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In his defense, the full quote is actually not so bad. I don’t expect you to agree with all these facts; some of them might even upset you. Great! Then we can

In his defense, the full quote is actually not so bad. I don’t expect you to agree with all these facts; some of them might even upset you. Great! Then we can begin a dialog about which facts really are facts and which are merely figments of my vivid loyal opposition imagination! It's interesting that he was (is?) a vocal dissenter on Open Source.

MichaelGG 11y ago
Wikipedia says this: >in 2000, Glass criticized open-source software, predicting that it will not reach far, and "will be limited to one or a few cults emerging from a niche culture." Glass's basis for this bold prediction was that open-source software "goes against the grain of everything I know about the software field" Not to judge off something that small, but if "everything he knew" told him open source was not going to reach far, then perhaps his other facts are off.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  I don't see in what sense his "facts" are factual. There are no references. They look more like random opinions - some interesting, but with a fair sprinkling of platitudes - supported by some equally random numbers, of the "Did you know fifty percent of statistics are made up?" kind. I think it's interesting how dated the piece looks. Equivalent writing today on Quora, Medium, or HN - never mind an IEEE journal - would be more likely to discuss real research. It might not be certain to have facts, but I think standards of argument have improved significantly - possibly because it's so much easier to find and reference studies than it was when a lot of debate happened very slowly in print.
  - mathattack 11y ago
    I think he puts the "Facts" out there with a grain of salt - and admits it in the preamble. They're very much a source of discussion rather than hard and true facts. (Software engineering is a social science where experiments are virtually impossible to replicate. As such, it's only slightly more rigorous than "Facts" in History or Political Science classes.)

MichaelGG 11y ago

Wikipedia says this: >in 2000, Glass criticized open-source software, predicting that it will not reach far, and "will be limited to one or a few cults emerging from a niche culture." Glass's basis for this bold prediction was that open-source software "goes against the grain of everything I know about the software field" Not to judge off something that small, but if "everything he knew" told him open source was not going to reach far, then perhaps his other facts are off.

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
I don't see in what sense his "facts" are factual. There are no references. They look more like random opinions - some interesting, but with a fair sprinkling of platitudes - supported by some equally random numbers, of the "Did you know fifty percent of statistics are made up?" kind. I think it's interesting how dated the piece looks. Equivalent writing today on Quora, Medium, or HN - never mind an IEEE journal - would be more likely to discuss real research. It might not be certain to have facts, but I think standards of argument have improved significantly - possibly because it's so much easier to find and reference studies than it was when a lot of debate happened very slowly in print.
- mathattack 11y ago
  I think he puts the "Facts" out there with a grain of salt - and admits it in the preamble. They're very much a source of discussion rather than hard and true facts. (Software engineering is a social science where experiments are virtually impossible to replicate. As such, it's only slightly more rigorous than "Facts" in History or Political Science classes.)