On Tue, 2009-04-28 at 18:17 -0400, Jeff Johnson wrote: ... > It sounds lie [sic] a great plan, well reasoned, and rational, > clearly listing the costs/benefits of creating and participating > in a OSS project, and astutely pointing out that any > project that doesn't understand the OSS model is eventually doomed. > > Its a shame that reality of OSS projects invariably comes to the > boring conclusion > We're all doomed. > from (if nothing else) the 3 laws of thermodynamics. Well, from this statement at least we will continue: Zeroth: You must play the game. First: You can't win. Second: You can't break even. Third: You can't quit the game. A more formal statement of the 2nd law may be applicable: The entropy of an isolated system which is not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium. > But the vendor/capitalist model for software has far deeper flaws > than the OSS model you've described. So, paraphrasing Churchill, OSS is the worst form of software development except all the others that have been tried. > 73 de Jeff I was born an optimist! Ah, then hopefully humans can do better than thermodynamic systems! :-) Cheers, Phil