Re: [Israel.pm] Mission Statement for a New Company based on Voluntarism-taken-to-Extreme

On Friday 13 April 2007, Nadav Har'El wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 13, 2007, Muli Ben-Yehuda wrote about "Re: [Israel.pm] 
[hackers-il] Mission Statement for a New Company based on 
Voluntarism-taken-to-Extreme":
> > On Fri, Apr 13, 2007 at 11:44:58AM +0300, Tzahi Fadida wrote:
> > > Don't confuse implementation and design :). To the best of my
> > > knowledge, linus may have implemented many ideas in FOSS but did not
> > > invent those ideas.
> >
> > So, how many projects have you worked on with Linus? Because from
> > where I stand, Linus is a far better designer than implementor, and
> > he's a great implementor.
>
> My original point (before Shlomi replied and Tzahi's replied to it) was
> that while Linus is a gifted engineer (which you split into two kinds
> of gifts, "design" and "implemtation"), he spent and still spends most of
> his time on engineering, and a minority of his time (although of course not
> zero) "philosophizing" on free software licenses and their social effects,
> on the effects of patents on innovation, on expanding free software's
> philosophy to other areas of intellectual property (text, music, etc.) and
> other areas of life in general, and so on.

That may be true.

>
> Not spending most of his time philosophizing doesn't say anything bad about
> Linus (some may even say it's a *good* thing!) but I think it can hardly be
> denied.

Right.

>
> On the other hand, there are people in the free software world that *do*
> spend most of their time philosophizing, theorizing, and writing texts -
> not software. This includes Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond (ESR), and a
> bunch of others, many of them not (yet?) famous. 

Well, this is a generalisation, which is not quite accurate. ESR still spends  
a large amount of his time writing code - he recently wrote bogofilter for 
example, and many other things. RMS cannot write code due to strain injury 
(see http://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/hacking-for-christ ). However, 
he still spends a large amount of his time doing: working on the GPLv3 and 
other licences (GFDL, etc.), writing essays, travelling and giving 
presentations, etc. 

Consider this quote by Richard P. Feynman from his excellent book "Surely 
you're Joking, Mr. Feynman":

http://www.pitt.edu/~druzdzel/feynman.html

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
I don't  believe I can really do without teaching. The reason is, I have to 
have something so that when I don't have any ideas and I'm not getting 
anywhere I can say to myself, "At least I'm living; at least I'm doing 
something; I am making some contribution" -- it's just psychological. 

When I was at Princeton in the 1940s I could see what happened to those great 
minds at the Institute for Advanced Study, who had been specially selected 
for their tremendous brains and were now given this opportunity to sit in 
this lovely house by the woods there, with no classes to teach, with no 
obligations whatsoever. These poor bastards could now sit and think clearly 
all by themselves, OK? So they don't get any ideas for a while: They have 
every opportunity to do something, and they are not getting any ideas. I 
believe that in a situation like this a kind of guilt or depression worms 
inside of you, and you begin to worry about not getting any ideas. And 
nothing happens. Still no ideas come. 

Nothing happens because there's not enough real activity and challenge: You're 
not in contact with the experimental guys. You don't have to think how to 
answer questions from the students. Nothing!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

While this quote is a bit wrong-headed - it illustrates a point. As I'm saying 
here - http://xrl.us/vrek - there are several levels of learning:

* Level 1 - Learning.

* Level 2 - Experimenting.

* Level 3 - Teaching.

* Possible Level 4 - Science or Philosophy. (Possibly included in Level 3)

Now you need to learn something before you can experiment with it, and you 
need to experiment with something before you can teach it. However, you 
cannot just sit idly on day thinking - this is unproductive.

I believe I'm now spending a minority of my time coding. Most of 
my "productive" time is spent writing essays, important emails (like this), 
blog entries, etc. But I also get a lot of inspiration and insights from 
learning or experiencing with new technologies, etc. I must if I want to be 
good.

Nadav, the obscure philosopher you've quoted was wrong. While it is possible 
that my philosophical essays will not be taught in philosophical courses 
soon, it does not mean it is invalid or bad or not innovative. Most B.A. 
Philosophy corriculums don't cover Ayn Rand either, and I found her 
philosophy incredibly original and highly enlightening. And all her books 
were huge best-sellers, and have directly influenced a great deal of 
Americans and other people. 

> There are even groups 
> trying to work together on free software philosophy, like the german
> Okenux, trying (in very broad terms, that may do them an injustice) to
> somehow combine the best ideas of marxism and free software.
>
> I've heard more than once remarks like "Who's that Eric Raymond guy, and
> what did he do - write the measly Fetchmail application?", or "Who's that
> Richard Stallman, and what right does he have to preach to us after he
> wrote a lousy editor 20 years ago". Ignoring the inaccuracy of these
> "facts" for a moment, the important point is that these "philosophers" (or
> theorisers, writers, bloggers, or whatever you want to call them) really
> wrote less free software in the last decade than other people (like Linus).
> This is because they spent most of their time on free software philosophy.
> It doesn't make their ideas any less valid. Sometimes, it makes their ideas
> even more worth listening to because their ideas have been well-researched,
> well- thought out, and well written.

I feel that I've written less code lately, and instead wrote more philosophy. 
That's what I feel I'm better at. However, I still have to write some code 
and be productive in this regard, or else I'll lose my edge.

>
> Of course, not everybody that has a lot of free time and writes something
> is worth listening to. Hitler's book (and again, I hope I'm not invoking
> Godwin's law ;-)) 

No, it does not.

> was written while he was in jail, and had a lot of time 
> to think on his hatred to Jews and come up with all sorts of insane
> theories and plans. This is why peer review and hind-sight by the next
> generations is important in philosophy, as in any other academic field.
> Kant (just to use an example given by Shlomi) is remembered today not
> because of some arbitrary reason, but because his peers and successors
> thought that his theories were interesting, important, and that we have
> something to learn from them, even if not all of them are considered 100%
> correct. Just like Newton's is still considered important to learn, even
> though later generations found that in many cases, his laws aren't actually
> correct, and have been ammended by relativity, quantum physics, and so on.

Well, it is important not to take anything for granted. I used to find a lot 
of value in Marx' theory, but then after reading Neo-Tech, and other 
Objectivist writing, and taking the time to digest it, found Marxism to be 
more and more stupid, and can actually prove it.

As you may well know, there are many ways of explicit or implicit censorship: 
state-governed censorship (Modern day China, the Communism in Eastern 
Europe), abusive laws such as the DMCA, or copyright takedown notices etc. 
All of these prevent the proper growth and expansion of knowledge:

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish      shlomif-ik1l9ssToec+JF/[email protected]
Homepage:        http://www.shlomifish.org/

If it's not in my E-mail it doesn't happen. And if my E-mail is saying
one thing, and everything else says something else - E-mail will conquer.
    -- An Israeli Linuxer


 
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