Scientists make FOSS great, and to be honest only some of it really is advanced, only some of it really great. Linux itself is far from an ideal kernel, it's monolithic, old and wasn't really built to be so scalable it's impressive it works as well as it does but perhaps a shame it does because it so held back the Hurd. (Connoisseurs might like to ask if FOSS is actually worth advocating yet). To me it seems a little pretentious that someone would claim to be adding to a world built on science with their social skills and little else, to me it shows a lack of intelligence or - more often - just a lack of dedication and curiosity, people like that strike me as those who didn't put in the effort to learn technical skills but were persuaded to imagine a community that is rather fragmented at best and apply normal community skills to it as if that is an affective alternative. You might like to pause and think quite what the word "community" means. I was talking to someone over breakfast; they used to have a teacher who always linked things to "imagined" and "physical" communities. The latter being a well-defined power structure like a government and the former being the looser "communities" the modern world so likes; the "community" of IRCers, the "community" of artists, perhaps the FOSS "community". We are all part of dozens of imagined communities - and I don't doubt their validity - as well as at least a few physical communities, but I think the distinction is a helpful one.
<br><br>Surely it's more use to this community (however you want to define it) for someone to design, create or work on technology such as the X Server, DBUS or the kernel than for them to.. how do I generalise this, to advocate? To advertise? It's almost like saying the people who make a film are no more important to the outcome than the people who market it, bearing in mind of course that this film is both always and never complete and that those who are marketed to can choose to contribute. So I pose the question: how do we measure the "value" of someone in this "community"? How terribly flat of me to consider a complex social system so mathematically, but that's economics for you. Let me simplify it, for argument's sake. Is a zealot worth less than an engineer? How many zealots have the same worth as one engineer? How do we define worth? I assume we all agree that software progress (the creation and completion of new and better projects) is more important to FOSS
than factors like the number of people using it, I know this is not the
case for some people who consider the ethos and "freedom" more
important than the software but to me that seems very dull and depressing. I'm interested in computers and I don't kid myself that FOSS users are somehow the saviors of man and beast.<br><br>Suppose, then, that FOSS users can be split into zealots, engineers and normal users. Suppose also that a zealot is never an engineer and vice versa. Zealots themselves are considered useless to the progress of FOSS, as are users. Each zealot may "convert" a certain number of non-FOSS users to FOSS while engineers will convert none. So the real question is "what proportion of the converts become engineers and what proportion become zealots?" I don't know if that can ever really be answered, but we can reasonably suppose that the zealot ratio is higher than the engineer ratio, so we shouldn't ignore the next level of zealots who themselves may find engineers. Therefore each zealot is potentially connected to a structure containing users, engineers and other zealots (each of which may have their own tree). A zealot may pay off in time with many engineers while an engineer can offer progress sooner (and with more certainty) but potentially less progress in the long term and they do not cater for later generations.
<br><br>Clearly I'm ignoring many levels of detail here. We could keep adding complexity until the cows come home to find the rapture has happened, but why not look briefly at where this could lead? In actuality, engineers are often zealots and no two zealots or engineers will provide the same level of progress. Certain zealots may be connected by a tree of other zealots to hundreds of users and yet may also be successful engineers (Mark Shuttleworth comes greasily to mind). Is this new hybrid engineer-zealot more effective at attracting engineers? I think that sounds reasonable. So the most important FOSS user is one who offers good solutions to computing problems - like an engineer - but also who provides for the future by attracting others - like a zealot. That's the path to fame in this "community" and it also leads to, in my mind, the greatest progress. That is to say, it is best for the community if people can both be and attract engineer-zealots. We're looking for intelligent, motivated people who aren't afraid to learn and apply some really hard science but who can also spread the interest to like-minded people. But then, isn't that what every society wants? And, just like every society, FOSS won't get as many engineer-zealots as it would like.
<br><br>In conclusion to this... study: if one wants to "give back to the community" one offers little by attracting those who themselves will offer little - users - but if one can both become and beget the engineer-zealot, then progress will ensue both now and tomorrow. A user is useless, a zealot is only as good as the engineers they find and an engineer is the only one who may offer progress directly. So if at all possible, zealots - and you know who you are - should learn something about engineering (learn to program, solve problems, pull levers, replace udev) and engineers should consider advocating to people they believe would be engineers themselves if they want to extend the community's reach to the stars above.
<br><br>I'd like for people to consider this with the understanding that it is a model of the imagined community we're all here for, but that simple models can provide great insights about the systems they represent. Science is all about finding manageable representations of complex situations because we can rarely calculate everything from the most basic, detailed level. One of the most controversial points here is a foundation-stone of my definition of worth that I set out before I started, so the rounded argument tries to fit a square hole if you consider kittens-and-trees ethics a more important hallmark of FOSS progress than science and the software itself.
<br><br><br>Thank-you for reading this far, I can't tell you how rare it is that someone nowadays is prepared to actually stop and read before careering off to quicker thrills like "Gnometris" and "YouTube". Perhaps with more people like you, we can properly consider the problems of this community by embracing lengthy communication where lengthy communication is in order. FOSS OSes need a lot of reworking to excel, engineers are in short supply and people who really care to learn are worth their weight in gold. They used to be called hackers and they created computer science.
<br><br>Goodnight everyone,<br>Tom French<br>P.S Any argument in agreement or rebuttal of mine would really make my day, does anyone out there have the time? <br>P.P.S Having the time is another topic I could talk for hours about, surely
everyone has the same amount of time in a day they just prioritise
activities differently?<br>P.P.P.S The definition of 'hacker' is also interesting to consider, but ultimately we should use whatever definition the world at large most understands if we can't tell it otherwise.
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