Re: Is Linux Unix?
On Mon, 2004-07-26 at 20:01, John Summerfield wrote:
> >
> >It's not that no one likes the proposal. It's more of the "herding
> >cats" phenomenon. There's no consensus on how the release process
> >should work, it's hard to make a thousand scattered volunteers listen
> >anyway, and no one other than the current release manager is willing to
> >step up and actually try to manage the release...
> >
> >
>
> I was thinking about that, thinking back to Mr Worthington, my history
> teacher in the early 60s. Teaching me history then was a pretty
> fruitless task, but I do recall that democracies don't provide efficient
> governance.
They do in the long term. Name a system of government that has been more
efficient than democracy over a 100 year period. The most significant
benefit is that plotting to overthrow the rulers is legal, permitted,
and expected. And that the retaliation by the rulers is constrained.
With every other kind of government, the paranoia of the leader causes
repression of the most able people around them, resulting in the
suppression of innovation of any sort. This still happens, of course, in
democracies, but the balance of power between the different factions
prevents it being taken too far.
>
> That's why we don't have democratic armies. While a democratic army is
> planning the next battle, it would get cut to ribbons by the enemy.
Very few democracies that regularly use direct vote on issues
(referendums). The swiss one is the only one I know of.
Instead, representatives are selected. So the parallel would instead be
a system where a set of Generals were elected, and they then took the
necessary decisions.
An army where the Generals were elected would be an interesting one. A
little less mechanically effective, I suspect, but maybe also less prone
to the macho posturing that has been particularly *ineffective* in
recent times.
>
> Debian is worse than a democracy, it's a democracy of hackers. No
> managers at all, to speak of.
That's why people do this in their spare time. Hell, if Debian were full
of professional managers, I'd be using Slackware :-)
>
> Hackers are good at cutting code. They don't like documentation - go
> look for debian-installer documentation for example.
Hackers also by definition work on projects that aren't complete and are
evolving. There's a significant problem in trying to document stuff that
isn't complete and is evolving.
Still, I partially agree with you on this.
> They don't like deadlines. "We'll release it when we're good and ready."
> Hackers who show management talent are likely to go get lucrative jobs
> managing. Managing the hosts of hackers here must be pretty thankless.
>
> The ideal government, according to Mr Worthington, is a benevolent
> dictatorship. A benevolent dictator's word is law, but he rules to the
> benefit of those whom he rules. Taking advice is, of course, allowed and
> good. So is making decisions.
Yes, except that a truly benevolent, tolerant and trusting dictator
won't last long. And one who isn't those things won't be a good ruler.
>
> That, I think, is about how the kernel works.
I would say the kernel development is more like a democracy; developers
"vote" by contributing to a particular kernel (BSD, Darwin, Linux,
Hurd). And so far Linus has proved to be a fine campaigner :-).
Cheers,
Simon
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