[Gnu-arch-users] Re: Re: community spirit

[Matthew Palmer]

On Mon, Nov 01, 2004 at 01:53:40PM -0600, Mike Partin wrote:
> Apologies, I meant this to go to the list.
> > 
> On Mon, 2004-11-01 at 12:06, Jacob Gorm Hansen wrote:
> > I don't think having n wrappers in people's favorite scripting languages 
> > makes much sense. I would like one binary that I can easily install on 
> > any kind of system, without being root, and without having to install 
> > tons* of library-files as well.
> > 
> > I also think the use of wrappers will fragment the community, it is 
> > already quite common to have a newbie user ask something like:
>
> Kind of like the choice of window managers or editors? Come on man, this
> argument smacks of the Microsoft Mentality(tm). It's the abundance of
> choice that makes the open source community what it is. "I don't like
> the tool you use, but this one works great for me." It's all about
> choice.

But it still fragments the community.  How many "XWindows people" are there
out there, as opposed to WindowMaker, KDE, GNOME, Blackbox, vtwm (etc etc)
people?  Most people identify themselves with a particular window manager. 
Similarly, with the diversity of tla wrappers, people will start identifying
themselves with a particular wrapper that they use.  So you'll have xlta
people, and fai people, and so on.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does need to be realised that
it's happening, and note taken of the possible negative effects.

- Matt

-- 
"The day when Hurd is so common that we want to emulate its braindamages is
not going to be in my life-time, I suspect."
                -- Linus Torvalds

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