Torvalds: No picnic to become major Linux coder

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Lots of opinion here ...

The fact that there are a limited number of people available to perform a task does not make those people suddenly become a clique. Cliques derive from shared social values, not code quality.

Agreed. Pardon my word choice. I should have written, "by necessity, since resources are scarce, it has become a clique."

The notion that one could possibly give exactly the same consideration to every contribution, regardless of who it came from, is ludicrous. There will be some geniuses, a ton of mediocrity, and a sizable portion of utter crap contributed.

Agreed. The only way you find the genius ideas is to look at all of them. Einstein had some kooky ideas. Kepler's cosmology based on perfect solids was utter crap.

Devoting talented resources to filtering the slush pile is a stupid waste.

Disagree. This is an appropriate analogy. Filtering the slush pile is the only way to find promising new talent.

He said nothing remotely like this ... Don't waste everyone's time with work that is not informed by interaction with others in the field.

I'll call this a push. I don't think either of our interpretations of what he said are off base for content. We disagree on tone.

The "lone outsider changing the world" fantasy is nice for Hollywood, but 99% of "lone outsiders" are in fact, kooks, who not only do not contribute value, but actually detract from quality by inserting noise.

Agreed. That's why you need a vetting process. However, that 1% is better than pure gold. He's potentially throwing that away. He admits the process could be better and that it is alienating people.

It's all about choices. They choose an efficient system that is about the social hierarchy of "very opinionated people". Their system has garnered impressive results. Nobody can take that away. Nobody is debating whether or not it's effective.

I'm just making the point that it's not a free and open approach.

Posted by: dkawalec   Posted on: 08/18/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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