3 ms·

In the article's example the original "small" Xnet and the other person's vision for "big" Xnet are two projects of the second type, but their vastly different

In the article's example the original "small" Xnet and the other person's vision for "big" Xnet are two projects of the second type, but their vastly different objectives might be at least partly trascended and reconciled by adding a project of the first type: common standards and interfaces that allow both Xnet incarnations to serve the same content and substitute each other, thus providing practical value to actual users rather than experience to the authors.

bayindirh 3y ago
> thus providing practical value to actual users rather than experience to the authors. Do we need to convert everything we develop to something which provides practical value to actual users? Some of us code for fun, and put what we do out there. If it's used, we're happy. If not, it doesn't matter since we're the primary users of our code anyway. Novell (IIRC) provided MyRealBox e-mails as a free service for beta testing their mail servers. The web interface was crude, but it worked flawlessly over the years they provided the service. The practical value was secondary, and we provided lots of data for the developers of the stack. We were happy even though we knew what it was. One day we received a mail about EOL'ing the thing, we migrated away, and it's gone. No hard feelings whatsoever. I think we should stop putting frames and projecting our ideals on anything which looks similar to something we have on our minds.
- HelloNurse 3y ago
  I was just suggesting a way for the article's author and the drive-by quasicontributor to get along, not that it would be a worthwhile product. Practical value (running a system that does X) vs. learning value (learning to do X) is the main distinction between the two types of projects defined in the parent post.
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    Yes, I understand where you are coming from, but I don't see the need for creating a third umbrella project to make two projects get along or communicate. Maybe if both parties accept, they can directly implement the interoperability, but my opinion stands. Anyway, I assume you know that GP is also my comment, but the difference is not Practical Value vs. Learning Value. It's the target of the project, plainly. i.e. Do you want a small tool which you gonna care, or a tool which you'll give away incl. its control. Learning Value and Practical Value can be combined. I have a couple of tools which I built for myself, with hard constraints on resource consumption, because they run on low end SBCs. However, all of these tools provide a real value for me, because I deploy these tools/services and they handle real world load for me. I also open source them [0][1], but I'll not accept big patches changing the code fundamentally. [0]: https://git.sr.ht/~bayindirh/railgun https://git.sr.ht/~bayindirh/railgun [1]: https://git.sr.ht/~bayindirh/nudge https://git.sr.ht/~bayindirh/nudge

bayindirh 3y ago

> thus providing practical value to actual users rather than experience to the authors. Do we need to convert everything we develop to something which provides practical value to actual users? Some of us code for fun, and put what we do out there. If it's used, we're happy. If not, it doesn't matter since we're the primary users of our code anyway. Novell (IIRC) provided MyRealBox e-mails as a free service for beta testing their mail servers. The web interface was crude, but it worked flawlessly over the years they provided the service. The practical value was secondary, and we provided lots of data for the developers of the stack. We were happy even though we knew what it was. One day we received a mail about EOL'ing the thing, we migrated away, and it's gone. No hard feelings whatsoever. I think we should stop putting frames and projecting our ideals on anything which looks similar to something we have on our minds.

HelloNurse 3y ago
I was just suggesting a way for the article's author and the drive-by quasicontributor to get along, not that it would be a worthwhile product. Practical value (running a system that does X) vs. learning value (learning to do X) is the main distinction between the two types of projects defined in the parent post.
- bayindirh 3y ago
  Yes, I understand where you are coming from, but I don't see the need for creating a third umbrella project to make two projects get along or communicate. Maybe if both parties accept, they can directly implement the interoperability, but my opinion stands. Anyway, I assume you know that GP is also my comment, but the difference is not Practical Value vs. Learning Value. It's the target of the project, plainly. i.e. Do you want a small tool which you gonna care, or a tool which you'll give away incl. its control. Learning Value and Practical Value can be combined. I have a couple of tools which I built for myself, with hard constraints on resource consumption, because they run on low end SBCs. However, all of these tools provide a real value for me, because I deploy these tools/services and they handle real world load for me. I also open source them [0][1], but I'll not accept big patches changing the code fundamentally. [0]: https://git.sr.ht/~bayindirh/railgun https://git.sr.ht/~bayindirh/railgun [1]: https://git.sr.ht/~bayindirh/nudge https://git.sr.ht/~bayindirh/nudge