Fedora's way forward

[Eric S. Raymond]

Alan Cox <alan at redhat.com>:
> Learn from history Eric. Unless you are careful to keep your beliefs and
> ethics intact you become what you fight, whether its the USA versus the USSR
> or free software versus proprietary.

Oh, I have learned from history all right.  You might recall that I
learned enough to do some of the heaviest work at busting us out of
our comfortable techie ghetto.

A lot of what I learned during that process is that the zealots for a
cause are frequently its worst enemies in the end.  Yes, hold hard to
your ethics -- until the point where your preconceptions prevent you
from engaging with *reality*, at which point they've become useless as
a guide to achieving your original lofty goals.

The reality, in this case, is that ordinary computer users simply
don't give a shit about anything but "does it do what I want at a
price I'm willing to pay"?  If we don't meet those expectations, all
the nobility of soul in the universe won't make us any more than
another failed cabal of crackpot idealists.

On the level of goals, I'm just as hard-core an idealist and visionary
as you or anyone else here.  But I never forget Santayana's definition
of a fanatic: "One who redoubles his efforts after he has forgotten
his aim".  Feeling virtuous and self-justified must not be the end
goal, *successfully changing the world for the better* must be.

If that means making tactical compromises in the present so we can
capture the mass market and wind up in a position to bring
overwhelming pressure on hardware manufacturers and stiff-arm would-be
IP predators in the future, then hell yes.  I'm for it.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>