----- Original Message ----- From: Philip S Tellis philip@konark.ncst.ernet.in
My thoughts:
How often have we, as developers, built our tools based on what the competition does? How often have we measured our systems against our competitors and not as the tool itself? Linus' philosophy is
basically,
don't bother about what the others are doing, just make your own stuff better today than what it was yesterday. Most of us started out with that philosophy (at least I did), but somewhere down the line the marketroids got to us. Maybe it was done in school and college, maybe it was done at home. It's the whole concept of getting measuring success by money earned that tends to screw up developers. This, is possibly just one of the things that seperates hackers from the rest.
I think its important to be aware and informed about what the competition does - just so that you can learn from it - they make some mistakes and do some things better than you - so why not learn 'em both? concentrating on just ur work, and "not caring" about what the competition is doing, is kinda myopic. Probably the point that Linus is trying to make is that the direction of the Linux kernel development is not _driven_ by market needs/competitor moves. That is not to say it is not _influenced_ by technologies developed by others.
my 2paise kishor PS: i've been incommunicado for the last ten days.Did the meet on 7th happen?
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