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Torvalds knifes Tridgell


spinynorman
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adriano: That would depend on your definition of 'professionally'. Some would argue that professionalism involves moral (or, at least, ethical) judgements and that simply doing 'the job' without consideration of the moral / ethical dimension is unprofessional. If some people agree with an RMS-type interpretation of software's ethical / moral dimension and consider it against their own ethics / morals to code or work with non-free software, I don't think that warrants your calling them unprofessional.

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adriano: That would depend on your definition of 'professionally'. Some would argue that professionalism involves moral (or, at least, ethical) judgements and that simply doing 'the job' without consideration of the moral / ethical dimension is unprofessional. If some people agree with an RMS-type interpretation of software's ethical / moral dimension and consider it against their own ethics / morals to code or work with non-free software, I don't think that warrants your calling them unprofessional.

But professional is really quite a subjective concept anyway.

I think the exact situation is both ? strange as that might be....

 

Using the best tool for the job is professional in one way... why use a wrench as a hammer if you can borrow a hammer....

Would you trust a plumber that used a wrench as a hammer.?

 

In the same way I would say unethical behaviour or immoral behaviour by a religious minister or a doctor etc. is unprofessional ....how about a lawyer who would bend the law?

 

Free/openSource software has both aspects.... a moral aspect and a engineering aspect. This is a large difference between linus and RMS (IMVHO)

 

It largely depends how you look at it and your job,

 

Is a lawyer who refuses to look at laws in acrobat reader unprofessional if he doesn't like the license and instead sees them somewhat currupted in xpdf?? (perhaps some enhanced feature)

Hard question - if the lawyer believes the license os fundamentally flawed...

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Well, it would be a shame if he didn't after all these shenanigans.

 

I must admit, after reading more of the backstory to this (thank you El Reg), I have a tad less sympathy for McVoy, though probably a bit more for Linus.

 

The business reasons McVoy cited for pulling the plug (which are not without merit of course, refer to my previous) would probably have come to pass soon anyway, and it becomes clearer that Linus was well aware of this as he was 'looking' for an alternative solution. He wanted to jump before he got pushed, which Tridgell ended up doing before McVoy got around to it. I can understand his anger, both on those grounds and because McVoy and he are childood friends, but yes, his friendship may well have blinded him to the problems he was storing up when Larry 'sold' him BK in the first place.

 

Still not wholly sure how I feel about Tridgell's actions. I concede that he had the right to do this (hey, I like Samba too) but I do think he knew full well how McVoy felt about him doing it which makes it a morally ambiguous move.

 

I'd like to know, what are the benefits of interoperability with BK anyway? (DISCLAIMER: I know slightly less than zero about the full spec of BK)

If no OSS community would willingly use it by default (which seems to be the consensus around here), what circumstances remain in which there are any proprietary BK servers worth talking to? If a proprietary-software business uses it, because they like the improvements over whatever OSS alternatives exist, surely they're gonna shell out a few bucks more to volume-license the same company's clients under a whole-bundle discount and get the support and guarantees that a business needs?

 

Okay, what's the bigger picture I'm not seeing this time?

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