Re: Coding style - a non-issue

[Larry McVoy]

On Sun, Dec 02, 2001 at 08:34:09PM -0500, David L. Parsley wrote:
> Larry McVoy wrote:
> > Which is exactly Victor's point.  That evaluation is the design.  If the 
> > mutation argument held water then Linus would apply *ALL* patches and then
> > remove the bad ones.  But he doesn't.  Which just goes to show that on this
> > mutation nonsense, he's just spouting off.
> 
> Eh, come on Larry.  You're too smart for this crap (as are others, your 
> straw just broke the camel's back).  Linus was just using an analogy to 
> illustrate some very valid points.  All analogies break down when 
> applied to the nth degree.  Insulting Linus because you've found a spot 
> where the analogy breaks is just ludicrous.

This whole mutation crap is ludicrous and if you read through the archives
you can find numerous examples where Linus himself says so.  I have no idea
why he is saying what he is, but that's neither here nor there.  Nonsense
is nonsense, regardless of who says it or why they say it.

Doesn't it strike you the least bit strange that when I challenge Linus to
bow out because he asserts that he isn't needed, this is just some grand
experiment in genetics which is working fine, he says everything would be
fine if he left but he isn't going to because he's having fun?  Isn't that
just a tad convenient?  It's a crock of crap too.  Linus has excellent taste,
better than any OS guy I've run into in 20 years, and if he bowed out a ton
of crap would make it into the kernel that doesn't now.  Genetic mutation
my ass.  If you want an experiment in evolution, then let *everything* into
the kernel.  That's how evolution works, it tries everything, it doesn't
prescreen.  Go read Darwin, go think, there isn't any screening going on,
evolution *is* the screening.