Short term? Have you looked at the cash reserves
of the industry leaders? Short term is what happened
to the holders of Netscape stock. To repeat what I
said to Mike offline, it's the eternal quest of
the webHeads to create a history to affirm their
myths. I am reminded of the hordes of archaeologists
sent all over the world in the 1930s in quest
of artifacts to prove the existence of a superrace
and to justify the actions for lebensraum. It
was really embarassing for them later.
Fair Dinkum is a reliable motivator. Passions
come and go like desert storms. It is not that
I don't believe in passions, but I don't find
success conducting business by the same rules
as my love life.
len
From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:]
I'm not sure that any of the criticisms there affect what Mike wrote
about second-order benefits rather than short-term profits, though they
certainly reflect Eric Raymond's hackers-as-humble-ubermenchen
perspective quite well.
