From: Jamis Buck <jgb3@...>
Date: 2004-10-15T03:45:17+09:00
Subject: Re: Eating sandwiches in the park

Markus wrote:
>>>     Why the rabid objection to people putting broccoli on their
>>>sandwiches if they like it?
>>
>>Because people are putting sandwitches everywhere, and a lot of us are
>>forced to eat other people's for a variety of reasons.
> 
> 
>      But this is exactly the point I don't get.  Who is forcing you?  Do
> they have a gun?  If I write something you find distasteful, and even
> post it on the web, are you required to use it?  Even if millions of
> others like it a start to use it, you don't have to if you don't want
> to.

No guns, but something just about as scary: the risk of losing my 
employment.

Now, I don't do Ruby for a living. But I *do* write Java code, and we 
use many different open source libraries. I *do* have *some* say in what 
libraries we use, but I do *not* have absolute say.

There are some libraries we are using which were mandated upon us. My 
life would be a lot less stressful right now if I could choose an 
alternative, but that's not the case, unfortunately.

>>Many of us are working with a lot of open source code here; we end up
>>working with code from a lot of other authors, and any feature that
>>makes that code harder for us to comprehend witll get in the way.
> 
> 
>      So don't work with code that you find to hard to deal with.  One of
> the fundamental tenants of Open Source (at least, as I see it) is that
> you are never required to use someone else's code if you don't like it. 
> Maybe you don't trust it, or them, or think it's bloat, or buggy, or
> just don't like their choice of identifiers.  Whatever the reason, you
> are free to decline to use it if you'd rather not.

Unfortunately, that's a rather naive view of things (and I don't mean 
that to say that YOU are naive, only that you have apparently never been 
in a situation where you've been forced to "eat someone else's 
sandwich"). Many times, especially in our own pet projects, we have 
ultimate say over what we use and don't use. There are also times, 
however, when we do not have that freedom.

- Jamis


-- 
Jamis Buck
jgb3@email.byu.edu
http://www.jamisbuck.org/jamis