[ please try not to take this too seriously ]
On Thu, May 02, 2002 at 01:11:41PM -0300, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> altho in most contexts, I would agree with Jim as to the use of 'The
> Best', for any mission statement to say anything other then that, IMHO,
> shows a lack of commitment ... I agree with mlw on this one, the mission
> statement is what we are *striving* for ... where we eventually want to
> get to ... if we aren't "The Best", then there is someone better then us
> that we have to work that much harder to become better then ...
that's right, we have to work harder to STOMP OUT ALL COMPETITION!
in fact, we should stop giving free access to the source, as our competitors
might use the code to make their product better than ours.
if we aren't THE BEST, then all those stock options are worthless!
we could increase our chances of being the best by infiltrating the CVS
tree of MySQL and the other projects stealing our thunder and injecting
bugs into their code.
i mean, if we want to be THE BEST, why should we stop at mere rhetoric?
to be THE BEST, you need to dominate, good quality design and code are not
the complete recipe for being THE BEST.
THE BEST implies that no-one else compares, and we can completely demoralize
the competition, thereby eliminating the competition.
in all seriousness, i think that this attitude of being THE BEST goes against
the philosophy of Open Source.
if your source is open and available for modification/improvement/localization,
then there will always be a chance for someone to run with it and make
improvements.
what is THE BEST Unix-based system? Linux? Debian? RedHat? FreeBSD? NetBSD?
OpenBSD? Solaris? Minix? Qnix?
if any of them claimed to be THE BEST Unix, we'd all laugh.
none of them are THE BEST, but all of them strive to be as good as they
can make them, and all of them borrow from each other in order to make
their version better in the eyes of their audience.
--
[ Jim Mercer jim@reptiles.org +1 416 410-5633 ]
[ I want to live forever, or die trying. ]
