Most programmers do most of their programming for pay, working for institutions with offices and employees.
The Linux kernel is great. How sure are you that it would be as successful as it is if its development didn’t receive quite a bit of funding (and direct participation) from institutions with offices and employees? See, e.g., this brief article. It’s from 2009, but my impression is that the situation it describes is fairly representative of Linux development both before and after 2009 as well.
(I do think the comment you’re replying to is an overstatement, but it’s not so very far from the truth.)
Most programmers do most of their programming for pay, working for institutions with offices and employees.
Correct, but it says nothing about their ability.
this brief article
The funding part doesn’t make sense, which why I didn’t address it. But if you insist, we should be looking at how much code was accepted, and from whom. There’s also the question of where the money actually goes, although I’m not sure how much important that is.
There’s also plenty of other FOSS projects out there, but the LK is the first thing that pops into my mind and admittedly I can’t name too many despite running a GNU+Linux system myself. What a shame. (mutt, Emacs, vim, BASH, and other smaller projects like Irssi or the Suckless tools are also good examples)
My main reason for addressing that initially was that I think there is some overlap between LW-ers to the hacker archetype. At least, I believe there should be.
I’m not sure I understand. You suggested that the general consensus among programmers is that “office and employees” is terrible, which is hard to reconcile with the fact that most programmers do most of their programming in an office with employees.
The funding part doesn’t make sense, which why I didn’t address it.
I’m not sure what you mean. What “funding part” of what doesn’t make sense how?
we should be looking at how much code was accepted, and from whom
That’s almost exactly what the article I linked to looks at. The difference is that between “submitted” and “accepted”; are you expecting that the accepted-to-submitted ratio will have been markedly different between the groups listed there?
mutt, Emacs, vim, bash [...]
All good and valuable things, and for the avoidance of doubt I am not trying to diss open-source software here. I really sincerely do think it’s great, and I wish there were more of it. But I don’t think any of that makes the original claim very wrong: generally when something big needs doing and people care a lot about it, the way it happens involves getting a bunch of people together in a single place and paying them money to do the job.
(Not always for profit; charitable and government-funded organizations are still mostly institutions with offices and employees.)
Most programmers do most of their programming for pay, working for institutions with offices and employees.
The Linux kernel is great. How sure are you that it would be as successful as it is if its development didn’t receive quite a bit of funding (and direct participation) from institutions with offices and employees? See, e.g., this brief article. It’s from 2009, but my impression is that the situation it describes is fairly representative of Linux development both before and after 2009 as well.
(I do think the comment you’re replying to is an overstatement, but it’s not so very far from the truth.)
Correct, but it says nothing about their ability.
The funding part doesn’t make sense, which why I didn’t address it. But if you insist, we should be looking at how much code was accepted, and from whom. There’s also the question of where the money actually goes, although I’m not sure how much important that is.
There’s also plenty of other FOSS projects out there, but the LK is the first thing that pops into my mind and admittedly I can’t name too many despite running a GNU+Linux system myself. What a shame. (mutt, Emacs, vim, BASH, and other smaller projects like Irssi or the Suckless tools are also good examples)
My main reason for addressing that initially was that I think there is some overlap between LW-ers to the hacker archetype. At least, I believe there should be.
I’m not sure I understand. You suggested that the general consensus among programmers is that “office and employees” is terrible, which is hard to reconcile with the fact that most programmers do most of their programming in an office with employees.
I’m not sure what you mean. What “funding part” of what doesn’t make sense how?
That’s almost exactly what the article I linked to looks at. The difference is that between “submitted” and “accepted”; are you expecting that the accepted-to-submitted ratio will have been markedly different between the groups listed there?
All good and valuable things, and for the avoidance of doubt I am not trying to diss open-source software here. I really sincerely do think it’s great, and I wish there were more of it. But I don’t think any of that makes the original claim very wrong: generally when something big needs doing and people care a lot about it, the way it happens involves getting a bunch of people together in a single place and paying them money to do the job.
(Not always for profit; charitable and government-funded organizations are still mostly institutions with offices and employees.)