Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Tue, 29 Jan 2002 18:52:03 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Tue, 29 Jan 2002 18:50:32 -0500 Received: from dsl254-112-233.nyc1.dsl.speakeasy.net ([216.254.112.233]:3474 "EHLO snark.thyrsus.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Tue, 29 Jan 2002 18:49:18 -0500 Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 18:47:42 -0500 From: "Eric S. Raymond" To: Rob Landley Cc: Alan Cox , mingo@elte.hu, Martin Dalecki , Linus Torvalds , linux-kernel , Jens Axboe Subject: Re: A modest proposal -- We need a patch penguin Message-ID: <20020129184742.A20998@thyrsus.com> Reply-To: esr@thyrsus.com Mail-Followup-To: "Eric S. Raymond" , Rob Landley , Alan Cox , mingo@elte.hu, Martin Dalecki , Linus Torvalds , linux-kernel , Jens Axboe In-Reply-To: <200201292256.g0TMu1U20885@snark.thyrsus.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5.1i In-Reply-To: <200201292256.g0TMu1U20885@snark.thyrsus.com>; from landley@trommello.org on Tue, Jan 29, 2002 at 05:57:08PM -0500 Organization: Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs X-Eric-Conspiracy: There is no conspiracy Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Rob Landley : > And we ARE using a patch penguin. You were around, and Dave is > around. I'm kind of confused at the level of resistence to formally > recognizing what basically IS current practice, and has been for > YEARS. (The reason for naming the position is we can't just say > "alan's tree" anymore. The position went from one person to another > person, and as such the position seemed to need to be recognized as > being separate from the individual. I didn't expect to hit a brick > wall on that. It didn't seem like a revolutionary idea to me...) Alas. That's because, like most Americans these days, you're historically illiterate. What we are facing here is a *very* familiar problem to social and institutional historians. All movements founded by charismatic leaders like Linus eventually hit this same wall -- the point at which the charisma of the founder and the individual ability of the disciples he personally attracts are no longer adequate to meet the challenges of success, and some way to institutionalize and distribute the leader's role has to be found. Movements that fail to make this transition die, generally by implosion or fragmenting into feuding sub-sects. If you were familiar with the historical precedents, Rob, you would understand that your modest proposal re-enacts a common pattern. A relatively junior member of the movement, one with few political ties, sees the developing stress fractures in the organization of the movement and proposes a modest, incremental change to relieve some of them. Conservatives interpret the attempt to separate and institutionalize part of the founder's role as an attack on the authority of the founder. Huge flamewars ensue, with the original pragmatic sense of the proposal often being lost as it becomes a political football in the movement's internal status games. Sometimes the first such attempt at institutionization succeeds. More often, the movement has to go through a series of escalating crises (burning up would-be reformers each time) before anyone finally succeeds in changing the movement's internal culture. Religions go through this. Secular social movements go through this. Companies founded by brilliant entrepreneurs go through this (the B-schools have a whole literature on "entrepreneurial overcontrol" and its consequences). It's one of the dramas that gets perpetually re-enacted; it's built in to our wiring. The unhappy truth is that even *successful* transitions of this kind are invariably painful, and often leave deep scars on the survivors and on the institution that arises from the transition. *Never* expect this sort of transition to be easy, especially when the positions people are taking are as much about personal identity and values as they are about "success" in whatever terms the movement defines it. -- Eric S. Raymond - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/