[ale] OT:Right vs Wrong (Linux vs MS) used to be "The Amazing Web"

[Dow Hurst]

Actually, the main reason I have the opinions I do is that I come from a
background where the morals taught by Mom and Dad were far more
important than any external laws imposed by the government.  How many
people drive the speed limit by choice or leave the bathroom cleaner
than when they found it?  Parents understand this quite well since they
are "the government" to their children!  They don't want to have to be
the "right and wrong" for the kids, but want their kids to "know" it
within themselves after being taught (once not a million times). :)  I
believe that our society, just as the free software world on the Net,
needs people to have stronger internal morals that guide them to what is
right.  Now as to what is "right", then caring about others as much as
you care about yourself is a good start.  Caring about what the Creator
defines as right is more important, but both sum up what is needed.  I
don't think that a society such as ours will be able to exist without
these principles operating.

Attempting to apply this to the Linux world:

The people who contribute to Linux care about integrating smoothly with
all OSes if possible since that promotes productivity.  Also, the design
of Linux embraces new ideas since people can contribute and aren't
locked out of creating new ideas/software.  Lot's of positive giving
support for anyone trying out Linux comes from the community we have
built.  What is the term, "the barriers are low"?

Microsoft has done well making money but the methods employed have been
very questionable.  I have read accounts of the MS strategy being absorb
and destroy, rather than trying to work with other companies.  MS would
steal the software thru supposed alliances and incorporate the new ideas
into their products.  The company with the new ideas would have had
their idea stolen and be driven out of business.  That is evil and
"wrong" in my eyes.  We aren't animals and can choose not to hurt others
in our drive for success.  In fact, the "ends justifying the means" and
"me first!" seem to be the anthem of a lawless man.

A good example of caring comes from the office my wife works at.  A
husband of one of the office workers has a brain tumor and is not doing
well.  They have had money problems since he can't work for awhile and
is facing surgery.  So the other office workers took up a collection and
donated over five hundred dollars to help out.

ALE'rs donate lots of time to help others as well.  Look at the
installfest coming up as another example.  

Just my ramblings,
Dow


aaron wrote:
> 
> One of the most unique, sustaining and powerful aspects of community that
> is consistently found in non-M$ computer organizations is an
> extraordinary level of generosity and altruism. An odd and parallel
> aspect is that the membership of these organizations often tend to
> evangelize Libertarian ideals that promote theories of greed motive and
> unregulated capitalism to levels of divine decree; a seemingly complete
> contradiction to the many selfless contributions upon which these
> communities thrive.
> 
> Whether in spite of this anarchy and contradiction or because of it,
> there is little argument that countless "Altruist Libertarian" computer
> communities have played significant roles in transforming a handful of
> publically funded, open source University projects into the freely
> accessable information technologies that comprise and sustain the
> phenomenal, ubiquitous entity known as the World Wide Web.
> 
> All too often, though, we are quick to forget that even superlatives like
> "phenomenal" and "ubiquitous" utterly fail to convey the magnificent
> human accomplishment that the Global Internet represents. Somewhere
> between the altruism, the anarchy, the avarice and the continuing
> struggle to protect that delicate Web from injurious corporate corruption
> and government regulation, it becomes easy to lose sight of the spirit of
> community that makes the World Wide Web so awesome and amazing.
> 
> I think the short article below is a pleasant, encouraging reminder of
> how very, very far we have travelled in an extremely short space of time.
> Hope you enjoy the forward as much as I did when it traversed the threads
> to my Linux desktop PC.
> 
> peace
> 
> ----------  Forwarded Message  ----------
> Kevin Kelly: The Web Runs on Love, Not Greed
> (Wall Street Journal article from January 4, 2002)
> 
> Right on cue, the demise of the dot-com revolution has prompted
> skepticism of the Internet and all that it promised. An honest
> evaluation would have to admit it has been a very bad year for hip
> startup companies, hi-tech investors, and hundred of thousands of
> workers in the technology field. Three trillion dollars lost on
> Nasdaq, 500 failed dot-coms, and half a million hi-tech jobs gone.
> Even consumers in the street are underwhelmed by look-alike gizmos
> and bandwidth that never came. The hundreds of ways in which the
> Internet would "change everything" appear to have melted away, or to
> have not happened at all. As the end of the year approaches a
> collective New Year's resolution is surfacing: "Next year, next time,
> we won't believe the hype."
> 
> This revised view of the Internet, as sensible as it is, is a
> misguided as the previous view that the Internet could only go up.
> The Internet is less a creation dictated by economics than it is a
> miracle and a gift.
> 
> Netscape's legendary IPO in 1995 launched the web in the mind of the
> public. That jumpstart happened not much more than 2,000 days ago. In
> the 2,000 days since then, we have collectively created more than 3
> billion public web pages. We've established twenty million web sites.
> Each year we send about 3.5 trillion email messages. If we could
> return back time a mere 6 years ago and ask anyone, even a geek,
> whether we could create 3 billion interactive, graphically rich,
> hyperlinked text pages on every subject known to humans, they would
> have frankly told you it was impossible. I would have told you it was
> impossible. Send 3 trillion emails? Where is the time even to push
> the send button? Who is going to pay for the creation of 3 billion
> web pages, each one which must be designed and coded and hosted? The
> economics of this don't work out. In 2,000 days? It's impossible.
> Yet, here at the end of a very bad year, this web is alive and still
> growing. It looks like a miracle.
> 
> In our disappointment of grand riches, we have failed to see the
> miracle on our desks. Ten years ago, it was easy to dismiss visions
> of a wondrous screen in our homes that would provide the whole world
> in its magical window. The idea of a universal information port was
> considered uneconomical, and too futuristic to be real in our
> lifetimes. Yet at any hour of today, most readers of this paper have
> access to the full text of the Encyclopedia Britannica, precise map
> directions to anywhere in the country, stock quotes in real time,
> local weather forecasts with radar pictures, immediate sports scores
> from your hometown, any kind of music you could desire, answers to
> medical questions, hobbyists who know more than you do, tickets to
> just about anything, 24/7 e-mail, news from a hundred newspapers, and
> so on. Much of this is for free. This abundance simply overwhelms
> what was promised by the most optimistic guru.
> 
> Why don't we see this miracle? Because large amounts of money can
> obscure larger evidence. So much money flew around dot-coms, that it
> hid the main event on the web, which is the exchange of gifts. While
> the most popular 50 websites are crassly commercial, most of the 3
> billion web pages in the world are not. Only thirty percent of the
> pages of the web are built by companies and corporations like
> pets.com. The rest is built on love, such as care4pets.com or
> responsiblepetcare.org. The answer to the mystery of why people would
> make 3 billion web pages in 2,000 days is simple: sharing. While
> everyone was riveted by the drama of companies such as pets.com, we
> overlooked the steady growth of enthusiast sites and governmental
> depots such as Usenet and nasa.gov, to name some larger ones.
> 
> As the Internet continues to expand in volume and diversity without
> interruption, only a relatively small percent of its total mass will
> be money-making. The rest will be created and maintained out of
> passion, enthusiasm, a sense of civic obligation, or simply on the
> faith that it may later provide some economic use. High-profile
> portal sites like Yahoo and AOL will continue to consolidate and
> demand our attention (and maybe make some money), while millions of
> smaller sites and hundreds of millions of users do the heavy work of
> creating content that is used and linked. These will be paid entirely
> in the gift economy.
> 
> Will we ever appreciate this web woven out of love and greed for the
> fabulous miracle it is? Perhaps as more of the world wins access to
> it, and more of our books, and movies, and history are added, we will
> come to see it as a dream come true, a collective dream created by
> people like you and me, sharing what they love. Who would have
> guessed that at the end of a harrowing year, the heart of this gift
> and miracle already beats?
> 
> ---
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-- 
__________________________________________________________
Dow Hurst                   Office: 770-499-3428
Systems Support Specialist  Fax:    770-423-6744
1000 Chastain Rd.
Chemistry Department SC428  Email:dhurst at kennesaw.edu
Kennesaw State University         Dow.Hurst at mindspring.com
Kennesaw, GA 30144
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*Computational Chemistry is fun!*
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