Re: A modest proposal -- We need a patch penguin

Rob Landley
2002-01-29T19:23:07Z

On Tuesday 29 January 2002 12:37 pm, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:
> On Tue, 29 Jan 2002 12:45:46 +0100
>
> Martin Dalecki <dalecki@evision-ventures.com> wrote:
> > Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > >On Mon, 28 Jan 2002, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > >>What you didn't do, Linus, is paint a picture which allows development
> > >>to scale up.
> > >
> > >Actually, I thought I did.
> > >
> > >Basic premise: development is done by humans.
> > >
> > >Now, look at how humans work. I don't know _anybody_ who works with
> > >hundreds of people. You work with 5-10 people, out of a pool of maybe
> > >30-50 people. Agreed?
> >
> > Not at all. Please have a look at the ARMY. (A tightly hierarchical
> > system...)
>
> Shoot me: where the heck is the creative/innovative element inside the
> ARMY? It just died somewhere down the hierarchy tree...
> Ants are a very successful species, too, but they will hardly ever write
> software (personal guess).
>
> Regards,
> Stephan

This is only marginally on-topic (at best), but I agree the army is a very
bad model for distributed collaborative development organization to try to
emulation. I have in fact written a series about this back when I wrote
stock market investment columns (strange hobby for a programmer, I know...)

http://www.fool.com/news/foth/2000/foth000731.htm
http://www.fool.com/news/foth/2000/foth000913.htm
http://www.fool.com/news/foth/2000/foth000905.htm
http://www.fool.com/news/foth/2000/foth000918.htm
http://www.fool.com/news/foth/2000/foth000925.htm
http://www.fool.com/portfolios/rulemaker/2000/rulemaker000928.htm
http://www.fool.com/news/foth/2000/foth001002.htm

Linux development is a fan club. And if you don't think fan clubs can
mobilize and coordinate truly huge amounts of effort, you've obviously never
been to worldcon.

But "the prototype and the fan club" is a seperate thing. Maybe if
somebody's really really bored I'll give them that talk during a BOF at LWE...

Rob