Subject: Mission Statement for a New Company based on Voluntarism-taken-to-Extreme

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2007 15:02:56 +0300

Hi all!

I wrote this mission statement as a way to put some of my thoughts on paper. 
It's just an idea, and I'm not sure how practical it is, but it is still 
interesting.

Comments are welcome.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

I recently got fired from my workplace:

http://shlomif.livejournal.com/39976.html

That has made me thinking: why can't there be a perfect workplace in Israel?
Here's how I define perfect:

1. Integrates the best of http://www.joelonsoftware.com/ , 
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/ ,
http://www.extremeprogramming.org/ ,
http://www.paulgraham.com/ , etc.

2. Google lets its employees work for 20% on the time on their projects of
choice. We will demand employees to work on our own projects only 20% of
the time, and we will not require them to assign copyrights for what they do,
including not at work time.

Why? For several reasons:

    2.1. If someone has to work 80% of the time, he'll feel frustrated and
    only works 20% of the time. If, OTOH, he has to work 20% of the time,
    he'll work more than that.

    2.2. Because what employees do on their free days may prove of interest
    to us.

    2.3. Because we're not possessive about our "intellectual property". We're
    fully open source (see below).

3. We will work on open source software exclusively. Not just GPL - but also
,and often preferably, LGPL or MIT X11. The less other people and companies 
ask
us for permission to use our software - the better.

4. We will encourage our workers to "blog": write essays, maintain a weblog,
edit wikis, maintain public web sites, publish articles in online and offline
publications, etc. We will have a "planet" for the company. 

5. We will allow free choice of language.

6. Everyone can become a member of the company simply by adding himself to 
the wiki. He or she will not get paid immediately, but they still can consider
themselves part of the company.

------------------------------------

Now what we will work on? Will there ever be a lack of good ideas?

1. Refactoring MediaWiki - MW is great but its source code is lacking and
could use a lot of polishing. I've talked with someone who wants to
re-implement it, but based on the wisdom of the patriarchs Joel and Eric, I'd
like to try to refactor it first.

2. Writing a web-based email that does not suck - I'm sorry, but KMail still
gives a much better E-mail experience than gmail, and makes the people you
correspond with, who are using a superior email client, much less angry.

I suppose we can take a popular web-based email client and improve it to
perfection (as we cannot do the same with gmail)

3. Winapt - http://winapt.berlios.de/

4. rindolf - a perl 5 compiler written in perl 5 that will make perl 5 on
Parrot and other VMs, both C-hosting and perl-hosting.

---------------------

These are just a few examples - there are many more. But the point is that
I believe such a company will not only be very popular, but can in fact be
profitable. Paul Graham and ESR have rambled a lot about how people who are
left to do what they want to do, rather than what they feel they are obliged
to do, produce superior results to those who don't. Such a company can be a
very powerful force, even in comparison to Google. And most importantly it
will be a great employer to work for.

My problem is that while being a competent programmer and a philosopher (or
essayist or blogger as they are now called), I'm not sure I'm cut to do
management. I need someone who'll manage me. Then I'll need to find funding.
This way I and others can get paid for doing the things they like to do on
their free time, and the company can actually make a profit.

I suppose that once someone has signed a contract, we can tell him to give
us a percentage of all the consultancy/contracting he's been doing. Or we can
give consulting, contracting and support for projects that we have a lot
of experience with. Alternatively, we can have a completely different business
model.

Regards,

    Shlomi Fish

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish      [email-masked]
Homepage:        http://www.shlomifish.org/

If it's not in my E-mail it doesn't happen. And if my E-mail is saying
one thing, and everything else says something else - E-mail will conquer.
    -- An Israeli Linuxer

---

From: guy keren <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2007 15:40:23 +0300

Shlomi,

i'm sorry that you got fired.

however, i think you should do some introspection about why you unable 
to find a steady work place for such a long time - you're burning 
yourself out in the market place.

coming up with ideas about utopian companies, without even thinking how 
they'll earn money, can help you release steam. it will not help you 
earn a living.

unlike with the open-source world, where time is not a factor, and it's 
ok if several people do the same thing again and again until they get 
something working properly, and having 10 different projects doing the 
same thing, until one or two emerge as the most useful, and the others 
ar thrown into a niche (or die gracefully) - i don't see many people 
willing to put their money into such initiatives - because they can't 
see how they are ever going to get it back with a nice profit. if you 
don't have a clear plan - it's safer to invest your money in bond 
stocks, in the stock market, etc.

so i would suggest you started thinking why you keep losing jobs 
(quiting early is not better then being fired). and try to work on 
changing that.

--guy

Shlomi Fish wrote:
> Yahoo! Groups Links

---

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2007 12:58:07 +0300

Hi guy!

> i'm sorry that you got fired.

Thanks for the support!

> yourself out in the market place.

guy, your last two messages to me were top-posting preaching:

1. The one about the Technion was a "should have", saying that I should have 
studied CS. I founded it of value because I incorporated some of my reply to 
my essay, but it was still annoying.

Yes, EE was more difficult for me than CS, but I don't regret taking it, and 
today with a B.Sc. in EE (cum laude, FWIW) in my hand, it is behind me, and I 
be glad it is behind me, and be proud that I did not give up.

2. This one may be relevant, but is still very preachy, and I did not ask for 
it. Furthermore, you just tell me to think about it, and don't have any 
concrete suggestions.

As you know, being a hacker and trying to live according to the Hacker's 
ethos, I have learned many technologies and also became interested in 
software management, software engineering, and the philosophy of hackerdom. 
Often I find that many workplaces, where the people in charge are much less 
knowledgable in many respects than I am, are doing things sub-optimally.

I have a tendency to become hypo-manic, where hypo-mania is a type of clinical 
depression, in which the person is overly-excited. This often makes me much 
less focused and productive. Such states-of-mind are caused by a certain 
negative thought that is not handled correctly by the cognition. From my 
experience, such things are normally caused by work-related fears and 
problems.

This has proven it hard for me to work as well. This time around I was OK for 
a long time (over two months), but then became hypo-manic. It took me some 
time to relax, but after I went to work, much more relaxed and determined to 
finish my task, I was informed that I was going to be fired.

-----------------------------

Where was I? Yes: I don't like very much being preached at much especially 
with not-so-constructive criticism like "you should figure something out" 
(how?) or "you should have done X instead of Y" (when it's impossible to do 
it again). My primary intention in the last two threads here was to start a 
philosophical discussion.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

> > I wrote this mission statement as a way to put some of my thoughts on
> > paper. It's just an idea, and I'm not sure how practical it is, but it is
> > still interesting.
> >
> > Comments are welcome.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > 	Shlomi Fish
> >
> > That has made me thinking: why can't there be a perfect workplace in
> > Israel? Here's how I define perfect:
> >
> > 2. Google lets its employees work for 20% on the time on their projects
> > of choice. We will demand employees to work on our own projects only 20%
> > of the time, and we will not require them to assign copyrights for what
> > they do, including not at work time.
> >
> >     2.1. If someone has to work 80% of the time, he'll feel frustrated
> > and only works 20% of the time. If, OTOH, he has to work 20% of the time,
> >     2.2. Because what employees do on their free days may prove of
> > interest to us.
> >
> >     2.3. Because we're not possessive about our "intellectual property".
> > We're fully open source (see below).
> >
> > 3. We will work on open source software exclusively. Not just GPL - but
> > also ,and often preferably, LGPL or MIT X11. The less other people and
> > companies ask
> > 4. We will encourage our workers to "blog": write essays, maintain a
> > weblog, edit wikis, maintain public web sites, publish articles in online
> > and offline publications, etc. We will have a "planet" for the company.
> >
> > 6. Everyone can become a member of the company simply by adding himself
> > to the wiki. He or she will not get paid immediately, but they still can
> > consider themselves part of the company.
> >
> > re-implement it, but based on the wisdom of the patriarchs Joel and Eric,
> > I'd like to try to refactor it first.
> >
> > 2. Writing a web-based email that does not suck - I'm sorry, but KMail
> > still gives a much better E-mail experience than gmail, and makes the
> > people you correspond with, who are using a superior email client, much
> > less angry.
> >
> > These are just a few examples - there are many more. But the point is
> > that I believe such a company will not only be very popular, but can in
> > fact be profitable. Paul Graham and ESR have rambled a lot about how
> > people who are left to do what they want to do, rather than what they
> > feel they are obliged to do, produce superior results to those who don't.
> > Such a company can be a very powerful force, even in comparison to
> > Google. And most importantly it will be a great employer to work for.
> >
> > My problem is that while being a competent programmer and a philosopher
> > (or essayist or blogger as they are now called), I'm not sure I'm cut to
> > do management. I need someone who'll manage me. Then I'll need to find
> > funding. This way I and others can get paid for doing the things they
> > like to do on their free time, and the company can actually make a
> > profit.
> >
> > I suppose that once someone has signed a contract, we can tell him to
> > give us a percentage of all the consultancy/contracting he's been doing.
> > Or we can give consulting, contracting and support for projects that we
> > have a lot of experience with. Alternatively, we can have a completely
> > different business model.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> >     Shlomi Fish
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Perl mailing list
> [email-masked]
> http://perl.org.il/mailman/listinfo/perl

--

---

From: "Nir Simionovich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2007 17:42:35 +0300

Hi Shlomi,

  I'm really sorry you got fired, it was kind'a nice seeing at the Black
Steer from time to time. 

  But, I couldn't help but read something you wrote on your blog: "My main
problem (and the reason I got fired) was that they were relatively clueless
as far as software management was concerned". Please tell us that you don't
really believe what you just said, as, I'm very sorry to say, that according
to your motto, we should all stand up and leave our current work places.

  Dude, it's a job, nothing more, nothing less. If you happen to be
fortunate and enjoy your job, be happy with that. When you try to impose
your own set of values and paradigms on a system, who usually isn't ready to
accept your values/paradigms, the result is: YOU GET FIRED!

  For example, in my previous work place, I was working with a very well
known open source figure. At some point, we hired another well known open
source figure, which simply didn't fit the job profile. He was a genius when
examining the code and the work, but the values and paradigms were
incompatible. 

  My advice to you is this: next time when you get into a new work place,
try not to stick out like a soar thumb from day one. Blend in, let time take
its course, and make your voice heard once you've established your status.
I'm confident you will see that your employment period will be longer than
the previous one. If you get to a company that is positive to open source,
and is willing to let you work on OSS as part of your work, consider
yourself the luckiest man on earth, and stick to that job for as long as you
can (or as long as you are happy with it).

Nir S

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On
Behalf Of guy keren
Sent: Monday, April 02, 2007 3:40 PM
To: [email-masked]
Cc: Perl in Israel
Subject: Re: [hackers-il] Mission Statement for a New Company based on
Voluntarism-taken-to-Extreme

Shlomi,

--guy

> I wrote this mission statement as a way to put some of my thoughts on
paper. 
> That has made me thinking: why can't there be a perfect workplace in
Israel?
>     2.2. Because what employees do on their free days may prove of
interest
>     2.3. Because we're not possessive about our "intellectual property".
We're
> 3. We will work on open source software exclusively. Not just GPL - but
also
> 4. We will encourage our workers to "blog": write essays, maintain a
weblog,

> themselves part of the company.
I'd
> 2. Writing a web-based email that does not suck - I'm sorry, but KMail
still
> Parrot and other VMs, both C-hosting and perl-hosting.
(or

Yahoo! Groups Links

---

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2007 13:00:43 +0300

Hi Roman!

DeCCing Perl-IL - please keep it this way.

On Tuesday 03 April 2007, Roman M. Parparov wrote:
> Hi,
>
> If a potential recruiter gets to read this message, and follows the link
> to your livejournal entry,
> and reads the lines "I gave my boss at the workplace this list, which
> I'll hope he'll read as much
> as possible from.", I'd guess Shlomi Fish would be disqualified as both
> a candidate and a
> contractor.
>

Hi Roman!

If a contractor STFWes me, or even just visit my personal web-site (URL at the 
bottom of every message I write) he'll find much more things due to which to 
reject me:

1. http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/TheEnemy/ - offensive to many Arabs, 
left-wingers, anti-Libertarians, pro-Israelis, etc.

2. http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/israel-pales/ - offensive to 
right-winged Israelis, and practicall every "humanitarian" people.

3. http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/case-for-file-swapping/ - offensive to 
all "IP-Nazis" and ultra-right-winged people.

4. http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/the-eternal-jew/ - incredibly 
blasphemous - practically every Theist will be offended.

And there are more. I'm not optimising to make myself look good to potential 
employers or commisioners. Instead, I'm trying to be the best possible man I 
can be. And that means being the best possible philosopher[1]. And that means 
speaking your mind. If I claim that Kant was a brilliant applied logician and 
history's greatest practical joker, many philosophy professors will think I'm 
talking non-sense. But I can prove that most of what he said was wrong, and 
given his false reasoning show the problems with it. (And no, I haven't read 
Kant yet - I was told it's incredibly inaccessible).

I believe in speaking my mind regardless of what the majority may think. At 
ancient times people believed the Sun revolved around the Earth. If we still 
believed that today, then we wouldn't have landed on the moon. Similarly, 
many or even most people believe that illegal narcotics should be illegal. 
This is also wrong, and I can prove it. 

Like I said, many people will hate me for what I said. But the most 
enlightened people (regardless of their many opinions) will find value in me 
speaking my mind so fearlessly[2]. I actually got some jobs because of my 
site, and there are some things I care about more than having a job. 
Hopefully, I will eventually become independent by becoming an 
essayist/blogger and a FOSS developer and consultant. This will enable me to 
get money for doing the things I'd like to do in my free time.[3]

What I meant by referring my boss to that, was that after I was fired I told 
him I believe he has yet a lot to learn as far as software management is 
concerned. **After** I was fired. So I was giving him a good advice.

It is possible many workplaces believe they are run in the best way possible, 
and that employees should just shut up, be micro-managed and do as they told 
and nothing more. However, there's no way I'd like working there, even if 
they paid me a lot of money. And I believe clueful people who are looking for 
consultants will be impressed that I'm familiar with "Joel on Software", Paul 
Graham, ESR, etc. and may actually prefer me over someone else. 

These are the companies I will most probably like to work for. They are much 
fewer than dysfunctional companies, but that's where hackers like to work. 
And for the record, I believe the company that fired me was as a general rule 
such a place.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

[1] - or essayist. Or now some bloggers are like that.

[2] - Although I admit that I find the thought of being witch-hunted for what 
I said not frightening, but rather exciting. People who feel fear and then do 
what they do anyway, are much more courageous than me, who is just a crazy 
romanticist.

[3] - And no, I don't think it will mean I'll be a leach on society. Some 
philosophers have produced more than they consumed, and obviously that's the 
case for the FOSS developers of many important projects.

> R.

--

---

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 07:42:05 +0300

Hi Nir!

No longer CCing Perl-IL where it isn't tolerated very much. I believe 
discussions about the startup idea are, but not such "Why I got fired" ones.

On Tuesday 03 April 2007, Nir Simionovich wrote:
> really believe what you just said, as, I'm very sorry to say, that
> according to your motto, we should all stand up and leave our current work
> places.
>
> try not to stick out like a soar thumb from day one. Blend in, let time
> take its course, 
> Nir S
>

You're right, of course. However, this time I feel the problem was with them, 
and let me explain.

My experience in this company has been very positive. They were very 
professional: had a great technology, had professional, friendly, good and 
productive people, the environment was nice, the location was OK, we got some 
perks like a kitchen with many snacks, and lots of informal meetings to 
celebrate birthdays, etc. 

I blended in relatively well for over 2 months, in which I had no depression. 
I expected my job to be a kernel hacker hacking on Linux/BSD/etc. kernel 
code, but as it turned out most of what I did was getting things to compile 
and work, especially on VMware ESX which gave us a lot of trouble. We sold 
high-end equipment (10Gbps cards) and we practically dealt with every 
customer specifically, which I suppose was the right thing to do in our 
position.

However, from my knowledge and experience in software management, I detected a 
few problems:

1. We didn't use the best tools and equipment money can buy. I had only one 
VMware ESX computer, which had to be rebooted and re-installed often. At my 
first day at work, I was given an old computer with a small hard-disk 
(20-40GB) and a CD-ROM (Not DVD-ROM or CD-RW or DVD-RW - CD-ROM!) drive. At 
one point we ran out of space on the only hard-disk of our development 
machine, which was 40 GB and the only hard-disks the lab bought were a 
whopping 80 GB disks. 

While I believe in equipment re-use and re-cycling, I think developers who 
don't want to be delayed by such problems, need a bit more than that.

2. I was sometimes "caught" playing Sokoban or PySol, and was notified to 
stop. Now, they had a policy of allowing the workers to surf the Internet 
indefinitely, but did not like them playing games. Now, I'm not a game 
addict, and frankly I play games to put my mind back into focus, not to waste 
time. (There's a limit to how much I can play puzzle games.)

I think they were worried that developers who play games made a bad 
impression. But to quote Feynman "What do you care what other people think?". 
Some people work. Some people pretend that they are working. These two are 
orthogonal. Sometimes playing games is good for one's productivity. If you 
have a good programmer who you know has an average ("DC") productivity, you'd 
better leave him alone and let him be.

3. There are other things I detected which I won't detail here.

------------------

I didn't comment on any of these things. I didn't tell him how to do things 
differently. While trying to be as "Rosh Gadol" as possible as far as the 
technical side of my work was concerned (given the limitations of it being 
completely new to me, and not fluent in it). However, I simply let them be as 
far as managing the company was concerned. Perhaps sometimes I quotes a 
software management guru for support to what I wanted to do, but not often. 
Often, I just made sure I can work the way I like despite limitations.

I was productive and achieved a lot of things. My supervisor, my co-workers 
and my boss were as a general rule happy with me. So why did I get fired? I 
was assigned a task to write a disassembler of sorts to our own internal 
processor. I first thought I can do it in Perl, but later was instructed to 
do it in C, so it will be capable of being in the drivers. At first I wanted 
to do it quick-and-dirty, but my supervisor then wanted me to do it using a 
dispatch table.

All of this delayed me.

Once I started writing the code, I decided to use Perl to generate at least 
some of it, make and the GNU tool chain to build it on my local machine, 
Python and ctypes to test it (with some unit tests for the Perl code in 
Perl), and Test::Run ( http://web-cpan.berlios.de/modules/Test-Run/ ) to run 
the tests and summarise everything (in colour - ;-)). I know it sounds like 
an insane configuration, but it worked pretty well.

Obviously writing C code, even by generating it using Perl takes some time. My 
boss (who's a brilliant Electrical Engineer) expected me to finish it in a 
day or two, but then I told him that there was no way I could do it. Perhaps 
it was my problem that I didn't tell them that one mother cannot deliver a 
baby in one month. Perhaps I should have been more "Rosh Gadol" and told him 
that it will take some time. Perhaps I should have asked him how urgently 
they needed it.

However, I believe this was a human mistake. It was not my first mistake 
there, but possibly the biggest one. ( My father, who is a bio-technological 
manager, once said 90% of his decisions were mistakes. ) However, I've always 
done mistakes, and while trying to learn from the mistakes of mine and 
others, will probably always do mistakes. Even the largest and most 
successful companies have done many mistakes, and I don't claim to be 
anywhere near a good or experienced a manager enough to run such one. If I'm 
ever going to be.

Perhaps they noticed a general trend of me being not independent enough and 
too dependent on my supervisor and other workers. (Or so I've interpreted 
it.). That was true, but it was because I still had too little experience 
with it, and had to pick the brain of someone with more. [1]

{{{{{{{{{{{{{{
[1] - The reason workplaces want experience is not because people with 
experience write better code, but because they know how to deal with problems 
easier. For example, once someone on Freenode's #perl asked us why he gets 
a "syntax error at line X" when the line was fine. Without looking at the 
code, I told him that he was missing a semi-colon on the previous (code) 
line. This indeed turned out to be the case.

I learned it by experiencing with Perl a lot. On a different time someone 
asked why her script won't run when the sha-bang (#!/usr/bin/perl) is fine. I 
told her I believe the she had a trailing carriage-return (CR or \r or 
whatever) at this line and should remove it. It also turned out to be the 
case, as the file originated from Windows. This I learned from hanging on 
#perl, helping many people.
}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

As I could tell, my boss was a brilliant developer, but had too little wisdom 
in managing people. Some people who become managers or team-leaders right 
after university become very good managers, while other people with a lot of 
experience in development and then management still suck at it. I'm not 
saying the latter ones can't improve, but it takes some attitude and 
determination to do so. (To quote Socrates - "I know that I do not know."). 

I hope I didn't defame my workplace here. Like I said, they are a great place 
to work, and they are good and friendly people and hopefully will improve. 
For the record, I spoke perfectly honestly and sincerily here, although it's 
just my side of the coin, and should be taken with a grain of salt. As you 
can see, I didn't mention the company's name, and ask you to avoid mentioning 
it here in semi-public.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 10:40:52 +0300

> http://www.paulgraham.com/ , etc.

Just a thought:

Maybe these issues are not as important as you think?
Some of the most interesting small projects that I ever worked on didn't
follow any of these rules. What *is* bad, however, are employers that try
to stuff their own (often stupid) software management techniques down your
throat. I don't mind that my employer doesn't use a specific software
management technique, but it does bother me when the technical team wishes
to use some technique, and this wish is vetoed by the management (for legal
reasons, legacy reasons, investment in some commercial software, etc.).

I believe it is more important what you work on, and *why* you work on it.

The "what" is obvious, but the "why" is also important: Are you working on
something because you believe it's important (and perhaps even helped to
invent), or because some clueless client or equally-clueless bossed "dropped"
some stupid requirement on you? Are you working toward a long-term goal you
can understand and believe in, or are you being "blown in the wind" (using
the ship metaphore I used in previous post) each month doing whatever things
your boss, clients, or whatever, wants you to do this month?

For me, the perfect employer would have me working toward long-term goals I
believe in.

This is also why I like working on free software (and especially Hspell),
which allows me to work in exactly this manner. Users' requirements are
always in the background, but I'm free to choose my own priorities and own
long-term goal, and stick to that goal (which in the Hspell case, has been
more-or-less been done).

> us for permission to use our software - the better.

Is this going to be a company producing software, a services company (like
consulting, etc.), a company for which software is just a part of (e.g.,
a hardware company, like TiVo), or what?

From most of your description, it sounds like you're talking about a software
company. If this is the case, I don't understand your business plan. How is
this company to profit? What is it selling if everything it works on is open
source?

> 5. We will allow free choice of language.

Programming language, or human language?
What if one employee decides to talk in French and program in Fortran - how
will anybody else understand him?
Of course, there should be diversity (not the 100% Java environment I
currently work in) but "free choice" is a little too strong.

> themselves part of the company.

Ah?
You lost me here. What does "being part of the company" mean, if you don't
get paid?

> will be a great employer to work for.

Free Software is an excellent proof of the superior results of the processes
you describe. However, it doesn't provide much proof that you can profit from
it by selling software (which it sounds like you're planning).
We already have "Free Software", and people can "just add themselves to
Free Software" at will and work on what they want. The only question is how
your company fits into this puzzle.

> us a percentage of all the consultancy/contracting he's been doing. Or we can

It sounds like you're describing now the "partnership" model we once discussed,
of creating a free-software/consulting firm which works very similarly to how
law firms currently work. This is indeed a good idea, and one which I'd like
to see materialize. But it is very far from what you described above...

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |     Thursday, Apr 12 2007, 24 Nisan 5767
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |are not my own.

---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 12:51:49 +0300

> right-winged Israelis, and practicall every "humanitarian" people.

This is all irrelevant. No right-winged employer can realistically expect
all his employees to be right-winged (and vice versa), unless he's a total
fanatic. No employer that I ever worked ever for cared about my political
position.

> all "IP-Nazis" and ultra-right-winged people.

Again, irrelevant, unless you try working for RIAA - which I know you wouldn't
want to anyway.

> speaking your mind.

The philosopher Peter Singer wrote a section (quoted in his "greatest hits"
book, "Writings on an Ethical Life") on why we should listen (on ethical
questions) to philosophers, rather than to the ramblings of any random
person, or a person from a different profession (e.g., a priest, doctor,
or in your case, a programmer ;-)).

One of the points he made was that it is professional philosophers who can
devote all their time to thinking about the issues being discussed (in his
case, ethics), and their opinions were formed after a lot of thinking, and
are (usually) not just something they wrote down after an afternoon of
basking in the sun. These philosophers have time not just to think, but also
to read other people's opinions, and more importantly (as he sees it) - to
check the facts.

So if you want to be the "best possible philosopher", you need to devote your
time to it. Have you considered getting a degree in philosophy? Perhaps
getting a job in philosophy (in the academia, writing books that will be
sold, etc.?) Or at least devoting all your free time to philosophy (and not
to other hobbies like programming)? Because if you don't, you can hardly become
the "best possible philosopher". All you can perhaps aspire to is to be
someone interested in philosophy (like I consider myself).

"Speaking your mind" doesn't make you a philosopher - it depends what you
say, and to whom. Speaking your mind when what you have to say is not well
thought out or stupid (and I'm not suggesting that what you say is like that!),
or when you speak out your mind to the wrong people, can make you a nudnik
or spammer, not a philosopher.

> If I claim that Kant was a brilliant applied logician and 

Ah? How can you prove that somebody was wrong without reading what he read???

I'm not saying you should read Kant's original works - I also didn't - but
at least don't claim you can prove them wrong unless you did.

> This is also wrong, and I can prove it. 

Very well, speak your mind. I'm all for it. But like Comedians and DJs know,
and you should too, you need to know your crowd. Feel free to preach smoking
pot to your friends, but you wouldn't really want to do it to a group of angry
cops you see on the street, or to a group of school children for that matter.
Similarly, you can be 100% for free software, without preaching to your boss
all the time. When asked, always give the pro-free-software answer, but when
you're not asked, don't "preach". Your boss is paying you to do what he asked,
not to preach to him. And it goes both ways - you're working for him because
you want his money - not because you agree with everything he thinks.

> get money for doing the things I'd like to do in my free time.[3]

Good luck (and I'm not saying this cynically).

> Graham, ESR, etc. and may actually prefer me over someone else. 

If you believe your job sucks, go out and look for a better one, but try to
hold on to the one you have in the meanwhile - both because I supposed that
you (like most us mortals) need the money to live, and because it's easier
to get a job while you already have one (employers are always suspicious of
people who got fired - it sounds like an anti-recommendation).

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |     Thursday, Apr 12 2007, 24 Nisan 5767
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Promises are like babies: fun to make,
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |but hell to deliver.

---

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 13:57:12 +0300

Hi Nadav!

Thanks for your email.

On Thursday 12 April 2007, Nadav Har'El wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 04, 2007, Shlomi Fish wrote about "Re: [Israel.pm] [hackers-il] 
Mission Statement for a New Company based on Voluntarism-taken-to-Extreme":
> > If a contractor STFWes me, or even just visit my personal web-site (URL
> > at the bottom of every message I write) he'll find much more things due
> > to which to reject me:
> >
> > 3. http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/case-for-file-swapping/ -
> > offensive to all "IP-Nazis" and ultra-right-winged people.
>
> Again, irrelevant, unless you try working for RIAA - which I know you
> wouldn't want to anyway.
>
> > And there are more. I'm not optimising to make myself look good to
> > potential employers or commisioners. Instead, I'm trying to be the best
> > possible man I can be. And that means being the best possible
> > philosopher[1]. And that means speaking your mind.
>
> basking in the sun. These philosophers have time not just to think, but
> also to read other people's opinions, and more importantly (as he sees it)
> - to check the facts.
>

I heavily disagree with that claim and let me explain why. I don't devote all 
my time to thinking, or all my time to programming, or all my time to writing 
essays, or whatever. However, I believe that by being eclectic in what I do, 
I can then reflect on something else I do, etc. By devising a good algorithm 
or designing a program properly, I become a more intelligent man, and this 
enables me to have better ideas for essays. Also, by writing essays and 
perfecting them according to other people's input I become a better 
programmer.

This is similar to the fact that learning a radically different and 
enlightening programming language will make you a better programmer even in 
the existing language. 

Over-specialisation is very dangerous. According to:

http://www.neo-tech.com/zero/part5.html

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
A mathematician alone, no matter how brilliant he might be, could not be a 
threat to a neocheater without the knowledge of other fields and the rest of 
the world, and without the means of achieving financial independence -- 
without a business integration. So long as those who are bright remain 
divided and "specialized", oblivious of the world, neocheaters are safe to 
exercise their "power" and use those scholars for their own advantages. This 
is what happened and what has been happening throughout the entire history of 
man. Moreover, some of those scholars turned to mysticism or neocheating and 
achieved political and/or religious prominence. The so-called 
social "intellectuals" of today are the direct offspring of those 
earlier "scholars turned neocheaters".

Research in the fields of biology and anthropology reveals that all the 
species and tribes that became extinct did so because of 
overspecialization.The current educational systems of the world, which 
originated in the neocheating strategy of ancient political powers, emphasize 
specialization, and thus endanger the continuation of the human species. 
Until today, the least specialized field, the field that requires the widest 
integration of knowledge, has been politics, where neocheaters, who have the 
least regard for knowledge, gravitate the most. Ironically and tragically, 
the fittest to survive in the mysticism-ridden world of inverted reality have 
been the least capable of surviving in reality.

That's why I believe a man of many talents (or a so-called "Renaissance Man") 
is much better at everything he does than someone who focuses on one talent 
alone. While only other people can proclaim I am Renaissance Man, I can 
testify I am a man of many talents, and always try to write what I want.

By becoming a full time philosopher who does nothing in real-life but think 
and write, I'll lose my edge. Philosophy and insights come from experience 
and from getting your hands dirty. You need to learn in order to experiment, 
and you need to experiment in order to teach.

As much as ivory tower philosophers are respected by the Academe, I have to 
say I found more value in philosophers that are do'ers: Ayn Rand, Paul 
Graham, Joel Spolsky, Eric S. Raymond, Frank R. Wallace (the Neo-Tech guy), 
etc. Nowadays the real philosophers are essayists or often even just 
bloggers. I often found a lot of value in a Slashdot comment by an obscure 
user. 

I call myself a philosopher, because I've reached many philosophical insights. 
Every field has a philosophy attached to it. While you can write a lot of 
code, without reflecting on what you write (using philosophy, logic, etc.) 
you'll hardly be any efficient.

> So if you want to be the "best possible philosopher", you need to devote
> your time to it. Have you considered getting a degree in philosophy?
> Perhaps getting a job in philosophy (in the academia, writing books that
> will be sold, etc.?) Or at least devoting all your free time to philosophy
> (and not to other hobbies like programming)? Because if you don't, you can
> hardly become the "best possible philosopher". All you can perhaps aspire
> to is to be someone interested in philosophy (like I consider myself).
>

I could get a degree in philosophy. On the other hand, Ayn Rand "only" had a 
B.A. in History, and Frank R. Wallace has a Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemsitry. So 
far it seems the non-technical degree that interests me the most is in 
ancient history of the Near East.

However, I don't see why I cannot philosophise without having a degree in 
Philsophy. Perhaps some idiot (= foolish) Philosophy Professors will me write 
me off as unprofessional (just like I was told most of them wrote off Ayn 
Rand), but I know better than to believe them. 

So Nadav, I think you have been trolled. However, trolling you was not an 
original intenion of mine.

> thought out or stupid (and I'm not suggesting that what you say is like
> that!), or when you speak out your mind to the wrong people, can make you a
> nudnik or spammer, not a philosopher.
>

I agree that speaking my mind does not make you a philosopher. However, 
a "spammer" is someone who sends unsolicited email to a very large amount of 
people, not just posts a message on it to a small number of mailing lists or 
web-boards. I may be regarded by some as a "nudniq", but I believe my essays 
are of value, and I'm always getting input from them on my own mailing list 
of reviewers (which I'll be glad to join anyone of you), and also ask people 
to read it on the IRC.

And I think you're confusing my techniques of publicing my articles with what 
I write in the articles themselves. I consider myself a philosopher because 
I'm trying to practice that, and that's what I'm doing. Historically 
philosophers had a great deal of training and professions. You don't need to 
have a Ph.D. in Philosophy to be a philosopher just as it is well known that 
some high school (or younger) students with one year of experience in 
programming are more productive and write far better code than many people 
with a Ph.D. in Computer Science, and 10 years of experience.

While education is important, your output is what matters, not what you've 
earned. 

> > history's greatest practical joker, many philosophy professors will think
> > I'm talking non-sense. But I can prove that most of what he said was
> > wrong, and given his false reasoning show the problems with it. (And no,
> > I haven't read Kant yet - I was told it's incredibly inaccessible).
>

I have read many of Kant's conclusions - from you or otherwise. And I can 
prove them to be wrong based on Logic and more basic assumptions. According 
to Neo-Tech, everything of importance can be deduced from the biological 
nature of men and women (and possibly some other natural laws and facts) and 
using Logic. 

>
> > I believe in speaking my mind regardless of what the majority may think.
> > At ancient times people believed the Sun revolved around the Earth. If we
> > still believed that today, then we wouldn't have landed on the moon.
> > Similarly, many or even most people believe that illegal narcotics should
> > be illegal. This is also wrong, and I can prove it.
>
> Very well, speak your mind. I'm all for it. But like Comedians and DJs
> know, and you should too, you need to know your crowd. Feel free to preach
> smoking pot to your friends, but you wouldn't really want to do it to a
> group of angry cops you see on the street, or to a group of school children
> for that matter. Similarly, you can be 100% for free software, without
> preaching to your boss all the time. When asked, always give the
> pro-free-software answer, but when you're not asked, don't "preach". Your
> boss is paying you to do what he asked, not to preach to him. And it goes
> both ways - you're working for him because you want his money - not because
> you agree with everything he thinks.
>

I agree. In my case, I didn't preach them the Joel way or any other way until 
after I got fired. And it was not a preach, it was a general recommendation.

Like I said, people can find a lot of dirt about me on the Internet by using a 
search with "shlomif" or "shlomi fish" and some selected keywords. But I 
don't care much because keeping a perfectly good image is much harder than 
not, and most of the employers I'd love to work for wouldn't care too much 
about what I said or did not say. That's because they know it would be 
irrelevant to my job as a programmer.

> > essayist/blogger and a FOSS developer and consultant. This will enable me
> > to get money for doing the things I'd like to do in my free time.[3]
>

Thanks!

> > It is possible many workplaces believe they are run in the best way
> > possible, and that employees should just shut up, be micro-managed and do
> > as they told and nothing more. However, there's no way I'd like working
> > there, even if they paid me a lot of money. And I believe clueful people
> > who are looking for consultants will be impressed that I'm familiar with
> > "Joel on Software", Paul Graham, ESR, etc. and may actually prefer me
> > over someone else.
>

I actually liked my job, and in fact the news that I was fired quite 
distressed me. So I was not looking for a different one at that point, but 
rather trying to do my job in the best way possible.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

---

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 15:31:14 +0300

Hi Nadav!

On Thursday 12 April 2007, Nadav Har'El wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 02, 2007, Shlomi Fish wrote about "[hackers-il] Mission 
Statement for a New Company based on Voluntarism-taken-to-Extreme":
> follow any of these rules. 

All of these rules are not a panacea or a necessity. To quote Joel from 
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html :

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Of course, these are not the only factors that determine success or failure: 
in particular, if you have a great software team working on a product that 
nobody wants, well, people aren't going to want it. And it's possible to 
imagine a team of "gunslingers" that doesn't do any of this stuff that still 
manages to produce incredible software that changes the world. But, all else 
being equal, if you get these 12 things right, you'll have a disciplined team 
that can consistently deliver.

However, integrating them all will make your programmers happier, the employer 
happier and everyone more effective.

> What *is* bad, however, are employers that try 
> invent), or because some clueless client or equally-clueless bossed
> "dropped" some stupid requirement on you? Are you working toward a
> long-term goal you can understand and believe in, or are you being "blown
> in the wind" (using the ship metaphore I used in previous post) each month
> doing whatever things your boss, clients, or whatever, wants you to do this
> month?
>

Right.

> long-term goal, and stick to that goal (which in the Hspell case, has been

In a previous workplace of mine I was instructed to translate a PHP+Flash 8 
program from PHP to Perl. At first, I thought it was a legacy program, which 
needed to be translated, and started working on it. Since I did not want to 
fork the Flash 8 code, I decided to emulate the PHP behaviour in Perl. This 
took a lot of work.

As it turned out all of it happened because our marketing department wanted 
the application to be either "PHP, ASP or Perl" so people can easily deploy 
it. But as you know, maintaining three differenet codebases in three 
different languages does not scale, and always break.[1] My boss told me it 
was equivalent to maintaining three different translations, but that's not 
the case, as someone who worked with most translation tools now. 

{{{{{{{{{{{{
[1] - XP says that you shouldn't also maintain a codebase and some external 
documentation that describes it because the code will always grow out of date 
with the documentation.
}}}}}}}}}}}}

This is one case, where the whims of marketing (who I think did not understand 
the technology properly, and the fact that just having a PHP-only codebase 
will give us most of the marketshare), caused the engineers to become 
sub-optimal. I'm not claiming the engineers are always right, just that they 
should be taken into the equation.

A good example of a case which almost completely ignores its engineers is the 
present-day OS division of Microsoft. They are creating more and more complex 
technologies in their operating system, which is growing into a bug-to-bug 
backwards compatible mess that no one wants or is able to tweak. And even 
Vista is still much inferior to the elegenance and power of some 
high-quality, open-source, UNIX-based OSes. Vista came up with all of its 
most-hyped features excluded early on.

> From most of your description, it sounds like you're talking about a
> software company. If this is the case, I don't understand your business
> plan. How is this company to profit? What is it selling if everything it
> works on is open source?
>

Well, first of all let me note that this idea is very theoretical and while I 
think it is good, I won't recommend you to depend on it. Here are some 
business models:

1. We'll create FOSS codebases for websites, (like a better webmail, or a 
better freelancers board (see http://xrl.us/vqdj )) and then set up our own 
sites based on them. Alternatively we can also hack on existing FOSS 
frameworks (while contributing everything back to FOSS) and again set up our 
own sites based on them.

2. We'll support our software. While the code will be perfectly usable, and 
can even be used in a proprietary context, some people will want to consult 
us on how to set it up, get it working, debug problems, etc. The code will be 
free, but our time won't be.

3. I suppose that if someone is the company's paid employee, we can ask him to 
give us a percentage of his fees for consulting, contracting, or commisions.

> currently work in) but "free choice" is a little too strong.

Programming language, of course. :-) All of our internal communication will be 
in English, and a good control of English will be necessary to be employed.

I'm not sure I know what I have meant by "free choice of language". Maybe I 
meant that we won't force someone to work with a language against his will or 
because it's the most hyped language currently.

> You lost me here. What does "being part of the company" mean, if you don't

It means that you're part of the community. For example, I was active in the 
Subversion #svn channel on Freenode (helping people with their problems, 
etc.), read some of the mailing list, contributed patches, and wrote a few 
advocacy articles, without getting paid. I no longer do, because Subversion 
has been working for me very well for a long time, and I no longer feel my 
help there is needed much. (While the GIMP is in much worse development 
condition and can get all the help it can get[1].) But I was still part of 
the community, even though I didn't get paid directly.

So in a sense you can work on this company's projects, or otherwise take part 
in its discussions, without yet getting paid, or even without ever wanting to 
getting paid.

{{{{
[1] - Just for the record, I believe GIMP could have been in a much better 
shape nowadays if it had not been for the high tactlessness and apathy by 
many of its core developers.
}}}}

> Free Software is an excellent proof of the superior results of the
> processes you describe. However, it doesn't provide much proof that you can
> profit from it by selling software (which it sounds like you're planning).

I didn't claim I was going to sell software. There are other ways to make 
money off software than selling it.

> your company fits into this puzzle.

See above.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

> > Or we can
> It sounds like you're describing now the "partnership" model we once
> discussed, of creating a free-software/consulting firm which works very
> similarly to how law firms currently work. This is indeed a good idea, and
> one which I'd like to see materialize. But it is very far from what you
> described above...

---

From: Tzahi Fadida <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 12:41:18 +0300

Just a suggestion, for the most idealistic.
Perhaps you should consider combining a PHD degree and an open source 
software/design. My degree was MSc, however, the project itself was open 
sourced. I think this can be a good option for you since when you do PHD and 
later be an associate in some university you can control the works of other 
students (phd, msc, etc...). Look at big projects that come out of the 
universities: linux, mosix, etc... All very crucial and important.
Granted, you can't get very rich, however, you are not getting there now 
either.

On Monday 02 April 2007 15:10:54 Shlomi Fish wrote:

-- 
Regards,
        Tzahi.
--
Tzahi Fadida
Blog: http://tzahi.blogsite.org | Home Site: http://tzahi.webhop.info
WARNING TO SPAMMERS:  see at 
http://members.lycos.co.uk/my2nis/spamwarning.html

---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 15:58:50 +0300

> and you need to experiment in order to teach.

It is conceivable that some "outside-world" experience can give you a
philosophical idea. For example, Richard Stallman's "free software" ideas
(and ideals) came after some real experience with a real printer. Many ideas
of Peter Singer (the philsopher I mentioned in a previous mail) probably
came from his experiences in a world eating meat and (ab)using animals.

However, once you have idea, it takes time and effort to make it into a
well-polished theory, book, or whatever. You can't do that if you don't devote
a lot of time to it. I'm not saying that you need to devote to it all your
time, or even most of your time - but if you spend 30 minutes a day "blogging",
I seriously doubt your ideas will have a strong impact on the world..
If Richard Stallman continued to work full-time on coding Emacs, he wouldn't
have had the effect he has today. Conversely, Linus who concentrated on "dirty"
code-writing hardly had any effect at all on free-software philosophy.

One problem with your "philosophy" posts (and I hope you don't take this as
an insult, I'm not trying to insult you) is that you do *not* do enough fact
checking or thinking on your theories. You raise ideas which have been
discussed by many philosophers in the past, but you never heard of them or
read their books (or books about them). You raise ideas on how to run a
country which doesn't go well with existing history as we know it. You raise
ideas on the perfect job, when your commulatative job experience is just a
few months, and you never talked to other people to hear about their job
experiences.
If you spent time on *research* - finding the facts, reading what other
philosophers said, listening to what other people think, and so on - that
will make you a better philosopher. If you can't do that because your time
is spent doing something else (be it programming or raising a kid), well,
that will never make you a better philosopher, unfortunately.

At least this is how I see it.

> While education is important, your output is what matters, not what you've 

This is 100% right. So if one day you'll write a brilliant philosophical
essay, I'd say, hats off for that auto-deduct renaisance-man. But until
then, I can still try to make suggestions ;-)

> nature of men and women (and possibly some other natural laws and facts) and 

So basically, your argument is that since Neo-Tech is right, Kant must be
wrong. That would be a perfect proof, if only Neo-Tech was indeed right.
But how do you know it is? And what if neither of those two positions is
wrong, and Neo-Tech is only partially right, and Kant is also partially right?
And what does it mean to be "right" anyway? Philosophy isn't an exact science
like math or physics. You don't check a philosophical idea - which is a way
to look at the world - for correctness based on experiments; Nor can you
check them using just logic - because unlike mathematics, there is no fixed
set of "philosophical axioms" that everyone agrees with.

Just a small example, is it ethical to eat animals? Some say it is (like
probably Neo-Tech, since eating meat is in our biological design), some say
it isn't (like the aforementioned Peter Singer). There isn't a "right" answer.
The only thing that matters (to philosophers) is how you explain your answer,
and the assumptions you made during this explanation (the "axioms").
You can say "yes" with a good explanation, and you can say "no" with a good
explanation...

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |     Thursday, Apr 12 2007, 24 Nisan 5767
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Having a smoking section in a restaurant
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |is like having a peeing section in a pool

---

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 10:48:27 +0300

Hi Nadav!

Please don't take it the wrong way, but I think that following my refute of 
your claims, you have evaded them, and instead of saying that you stand 
corrected, you tried to amend them. But I'll reply to them just in case.

On Thursday 12 April 2007, Nadav Har'El wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 12, 2007, Shlomi Fish wrote about "Re: [Israel.pm] [hackers-il] 
Mission Statement for a New Company based on Voluntarism-taken-to-Extreme":
> > By becoming a full time philosopher who does nothing in real-life but
> > think and write, I'll lose my edge. Philosophy and insights come from
> > experience and from getting your hands dirty. You need to learn in order
> > to experiment, and you need to experiment in order to teach.
>
> (and ideals) came after some real experience with a real printer. Many
> ideas of Peter Singer (the philsopher I mentioned in a previous mail)
> probably came from his experiences in a world eating meat and (ab)using
> animals.
>
> well-polished theory, book, or whatever. You can't do that if you don't
> devote a lot of time to it. I'm not saying that you need to devote to it
> all your time, or even most of your time - but if you spend 30 minutes a
> day "blogging", I seriously doubt your ideas will have a strong impact on
> the world.. If Richard Stallman continued to work full-time on coding
> Emacs, he wouldn't have had the effect he has today. 
> Conversely, Linus who 
> concentrated on "dirty" code-writing hardly had any effect at all on
> free-software philosophy.
>

Are you kidding? Linus had a huge effect. A lot of what he says has been very 
influential. He's often being quoted. He is a wonderful humourist and has 
provided a lot of balance to free software by not holding the radical 
opinions that RMS does. And he projected the project of writing the Linux 
kernel which is currently the most advanced open-source kernel and the one 
used by the most popular free software OS.

From reading Linus, I think he's both extremely intelligent and extremely 
wise. RMS, OTOH is very idealistic, very stubborn and completely unable to 
distiniguish between the two. I often found value in what RMS said, but I 
believe I usually agree with what Linus or other people like Tim O'Reilly say 
more.

> an insult, I'm not trying to insult you) is that you do *not* do enough
> fact checking or thinking on your theories. 

That may be true.

> You raise ideas which have been 
> country which doesn't go well with existing history as we know it. 

History can often be interpreted in a misleading way. Some people claim that 
the pre-depression USA was a counter-example for why Laissez-Faire Capitalism 
does not work, but it wasn't LFC by a long shot. Some people claim that the 
situation of the Negros in the USA was improved by the regulation, but for 
all we know it could have been better without it and with a public, 
voluntary, action on part of the Black people and the people who supported 
them.

> You 
> raise ideas on the perfect job, when your commulatative job experience is
> just a few months, 

Actually my commulatative job experience is a few years.

> and you never talked to other people to hear about their 
> job experiences.

I have in fact. On IRC, on Email, in real-life, etc.

Please stop making wrong generalisations about me.

> that will never make you a better philosopher, unfortunately.

I could find facts. But I believe a philosopher has an artistic licence to 
publish an essay without much fact checking. Just because he has this idea. 
As you may know, I publish a lot of mini-essays on my blogs, because I have a 
good idea, and don't want to form it into a good essay on my site (or don't 
feel its scope justifies that), and instead just publish it there for 
everybody to read.

> > While education is important, your output is what matters, not what
> > you've earned.
>

I think many of my philosophical essays are good. Most of them are not about 
philosophy proper ("What is existence?", "Is the meta-variable nature of the 
presence of multi-purpose individualism beneficial for the collective state 
of mind?"[1]) but rather about applicative philosophy.

If you're claiming I should invest more time in researching my essays, that 
may be true, and I can agree with that. However, if you're claiming I should 
get a Ph.D. in Philosophy, just to be able to call myself a philsopher - it's 
not something I can agree with.

A good engineer is any person who is competent at doing engineering work, not 
necessarily someone who has a degree in an engineering field. Similarly, a 
philosopher may not have studied philosophy in university. I believe my 
experience as a software developer, a student for Electrical Engineering in 
the Technion, a K12 student, a writer of humourous stories, bits and 
aphorisms, a writer and giver of presentations, a blogger, etc. give me 
enough credit to call myself a philosopher. And I certainly have more in my 
arsenal than most people with a B.A. in philosophy.

{{{{{{{{
[1] - Don't ask me what the latter question mean.
}}}}}}}}

> > prove them to be wrong based on Logic and more basic assumptions.
> > According to Neo-Tech, everything of importance can be deduced from the
> > biological nature of men and women (and possibly some other natural laws
> > and facts) and using Logic.
>
> wrong. 

That's not what I said. You completely mis-interpreted me. What I said was 
that given several of Kant's conclusions, I could disprove them based on some 
more basic assumptions and Logic. Nothing that has to do with Neo-Tech. I 
don't know how Kant reached his conclusions, but since the conclusions are 
wrong, I can assume his reasoning was wrong too. (Or else Logic, which is the 
tool for non-contradictory identification, is useless.)

> That would be a perfect proof, if only Neo-Tech was indeed right. 
> wrong, and Neo-Tech is only partially right, and Kant is also partially
> right? And what does it mean to be "right" anyway? 

I have some things I disagree with the core Neo-Tech documentation, or think 
they should be corrected.  I also have many extensions or corrections to 
Neo-Tech. And I think some of the strategy that Neo-Tech took was wrong. 
However, that doesn't make me any less of a N-Ter, because in N-T people 
think for themselves, guide themselves, and philosophise for themselves.

> Philosophy isn't an 
> exact science like math or physics. You don't check a philosophical idea -
> which is a way to look at the world - for correctness based on experiments;
> Nor can you check them using just logic - because unlike mathematics, there
> is no fixed set of "philosophical axioms" that everyone agrees with.
>

Due to the liberty of speech anyone can utter the greatest stupidity, and it 
is his right to do it. However, it is also my right to claim that he's 
speaking non-sense, or even trying to voice a bad philosophy in order to do 
harm. I believe that like Math, we can make a deduction about reality, 
humans, societies, etc.

For example, many people assume that altruism, the belief that humans must or 
should subject themselves to "higher causes" in order to live is good. 
However, then Ayn Rand asked "Why?" - give me a good reason why. And you 
cannot answer. 

JFK said <<< Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do 
for your country. >>>. There's also <<< Social good is superior to personal 
good. >>> . That was a slogan of the German Nazi party. (and no, Godwin's Law 
is not invoked here.)

Imagine what would happen if a vast majority of the people of the countries 
surrounding Germany before WWII were armed with firearms. Wouldn't history be 
completely different?

> it isn't (like the aforementioned Peter Singer). There isn't a "right"
> answer. The only thing that matters (to philosophers) is how you explain
> your answer, and the assumptions you made during this explanation (the
> "axioms"). You can say "yes" with a good explanation, and you can say "no"
> with a good explanation...

If you tell me Peter Singer's reasoning, I may be able to detect some flaws in 
it. I can accept any philosophy as a philosophy, but I also reserve the right 
to claim it is false, invalid and illogical. Otherwise, we might as well 
agree that for each A, both A and Not-A are true, and being omni-knowing not 
say anything later on.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

---

From: Tzahi Fadida <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 11:44:58 +0300

On Friday 13 April 2007 10:52:19 Shlomi Fish wrote:
> Are you kidding? Linus had a huge effect. A lot of what he says has been
> very influential. He's often being quoted. He is a wonderful humourist and
> has provided a lot of balance to free software by not holding the radical
> believe I usually agree with what Linus or other people like Tim O'Reilly
> say more.

Don't confuse implementation and design :). To the best of my knowledge, linus 
may have implemented many ideas in FOSS but did not invent those ideas. His 
influence thus, is more of spreading the word instead of inventing the word, 
which is what RMS did/does. Even now, i hear that for GPLv3 he had more 
reservations than any ideas.

---

From: Muli Ben-Yehuda <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 20:44:21 +0300

On Fri, Apr 13, 2007 at 11:44:58AM +0300, Tzahi Fadida wrote:

> may have implemented many ideas in FOSS but did not invent those
> ideas.

So, how many projects have you worked on with Linus? Because from
where I stand, Linus is a far better designer than implementor, and
he's a great implementor.

> His influence thus, is more of spreading the word instead of
> inventing the word, which is what RMS did/does. Even now, i hear
> that for GPLv3 he had more reservations than any ideas.

Same question.

Cheers,
Muli

---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 23:06:10 +0300

> he's a great implementor.

My original point (before Shlomi replied and Tzahi's replied to it) was
that while Linus is a gifted engineer (which you split into two kinds
of gifts, "design" and "implemtation"), he spent and still spends most of
his time on engineering, and a minority of his time (although of course not
zero) "philosophizing" on free software licenses and their social effects,
on the effects of patents on innovation, on expanding free software's
philosophy to other areas of intellectual property (text, music, etc.) and
other areas of life in general, and so on.

Not spending most of his time philosophizing doesn't say anything bad about
Linus (some may even say it's a *good* thing!) but I think it can hardly be
denied.

On the other hand, there are people in the free software world that *do*
spend most of their time philosophizing, theorizing, and writing texts - not
software. This includes Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond (ESR), and a bunch of
others, many of them not (yet?) famous. There are even groups trying to work
together on free software philosophy, like the german Okenux, trying (in very
broad terms, that may do them an injustice) to somehow combine the best ideas
of marxism and free software.

I've heard more than once remarks like "Who's that Eric Raymond guy, and
what did he do - write the measly Fetchmail application?", or "Who's that
Richard Stallman, and what right does he have to preach to us after he wrote
a lousy editor 20 years ago". Ignoring the inaccuracy of these "facts" for
a moment, the important point is that these "philosophers" (or theorisers,
writers, bloggers, or whatever you want to call them) really wrote less
free software in the last decade than other people (like Linus). This is
because they spent most of their time on free software philosophy. It doesn't
make their ideas any less valid. Sometimes, it makes their ideas even more
worth listening to because their ideas have been well-researched, well-
thought out, and well written.

Of course, not everybody that has a lot of free time and writes something
is worth listening to. Hitler's book (and again, I hope I'm not invoking
Godwin's law ;-)) was written while he was in jail, and had a lot of time
to think on his hatred to Jews and come up with all sorts of insane theories
and plans. This is why peer review and hind-sight by the next generations is
important in philosophy, as in any other academic field. Kant (just to use
an example given by Shlomi) is remembered today not because of some arbitrary
reason, but because his peers and successors thought that his theories were
interesting, important, and that we have something to learn from them, even
if not all of them are considered 100% correct. Just like Newton's is still
considered important to learn, even though later generations found that in
many cases, his laws aren't actually correct, and have been ammended by
relativity, quantum physics, and so on.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |       Friday, Apr 13 2007, 26 Nisan 5767
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Those who beat their swords into
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |plowshares will plow for those who don't.

---

From: Tzahi Fadida <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 00:59:40 +0300

On Friday 13 April 2007 21:36:16 Muli Ben-Yehuda wrote:
> > Don't confuse implementation and design :). To the best of my knowledge,
> > linus may have implemented many ideas in FOSS but did not invent those
> > ideas.
>

We are referring here to FOSS philosophy, not to coding (either code design or 
code implementation). If there are projects of FOSS philosophy i am not aware 
off, i will take my comments back. Till then...

> > that for GPLv3 he had more reservations than any ideas.

Same answer.

---

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 22:29:05 +0300

On Friday 13 April 2007, Nadav Har'El wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 13, 2007, Muli Ben-Yehuda wrote about "Re: [Israel.pm] 
[hackers-il] Mission Statement for a New Company based on 
Voluntarism-taken-to-Extreme":
> > > Don't confuse implementation and design :). To the best of my
> > > knowledge, linus may have implemented many ideas in FOSS but did not
> > > invent those ideas.
> >

That may be true.

Right.

> spend most of their time philosophizing, theorizing, and writing texts -
> not software. This includes Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond (ESR), and a
> bunch of others, many of them not (yet?) famous. 

Well, this is a generalisation, which is not quite accurate. ESR still spends  
a large amount of his time writing code - he recently wrote bogofilter for 
example, and many other things. RMS cannot write code due to strain injury 
(see http://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/hacking-for-christ ). However, 
he still spends a large amount of his time doing: working on the GPLv3 and 
other licences (GFDL, etc.), writing essays, travelling and giving 
presentations, etc. 

Consider this quote by Richard P. Feynman from his excellent book "Surely 
you're Joking, Mr. Feynman":

http://www.pitt.edu/~druzdzel/feynman.html

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
I don't  believe I can really do without teaching. The reason is, I have to 
have something so that when I don't have any ideas and I'm not getting 
anywhere I can say to myself, "At least I'm living; at least I'm doing 
something; I am making some contribution" -- it's just psychological. 

When I was at Princeton in the 1940s I could see what happened to those great 
minds at the Institute for Advanced Study, who had been specially selected 
for their tremendous brains and were now given this opportunity to sit in 
this lovely house by the woods there, with no classes to teach, with no 
obligations whatsoever. These poor bastards could now sit and think clearly 
all by themselves, OK? So they don't get any ideas for a while: They have 
every opportunity to do something, and they are not getting any ideas. I 
believe that in a situation like this a kind of guilt or depression worms 
inside of you, and you begin to worry about not getting any ideas. And 
nothing happens. Still no ideas come. 

Nothing happens because there's not enough real activity and challenge: You're 
not in contact with the experimental guys. You don't have to think how to 
answer questions from the students. Nothing!

While this quote is a bit wrong-headed - it illustrates a point. As I'm saying 
here - http://xrl.us/vrek - there are several levels of learning:

* Level 1 - Learning.

* Level 2 - Experimenting.

* Level 3 - Teaching.

* Possible Level 4 - Science or Philosophy. (Possibly included in Level 3)

Now you need to learn something before you can experiment with it, and you 
need to experiment with something before you can teach it. However, you 
cannot just sit idly on day thinking - this is unproductive.

I believe I'm now spending a minority of my time coding. Most of 
my "productive" time is spent writing essays, important emails (like this), 
blog entries, etc. But I also get a lot of inspiration and insights from 
learning or experiencing with new technologies, etc. I must if I want to be 
good.

Nadav, the obscure philosopher you've quoted was wrong. While it is possible 
that my philosophical essays will not be taught in philosophical courses 
soon, it does not mean it is invalid or bad or not innovative. Most B.A. 
Philosophy corriculums don't cover Ayn Rand either, and I found her 
philosophy incredibly original and highly enlightening. And all her books 
were huge best-sellers, and have directly influenced a great deal of 
Americans and other people. 

> There are even groups 
> trying to work together on free software philosophy, like the german
> Okenux, trying (in very broad terms, that may do them an injustice) to
> somehow combine the best ideas of marxism and free software.
>
> Richard Stallman, and what right does he have to preach to us after he
> wrote a lousy editor 20 years ago". Ignoring the inaccuracy of these
> "facts" for a moment, the important point is that these "philosophers" (or
> theorisers, writers, bloggers, or whatever you want to call them) really
> wrote less free software in the last decade than other people (like Linus).
> This is because they spent most of their time on free software philosophy.
> It doesn't make their ideas any less valid. Sometimes, it makes their ideas
> even more worth listening to because their ideas have been well-researched,
> well- thought out, and well written.

I feel that I've written less code lately, and instead wrote more philosophy. 
That's what I feel I'm better at. However, I still have to write some code 
and be productive in this regard, or else I'll lose my edge.

> Godwin's law ;-)) 

No, it does not.

> was written while he was in jail, and had a lot of time 
> to think on his hatred to Jews and come up with all sorts of insane
> theories and plans. This is why peer review and hind-sight by the next
> generations is important in philosophy, as in any other academic field.
> Kant (just to use an example given by Shlomi) is remembered today not
> because of some arbitrary reason, but because his peers and successors
> thought that his theories were interesting, important, and that we have
> something to learn from them, even if not all of them are considered 100%
> correct. Just like Newton's is still considered important to learn, even
> though later generations found that in many cases, his laws aren't actually
> correct, and have been ammended by relativity, quantum physics, and so on.

Well, it is important not to take anything for granted. I used to find a lot 
of value in Marx' theory, but then after reading Neo-Tech, and other 
Objectivist writing, and taking the time to digest it, found Marxism to be 
more and more stupid, and can actually prove it.

As you may well know, there are many ways of explicit or implicit censorship: 
state-governed censorship (Modern day China, the Communism in Eastern 
Europe), abusive laws such as the DMCA, or copyright takedown notices etc. 
All of these prevent the proper growth and expansion of knowledge:

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish