[ossig] [myoss] The Virtues of Monoculture

[Dinesh Nair]

On Thu, 26 Apr 2007 01:25:48 +0800, Ditesh Kumar wrote:

> On Wed, 2007-04-25 at 17:50 +0800, Dinesh Nair wrote:

for starters, i didnt write the article. i just forwarded it into the list.

> sigh, the author is an idiot. and i'll tell you guys why. he's not
> arguing for a monoculture, he's actually arguing for a single stack -
> the kind that redhat provides - operating system, desktop, database,
> development tools, support options etc.

which isnt a bad thing considering that the enterprise market demands
such. 

> a) because diversity allows good ideas to flourish

absolutely true, but the diversity has to happen for the right reasons.

> b) because people have ideas which may not be fully explored on existing
> platforms
> d) because it allows one to focus on something very specific
> f) because personality conflicts can kill innovation

both these issues can be fixed by proper architecture of the software
system. proper architecture can break the system into a collection of
interoperable components, with each subsystem having its own leaders,
ideas and development tracks. as long as the interfaces between the
components are engineered and released well, the architecture will come
together producing something greater than the sum of its parts. 

each subsystem can and should have its own specific focus. on this, having
been involved in asterisk development, i think they've got some of these
architectural ideas in place quite well. 

likewise, when subsystems are broken down, personality conflicts are
minimized because each subsystem is a project on its own. this obviously
wont solve personality conflicts within the same subsystem, but that is a
human issue which exists closed or open source. 

> c) because it allows one to build something from scratch that doesn't
> suck

if the reasons for the diversity are technical in nature, then this is
valid. otherwise, it just plain isnt.

> e) because existing licensing prevents improvements

this is the core of what the original author was bitching about, the
reason behind a fork. when something is reinvented or forked because of
license conflicts or ego related issues, then its counter productive. my
take on this is if the license is the problem, then change the license.
get to the source of the problem and fix it there. changing the code with
a different project just pushes the problem for it to resurface later
again and again. 

-- 
Regards,                           /\_/\   "All dogs go to heaven."
dinesh at alphaque.com                (0 0)   http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/
+==========================----oOO--(_)--OOo----==========================+
| for a in past present future; do                                        |
|   for b in clients employers associates relatives neighbours pets; do   |
|   echo "The opinions here in no way reflect the opinions of my $a $b."  |
| done; done                                                              |
+=========================================================================+