>
>so why focus on open source?
i am not and never have. my first comment in this entire thread was about "geeks". my next comment, the one that pissed everyone off was an oblique reference to the war between stallmand and raymond's vision of "open source".
> why not pay attention to the longer,
>larger, more mature processes of the ietf or the history of free
>software -- and judge the hacker ethos from *them* (and not raymond's
>ego)?
i'm not judging hacker's or coders or geeks. i don't give a flying fuck whether they do what they do because they are bored or lonely or psychotic or totally in love with code or selfless or egotistical. i'm talking about the conditions under which occupations move to professionalize. i'm pointing to the conditions that i believe make the occupation ripe for professionalization and it will be more so when the economy slows because the so-called monopoly on knowledge is not special. even physicians cannot muster such a monopoly and they hold people's lives in their hands. how do you suppose it has happened that they are increasingly under the thumb of accountants who tell them how to practice their trade?
capitalists and their managerial lackeys will NOT put up with attitudes like those expressed by people who think they can extort capitalists. they don't like it. no one does,. capitalists, however, have the power, money, resources, and such to control things a lot more than geeks. therefore, if geeks want to fight to retain the good life they've achieved, they will have to organize. as i said, all major associations affiliated with IT have had the professionalization discussion for at least a decade now.
that is why you haven't been reading what i'm writing.
it's not about you and yours. however much you'd like to be the center of attention. that's simply not what i do as a sociologist. and, moreover, i'm not writing a book or article or anything. it was just a post to a flippin' list exploring an idea. i have a professional code of ethics to uphold and so i cannot do research unless i come out and tell everyone at dc, lbo and elsewhere that this is what i'm doing. plain and simple.