On Fri, Jan 2, 2009 at 7:25 PM, Michael Stone <<a href="mailto:michael@laptop.org">michael@laptop.org</a>> wrote: <div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> <div class="Ih2E3d">On Fri, Jan 02, 2009 at 06:12:40PM -0500, Walter Bender wrote: > Can you please cite a few examples to help ground me further? </div>Let's try:  * the Etoys/Debian fight?  * the F6/F7 timeframe Java fight?  * the Debian/Fedora fight? (and the Ubuntu/Debian fight?)  * the activity packaging formats fight?  * the initscripts fight?  * the vserver fight?  * the libertas fight(s)?  * the Bitfrost/____ fight?  * the Journal/file manager fight?  * the livecd-tools / pilgrim+puritan fight?  * the stock vs. patched kernel fight?  * the UY, ET, and NE modification fights?  * deciding how and where to seek donations to OLPC (or alternately,    to market and sell XOs, depending on your perspective).</blockquote><div> Not knowing all the gossip, a lot of these seem more like "conservative" vs "exciting" decisions rather than "libre" vs "usability" or "global" vs "local". Programmer/Manager A:  Let's do crazy idea X, it will solve A, B and C and will be simple to implement! </div></div>Programmer/Manager B:  You have no idea what what problems will really arise with X.  Let's just stick with what works, Y.  <fighting ensues> This judgment process is a natural part of software development. As a fun exercise, I personally come down at: Etoys, missed that one, Debian, something other than xo bundles, custom initscripts!!, KISS, libertas FTW, the best security is a reflash usb key and backup, both, probably livecd-tools, PATCHED, let them do whatever they need to, market away but avoid sponsors. Cheers, -Wade