The History of the World. Part 2

[Evan Leibovitch]

Francois Ouellette wrote:

>During all the time spent writing rhetoric about the "freedom" of everything
>and how free-er our minds could be there are (paid) guys at M$ writing code
>and testing the next release of Windoze and Office...
>  
>
There seems to be little question that there is, on the whole,  less
financial reward working on open source software than on the IP hoarding
model. At a certain level, participating in FOSS involves a level of
communal spirit that must drive Ayn Rand followers nuts.

>Just like my music teacher used to tell me: if you don't practice, someone
>else does, he/she will win the next competition, not you!
>  
>

That depends on the competition.

Piano recitals in my experience are judged by people obsessed with
attention to details. But those who truly succeed in music are those who
are best able at applying their own creativity and may be less
interested in getting every detail down.

One of my favourite jazz musicians, Keith Jarrett, never played the same
thing twice. A British phenom profiled on CBS Sunday Morning earlier
this week, Jaimie Callum, can't even read sheet music. Yet by many
yardsticks these artists are considered better than others who may
practise more.

My point is this. Different priorities, or different underlying
philosophies, often lead to tackling similar problems in different ways.
When this happens, you don't gauge your success using the others'
metrics. The metrics of success of proprietary software producers --
primarily financial -- are not the same as those behind most of the free
software movement.

- Evan
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml