Right, thanks. I talk to Ward (Cunningham) practically every week, and I still confuse his name with Ward Christensen when typing it in text. Christensen was a well-known CPM-80 open-source contributor from the 1980s. (In his day job, he was an IBM tech rep.)
- Dennis -----Original Message----- From: Joseph Schaefer [mailto:joe_schae...@yahoo.com] Sent: Friday, March 01, 2013 16:40 To: dev@openoffice.apache.org; orc...@apache.org Subject: Re: Strategic Planning: Website His last name is Cunningham, not Christensen, and I enjoyed his bar camp talk quite a bit at this year's Apachecon. Pity the AOO contingent was small this time round. On Mar 1, 2013, at 4:34 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton <orc...@apache.org> wrote: > I don't think entropy is the proper term. > > The physicists version that I learned was in the following form: > > 1. You can't win. > 2. You can't even break even. > 3. And you can't get out of the game. > > I think an appropriate concern, here, has to do with technical debt. The > longer the technical debt goes unpaid, the more interest must be paid by > someone (often the users). > > The term was introduced by Ward Christensen (inventor of the Wiki, among > other things). Martin Fowler has a nice perspective that discriminates the > different ways that technical debt arises (including, "if it was known then > what is known now ... ." > See <http://martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebt.html> > and <http://martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebtQuadrant.html>. > > - Dennis > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Donald Whytock [mailto:dwhyt...@gmail.com] > Sent: Friday, March 01, 2013 08:16 > To: dev@openoffice.apache.org > Subject: Re: Strategic Planning: Website > > On Fri, Mar 1, 2013 at 10:19 AM, Rob Weir <robw...@apache.org> wrote: >> I'd love to hear your thoughts, and see your improvements or corrections. > > "Entropy. The longer we go without solving some of the above problems > the worse things will get." > > I'd like to see a slightly-less-apocalyptic wording for this, in light > of the public exposure and scrutiny AOO seems to receive. Perhaps: > > "Entropy. Letting problems persist is easy, and gets easier the > longer it's allowed to happen. We need to be proactive in not only > recognizing the problems, but also working to solve them." > > Don >
