tilt! <t...@linuxfoo.de> writes: [...]
> Short: A (scientific) meritocracy is vulnerable to (scientific) fads. > > Example #2: SystemD. Watch in amazement a software that is > technically and scientifically unreasonable being amalgamated into > a widely adopted industry standard by people who *claim* to have > superior skills and happen to have that claim backed by corporate > funding and clever psychological manipulation. In parallel, they > *define* only such activities a "merit" that help further their > cause. Even if this transformation should happen to result in a > market of development and services that can be called a > meritocracy, it was mere elitism nonetheless While I like the wording of this, and while I'm convinced that the ideas behind systemd I know of a horribly wrong-headed (to take a simple one: Recoding a relatively small part of the system such that it ends up as a seriously large part written in a notoriously difficult to use low-level language 'for performance reason' is about as 'modern' as producing highly durable ceramic bifaces would be and just about as useful) I nevertheless have to disagree with this somewhat: To a degree, everything is a fad and people never intentionally further a bad cause. That's why open discussion of ideas is important and open discussion of ideas can only happen in an environment where the people championing them are not discussed[*]. Otherwise, it degrades into a possibly entertaining but ultimatively useless spectacle of the kind yellow press and TV companies make money from. [*] With more than three decades of exprience as everybody's favourite punching ball, I claim to know a little about this :-) _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
