Quoth Jim Blandy on Fri, 10 January:
: It's difficult to predict which tactic is "best". Who knows --- maybe
: Guile will die a horrible death under the weight of its own hairy
: code. Maybe people will get bored of STk because it doesn't have that
: OpenGL interface they really want. You go with what turns you on.
Maybe they both will die of irrelevancy because the user community was
divided to the point where no fragment had critical mass.
If the majority of the activist community united behind Linux, HURD,
Mach4, or one of the BSD's, there might be enough mass to form a
marketing arm and destroy Windows, which would be an incredible boon
to humanity, saving thousands (or even millions, long term) of human
lives. I do not intend hyperbole here, but admit that the feasibility
of obtaining such a degree of unity is chimerical. I doubt that the
division of stk and guile will cost even one human life, but it will
undoubtedly cost a significant fraction of one.
The community develops rationalizations (or rather, steals old Maoist
slogans -- "let a thousand flowers bloom") because they cannot deal
with the fact that this division is unconscionable -- they do not
regard the problem as soluble; therefore, to avoid angst, they deny the
existence of a problem.
Received on Sat Jan 11 1997 - 17:54:18 CET
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: Mon Jul 21 2014 - 19:38:59 CEST