Die GNU autotools

[Nadav Har'El]

Hi,

On Thu, Jan 13, 2011, Elazar Leibovich wrote about "Re: Die GNU autotools":
> But what I'm really bothered is by your claim "developer time is cheap, it's
> FSF, somebody[*] will do that". I really don't think the situation nowadays
> is that we have too much working hands for free software. Especially in open
> source software for which you need special expertise

I stand behind my claim that today, the free software world already has more
than enough developers.

I agree this is a controversial claim, but I'm not alone in this observation -
Richard Stallman made the same observation in his talk when he visited Israel
8 years ago already! Basically, he said that when he started the GNU project,
his goal was to get people to write free software, and today (i.e., 8 years
ago), this was no longer a problem, which is why he turned to more pressing
issues - like fighting for people's *right* to right free software (i.e.,
fighting software patents, DRM, DMCA and the likes).

If you look around, you see that for every purpose - be it calculator applets,
C compilers, kernels, IDEs, word processors, databases, Web servers, and what
not - people have already written many competing free software projects.
I don't think there's any shortage of people writing free software! That is
not to say that we can't always do with more - that is not my point. My point
was different - that free software is undergoing Darwinian-style natural
selection: There is more free software out there than could possibly "survive"
(i.e., be replicated by distributions and finally reach end-users machines),
so only the *fittest* software will survive. And the fittest software is,
literally, software that best fits the user's needs. It doesn't matter how
hard it was to develop. If two programs are virtually identical, have the
same features and quality, but one is written in C and takes 5 MB on disk
and memory and the second is in Java and has its own copy of the JVM and
takes 25 MB on disk and memory - which of the two do you think the
distributions will pick up? Which do you think users will end up using?
Even if the difference is small (20 MB), if it's the only user-visible
difference ("phenotype"), this is what will be selected.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |       Friday, Jan 14 2011, 9 Shevat 5771
nyh at math.technion.ac.il             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Anyone who quotes me in their sig is an
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |idiot. -- Rusty Russell's sig.