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Human work!
Apr. 13th, 2011 10:12 pmMore than a few times I've thought about the sheer waste of human effort involved in the ceaseless recreation of existing systems and infrastructure, locked up in corporate enclaves. Build systems. Network authentication deployment. VPNs. Programming Languages. Boot systems.
What if we - us - took a systemic approach to sharing infrastructure, educating ourselves on the most advanced techniques possible, and focused on solving problems that haven't been solved. I have gotten more experienced in the software engineering world, and I become to swing more and more the GPL viewpoint in my thoughts. Human betterment demands sharing of certain things.
There is no reason we need another Java/C# clone in this world. Yet they come out every 2-4 months, some ambitious project of some exceptionally intelligent geek (and maybe the company he works for). To the best of my knowledge and awareness, they've all fallen either flat or niche. They tried to take over the market, to be another general purpose language on a VM, but now with company/team X flavor.
That's a waste of those minds and those teams, to date. The same holds true for OS interface and architecture. We all seem to be sitting on vaguely Unix clones with a UI. That's great, but I bet you we're sitting on a local minima. So the iPad is exciting that way (but it so terribly needs a relicensing to allow full hackability).
There are piles of format wars. That's a waste of minds. We can find the best formats for engineering purposes X, Y, Z, design a meta-protocol for selection of those, and move on. But human pride doesn't want to see its baby thrown out.
I believe open source has a good potential, somehow. Maybe there'll be better than open source, where we can both share our inventions and retain the ability to make money.
What if we - us - took a systemic approach to sharing infrastructure, educating ourselves on the most advanced techniques possible, and focused on solving problems that haven't been solved. I have gotten more experienced in the software engineering world, and I become to swing more and more the GPL viewpoint in my thoughts. Human betterment demands sharing of certain things.
There is no reason we need another Java/C# clone in this world. Yet they come out every 2-4 months, some ambitious project of some exceptionally intelligent geek (and maybe the company he works for). To the best of my knowledge and awareness, they've all fallen either flat or niche. They tried to take over the market, to be another general purpose language on a VM, but now with company/team X flavor.
That's a waste of those minds and those teams, to date. The same holds true for OS interface and architecture. We all seem to be sitting on vaguely Unix clones with a UI. That's great, but I bet you we're sitting on a local minima. So the iPad is exciting that way (but it so terribly needs a relicensing to allow full hackability).
There are piles of format wars. That's a waste of minds. We can find the best formats for engineering purposes X, Y, Z, design a meta-protocol for selection of those, and move on. But human pride doesn't want to see its baby thrown out.
I believe open source has a good potential, somehow. Maybe there'll be better than open source, where we can both share our inventions and retain the ability to make money.
