Re: Done

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>]

On Sun, Sep 14, 2003 at 07:38:27AM +0000, benfoley wrote:
> On Saturday 13 September 2003 13:40, Colin Watson wrote:
> > How far away is that, really, from holding the attitude you've often
> > professed that developers work primarily to produce the best system for
> > themselves, and that altruism is merely a biologically infeasible
> > delusion? ;-) In my experience, such as it is, people who are unwilling
> > or unable to follow up an inadequate package description and discover
> > what it does are statistically less likely to be collaborative users, on
> > the basis that only a limited proportion of novices end up
> > collaborating, and therefore a strict approach of enlightened
> > self-interest would seem to give their problems lower priority.
[...]
> i frankly find it baffling that manoj has had to struggle as hard as
> he has to have the rest of you accept a point that is so blatantly
> plain and obvious. those who would argue against coherent package
> descriptions are ultimately arguing against the success of the
> project.

Note that I'm not arguing against that at all. Nor am I particularly
arguing, in fact; I just found the distinct and apparently
almost-conflicting positions interesting.

> as much as i revere you guys for what you do in providing us plain
> users with an honest and honestly excellent free operating system, i
> worry that you seem to have made a hobby of hacking, in the negative
> sense, on each other. for instance, colin, though i've read posts from
> manoj where he has stated that the developers work on the system for
> their own satisfaction (which actually recommends debian), i have
> never read a single post of his where he claimed that altruism is a
> biologically infeasible(sic) delusion.

  http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0211/msg02079.html
  http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0211/msg02138.html

I don't think Manoj took it the wrong way: in fact, he produced an
excellent defence of his position. There let it rest.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                  [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]