Re: [PLUG] Revision Control for the Rest of Us

[Rich Freeman <r-plug@thefreemanclan.net>]

On Sun, Dec 10, 2017 at 9:42 AM, Rich Kulawiec <rsk@gsp.org> wrote:
>
> That's often true.  It also seems to be often true in the last decade
> or so that new things are being invented by people who didn't bother to
> learn the old things and to understand, in depth, why they were designed
> and built as they were.  In some situations, this has led to rather a
> lot of time and effort being invested in something that's new and shiny
> and fine -- as far as it goes -- but is partially-to-mostly superfluous.
> Or worse, is a really poor attempt to replace something that doesn't
> need replacing, just some updating and extension.

So, you don't cite specific examples, but the sorts of replacement
projects to come along in recent years that result in the most
controversy (ahem...pulseaudio...wayland...systemd...) actually have
been written mostly by people who were intimately familiar with what
went before.  Often it is this familiarity that drives them to create
the replacement.

Certainly the people in charge of distros who make the choice to
switch to the replacement technologies are familiar with what went
before.  Again, it is often the familiarity that leads them to adopt
the replacement.  A well-written init.d script isn't hard to read, but
certainly it is harder to write than the equivalent systemd unit, and
the people making the choice of which approach to use are the ones who
have spent the last decade writing them and dealing with the carnage
when they hit the suspend button.

You're certainly free to disagree with these decisions, but in my
experience it is rare that the people who can pull off these kinds of
large-scale changes are completely ignorant of what came before.

> This often seems to
> happen out of hubris: some developers just can't bring themselves to
> use/adapt/improve existing work and insist on starting over because
> they want to.  This serves their egos well but the community poorly.

You seem to think that the only reason developers re-invent the wheel
is ego and hubris.  You completely leave out curiosity and interest.
IMO the latter is the far more prevalent motivation.  Licensing is
another big one you leave out.

Most of these projects are written by volunteers, or people who are
pretty close to being volunteers.  They have no duty to spend their
efforts improving the software you personally approve of.  If somebody
who could make Linux the most secure platform in existence instead
wants to spend their time learning to play the guitar, or improving
emacs, that is their choice to make, even if I value those choices
less.

The benefit to the community is typically incidental unless the
community is actually compensating them.

-- 
Rich
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