Debian: contempt for "end user" values has to stop!"

[Derek Broughton]

Amedee @ Ubuntu wrote:

> 
> On Thu, August 20, 2009 15:02, Derek Broughton wrote:
> 
>> Linux is evolutionary.  Evolution _is_ a bunch of "second-rate coders
>> patching up every little personal gripe."
>>
>> A local church had a sign out front that said "If evolution were real,
>> mothers would come with three arms".  I claim that, if anything, that was
>> proof of evolution, because clearly, once again, evolution got it wrong.
>> God would have got it right.
>>
>> Just like evolution, code (often bad) gets added, pruned and modified all
>> the time.  The end result improves, but the methods of getting there are
>> seldom optimal.
> 
> 
> Ouch.
> Being trained as a biology teacher (but not working in education), this
> really hurt my eyes. What you are describing, is at best Lamarckism.
> Darwinian evolution is a completely different beast.
> 
Bullshit.  Nothing is more calculated to rouse my dander than to suggest I'm 
ignorant.  I'm quite aware of the differences between Lamarckism and 
Darwinism. While I didn't claim it was either one, can you, as a biologist, 
really argue that genes are not "added, pruned and modified"?  Natural 
selection cannot begin to occur unless there is a means of mutation that 
provides differences from which the selection can be made.

The evolution of free software _is_ very much Darwinian.  Code is changed 
(mutated) and the good changes are accepted, the bad ones aren't.  When some 
groups find one set of code useful, and others prefer a different set of 
code, we get a fork (speciation).
-- 
derek