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The Battle Between Purists and Pragmatists
Glyn Moody has a thoughtful piece taking a long look at the never-ending battle between pragmatists and purists in free and open software. "While debates rage around whether Mono is good or bad for free software, and about 'fauxpen source' and 'Faux FLOSS Fundamentalists,' people are overlooking the fact that these are just the latest in a series of such arguments about whether the end justifies the means. There was the same discussion when KDE was launched using the Qt toolkit, which was proprietary at the time, and when GNOME was set up as a completely free alternative. But could it be that this battle between the 'purists' and the 'pragmatists' is actually good for free software — a sign that people care passionately about this stuff — and a major reason for its success?"
The purist seeks to change the world to fit him, whereas the pragmatist changes himself to fit the world.
Ergo all progress relies on the purists. :-)
While the purist is sounding off about some moral crusade for cuter kittens or something, the pragmatist will have finished what they're doing and be in the bar with a beer. The purists see this as proof that they are right. The pragmatists see this as proof that they've got a beer.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Define "define".
#define define
Can we move on?
The pragmatists see this as proof that they've got a beer.
But it's not free beer, now is it?
I can't tell if this a purist view of pragmatism, or a pragmatic view of purism.