Re: State of Pidgin: Attracting and Maintaining New Contributors

On 2017-10-03, 15:48 GMT, Matěj Cepl wrote:
> On 2017-10-03, 14:43 GMT, Gary Kramlich wrote:
>> Aside from that, I also mention (at least I have previously) 
>> that open source software is about providing choices, no one 
>> is providing a choice.  Everyone is using the same tool for 
>> the same job creates a monopoly that stifles innovation.
>
> http://www.islinuxaboutchoice.com/
>
> I think this is really not about the argument but just 
> a rationalization of status quo, but …
>
> I have no business of telling anything how this project is 
> supposed to be managed, because I really do not participate in 
> it, so I will let you to it.

I am sorry for returning to this long dead thread, but it 
bothers me that I have provided here what I consider the wrong 
answer.

I did not want to say (and I believe ajax did on that page) that 
choice is too costly and should be approached with caution (and 
I agree with it), but that the world does not seem to like the 
freedom of choice too much. Most technologies in the FLOSS seem 
to tend towards some kind of optimum, and it takes really a lot 
of effort to turn the tide. How many alternatives there are to 
bash, glibc, gcc, you preferred type of text editor? There are 
some, but how much you heard about ksh, elvis, XEmacs, dietlibc, 
µClibc, actually even *BSD systems, lately? There are some 
alternatives, but it takes enormous amount of neglect on the 
side of the primary technology (vim v. neovim) or enormous 
amount of effort on the side of the secondary one (gcc 
v clang/llvm), but the natural tendency seems clearly going 
towards one solution.

It is not issue of “should”, but just a sociological observation 
of the natural development in the FLOSS technosphere. And yes, 
it is not very original observation 
(http://catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/homesteading/).

Looking at it from this point of view, I really do not see 
bright future for Mercurial (perhaps Facebook can save it, but 
I wonder whether and when they will rather fix git or build some 
tooling on the top of the git to make it work for them, after 
all Microsoft did just that).

Best,

Matěj
-- 
https://matej.ceplovi.cz/blog/, Jabber: [email protected]
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The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is a constant, but nowadays
the illiterates can read.
    -- Alberto Moravia

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