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I can't make a claim as to whether entrepreneurship is noble but it's far more than "not completely useless". Let's continue with your example. We have million

by delano 18y ago

I can't make a claim as to whether entrepreneurship is noble but it's far more than "not completely useless". Let's continue with your example. We have millions of true computer lovers coding for free. Let's expand that to include people pursuing their passion in any field for free. Now what? Now we have a collection of high-quality, but isolated research and tools. How do I use this research and these tools to solve my problems? How do I use them to solve other people's problems? By putting in time and effort to connect the dots. That's what entrepreneurs do at their best: they bring existing things together to make something new to solve other people's problems. Where are these computers lovers firing up IDEs, eager to solve my problems for free? And that's my point: craft and entrepreneurship go hand in hand. They're both better off by the presence of the other.

old-gregg 18y ago
I guess the point I was trying to make was this: 99.99% of the code running on "web 2.0 server" somewhere in California is GPL/LGPL stuff, good part of which originates from Europe. Therefore it's very foolish of us to even hint that "Europeans are lazy" or inferior in any way. Google, Yahoo and Sun might not be from Europe, but Linus, Guido, DHH and thousands less famous are. Moreover, I feel SV entrepreneurs should be far more polite and humble because they have a terrible track record of returning the favor: where is scribbd's iPaper's code? We all know it's built on top of OO, why can't OO contributors host their own Office docs on their own personal servers using iPaper from scribbd?
- delano 18y ago
  SV entrepreneurs are not a cohesive group. Neither are Europeans. It's just as ridiculous to say "Europeans are lazy" as it is to say, "entrepreneurs have a terrible track record". It's worse in the case of "Europe" because that's a group of groups. How about this: some people are lazy and some people thanklessly live off of other people's work. Regarding iPaper, if they do build on top of OpenOffice -- which uses the LGPL -- they have a legal obligation to make their source available by request. If they don't, then I agree, those specific entrepreneurs are jerks.

by delano 18y ago

old-gregg 18y ago

I guess the point I was trying to make was this: 99.99% of the code running on "web 2.0 server" somewhere in California is GPL/LGPL stuff, good part of which originates from Europe. Therefore it's very foolish of us to even hint that "Europeans are lazy" or inferior in any way. Google, Yahoo and Sun might not be from Europe, but Linus, Guido, DHH and thousands less famous are. Moreover, I feel SV entrepreneurs should be far more polite and humble because they have a terrible track record of returning the favor: where is scribbd's iPaper's code? We all know it's built on top of OO, why can't OO contributors host their own Office docs on their own personal servers using iPaper from scribbd?

delano 18y ago
SV entrepreneurs are not a cohesive group. Neither are Europeans. It's just as ridiculous to say "Europeans are lazy" as it is to say, "entrepreneurs have a terrible track record". It's worse in the case of "Europe" because that's a group of groups. How about this: some people are lazy and some people thanklessly live off of other people's work. Regarding iPaper, if they do build on top of OpenOffice -- which uses the LGPL -- they have a legal obligation to make their source available by request. If they don't, then I agree, those specific entrepreneurs are jerks.