[lug] LinuxJournal: Introducing the Open Cluster Framework

[John Dollison]

Thanks, Alan!

I found the article interesting, especially the part where you said "I had
read Eric Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar, and I had been fascinated
by the idea that it captured something important. It wasn't the hacker
mentality or the communal developer approach; it was that by traditional
models, Linux should be an abysmal failure. It breaks every single known
rule of software development."

I've been thinking about how that concept will eventually effect other parts
of society.  For example, businesses that are in the business of making
money are often very successful (Microsoft, for example), but businesses
that are in the business of helping people often make little or no money at
all (your local homeless shelter) and require government intervention (your
tax dollars) to keep their doors open.  But Linux doesn't need tax dollars.
So what happens when programmers start giving away all their time for free
to develop open-source software?  They expend their free time to help
others, often getting little or nothing in return.  Certainly a noble cause,
just like most other volunteer work, but what if this attitude spreads
throughout society?  But how can they make an honest living?  What are the
moral implications?  The societal impact?  Will we have to rethink our ideas
about jobs and money?

I guess it's been at the back of my mind for a while.  I read an article
about how many Europeans have 30- to 35-hour work weeks, and are quite
content.  Apparently, it's a number of reasons.  They don't feel like
they're always in a rush to complete a project; they don't have the
never-ending "to-do lists" that we have; they don't suffer from "Affluenza"
(the need to always have more stuff).  They're happy with what they have
now.  (But doesn't that breed stagnation?)

Even in my church we discuss it.  Martie (our pastor) recently got to see
Thich Nhat Hanh, a celebrated Buddhist monk.  She said "The essence of his
message was that the conditions for our happiness are in the present
moment.... As we learn to listen deeply to ourselves and to others we can
begin to bring peace and joy to a world completely distracted by doing, a
world bent on watering the seeds of fear, anger, and violence."   Our church
also developed a "Whole Earth Covenant", which addresses issues such as
striving to share our resources in such a way as to provide at least some
minimum level of living standards for every human on earth.

Anyway, I realize that this "stream of consciousness" seems pretty
off-topic, but the open-source movement is making all of us look at
traditional business models, and even our role as employees and citizens, in
a whole new light.

John D.


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----- Original Message -----
From: "Alan Robertson" <alanr at unix.sh>
Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2002 6:23 AM
Subject: [lug] LinuxJournal: Introducing the Open Cluster Framework


Hi,

Here's an article that most of you will miss, since it's not in the dead
tree edition:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6143

It was originally slated for publication in the print edition, but
unfortunately, Linux Journal changed editors, and they changed directions
:-(.  So, no more monthly articles on clustering...

Getting to tell about the OCF was fun!

-- Alan Robertson
   alanr at unix.sh