Re: [OS:N:] Developing for developers and users

[Chris Spencer <chris forevergalleries com>]

I love a good rant.

On Wed, 2004-08-25 at 10:32, Etienne Goyer wrote:
> My expectation toward OSS is not to have "innovative" softwares based on 
> new paradigm, it is to have access to robust software that get the job 
> done.  People want/need a word processor.  OpenOffice provide that.  I 
> can't blame OO.o for providing a rip-off that happen to be useful to 
> people.  Actually, it is the right thing to do.

No, no, no.  We aren't providing rip-offs.  There is work being done on
function-alikes such that there is a stable free base of software that
can be worked from to provide the innovative new features required for
tomorrows computing users.  (and us)

The people doing this work in our community are nothing less than
heroes.  Fighting the right fight for a free tomorrow.

> Innovation is not mutually exclusive with usefulness, but I'd rather 
> have a useful non-innovative software than a (mostly-) useless 
> innovative one.

I will take both.  Because sooner or later the useless but innovative
one will pass the non-innovative software and if I already have that
non-innovative one to build on, it will happen sooner.

> BTW, OSS *does* produce innovative stuff.  I think we can agreee that 
> one of the most important breakthrough in how we use software and 
> computer, in the past decade or so,  was the Web.  AFAIK, the Mosaic web 
> browser and NCSA httpd *where* OSS.  The best implementation of a web 
> browser and web server today *are* OSS.  This is just one example.

Innovative, yes.  Revolutionary, no.  The web browser and server are
predated by gopher and gopher by BBS systems and BBS systems by posters
and posters by town criers ... etc.

Microsoft has it right when they admitted that they had a failure of
imagination.  With good reason too.  Imagination is a function of many
different perspectives seeing the same problem from a different
viewpoint.  Their size is not big enough.  They can not compete.  There
loss is immanent.

For Microsoft to win the battle they will have to doom the world to a
life of idea slavery.  Idea slavery is a crime against humanity and in
the end it too will fail.  

If you want your freedom then you need to listen the words of Supreme
Court Justice Louis Brandeis found in my signature.  Choose your masters
carefully.

-Chris

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty
when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are
naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded
rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment
by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." - Supreme Court
Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v. U.S. (1928)