Ubuntu 8.04 and KDE

[Donn]

> 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.

> 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.


\d
-- 
"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)