From: Dave Winer (dave@userland.com)
Date: Mon Sep 18 2000 - 08:14:39 PDT
> Don't know if it's about being a benevolent dictator so much as a
conscientious
> slave. Open source is a lot of hours for no pay.
Same with commercial software.
I wrote a little story on Scripting News to be inserted into this thread.
It goes like this.
Were you a math major? I was.
In mathematics you prove theorems. If someone proves a theorem that says,
for example, that water feels wet when the sun is shining, the next thing a
mathematician wants to know is if water feels wet even when the sun isn't
shining.
This relates to the ongoing open source discussion. If something is true of
open source project, perhaps it's also true of commercial projects? In
mathematics a higher statement is "necessary and sufficient." It's worth
thinking about, imho.
Bottom line, programming and mathematics are the same thing. Let's apply
mathematical thinking to this subject. Use the scientific method. You might
find that instead of discovering that there's a relationship between
sunshine and wetness that you've found a deeper and more broadly applicable
truth.
Dave
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