Ubuntu 8.04 and KDE

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 30 December 2007, Donn wrote:
>> Their practice is like forced inbreeding.  They buy a competing product
>> and kill it off, forcing everyone to migrate.  Everyone ends up with the
>> same DNA, so to speak
>
>Great analogy.
>
>I wonder to what extent monopolies retard civilization globally? It seems
> they start because there is a niche and they happen to be run by greedy
> men. I know in South Africa we have to suffer under the yolk of a single
> Telephone company and I can never understand why the State does not kick it
> out on it's arse. Perhaps there's a lot of corruption going on, but there
> may be other complex factors.
>
In the case of South Africa, the corruption pays entirely too well, and will 
not get changed without some bloodshed I fear, and that continent in general 
has seen entirely too damned much of that in the last 30 years.

>> We have the opposite here, with interbreeding writ large.  I guess you can
>> argue we take it too far in the other direction though.
>
>It has taken me many years to get over my programmer's distaste
>of 're-inventing the wheel' - to see the advantages of the FLOSS method.
> It took starting my own project to see just how *large* it all is and how
>totally hypothetical it is to say "why don't 'they' all just use the same
>libs? Why don't 'they' share this much-vaunted open code? Why don't 'they'
>stick to standards?" -- as if anything in software ever did.
> It's a pervasive mindset that comes from being hypnotised by DOS and
> Windows into believing them all based on one fluid, highly optimized and
> cleverly efficient plan. In reality it's just all hidden behind marketing
> and a logo. Same chaos underneath, but you never see it. (until it
> blue-screens)
>
>The advantage, from my limited pov, of FLOSS is that at least I (as a
>developer) get the *chance* to see other people's code and get to stand on
>their shoulders - it sure don't mean that I am going to savvy anything more
>than one layer beyond where I'm coding - and it sure don't mean that I
> expect anyone else to either.
>
>Evolution is the perfect word. It's cranes lifting code, making more cranes
>all the way up. To go back and tear stuff down is too costly and I think the
>shape of things to come will be lifted on the cranes of the shape of things
>past.

Variation on a theme that is now a few centuries old, and well translated too.

>--
>"To illustrate the vain conceit that the universe must be somehow
> pre-ordained for us, because we are so well-suited to live in it, he
> [Adams] mimed a wonderfully funny imitation of a puddle of water, fitting
> itself snugly into a depression in the ground, the depression uncannily
> being exactly the same shape as the puddle."
>-- Richard Dawkins, in "Lament for Douglas" (14 May 2001)

A different viewpoint, and who is to say which is correct... :)

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Miller's Slogan:
	Lose a few, lose a few.