behaving like boyscouts, being self-sacrificing and public-interested
and all.  Of course they are not and, more subtlely, that's a
comforting illusion for them (hence, the 2nd order element of greed).
And of course /some/ subset of the execs is presumably, as you'd
expect, simply (first-order) greedy and/or otherwise-evil.  But
really, I think a lot of it is just confusion and class politics (as
in "I (Mr. Exec) don't really have much good reason to believe X but I
sure get a lot of peer-encouragement to believe X so I guess I will.")

-t