Re^2: On waiting until a word becomes a better place...

[Eyck]

What about Alan Cox, Andrew Morton, Dave Miller and ~400 linux maintainers went on and created their own OS?

Larry created something that wasn't available before, I don't think it would be that easy to extend bash or ksh to the point where it resembles power of perl (take a look at zsh though, one seriously powerfull shell).

The point is, the act of re-creating something that already exists and works fine, is rather egoistic. Looking at Linux, the initiator becomes a coordinator, while those crowds of largely nameless programmers do the real heavyweight shifting..

Sometimes there are projects where one person can create and maintain them, but this requires either very simple projects or very talented authors.

[BrowserUk]

Linus didn't just throw out a casual "Hey, let's create a new free unix from scratch." and get 400 people to give up their free time to make it happen. He had to present them with some of his own work first and then attract the 400.

There are many, many OSS projects that start out as a good idea with a few people collaborating, that die a death because there is no core upon which to collaborate and no single-minded individual with a clear vision of where he wants to get to, driving them.

Almost anything that is truely innovative has a single person with a vision that starts the ball rolling. And that same person then takes the, often capricious, decisions that prevent it from sprawling in all directions and pettering out into nothingness.

Dogged, single-minded, cussedness is a trait shared by many people later seen to be visionary. The problem they face, almost universally, is getting their contemporaries to look past their own dogmas with an open mind. And the more authoratative the credentials of their contempraries, the harder that task becomes.

[TimToady]

Unfortunately, dogged, single-minded cussedness is trait shared by many people, period. I certainly share it with as many people as possible. :-)

[BrowserUk]

Unfortunately, dogged, single-minded cussedness is trait shared by many people, period.

Hmm. You think so? I know people can get vocal when a subject comes up, and they often pursue their p.o.v cussedly and sometime doggedly over the short term, but I think they usually drift off to pastures new when the novelty wears off.

Single-mindedness over the long term I have found to be a fairly rare commodity in general, but where it does present itself, there is usually something more than just cussedness behind it.

[Ninthwave]

As with anything one person's positive trait is another person's negative trait. In job interviews and performance reviews, recently (last 10 years) the questions: What do you consider to be your strengths? and What do you consider to be your weaknesses? are always asked. I think I was fortunate enough to learn in my youth that the answer to both is the same thing.