Subject: Re: Is LISP dying? From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1999/07/23 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3141762119317165@naggum.no> * Craig Brozefsky <craig@red-bean.com> | In other words, I do not subscribe to the "uberprogrammer" theory, well, do you believe that artists are übermensch since you bring this up? in my view, if they were, their works wouldn't need protection. it's because fairly normal people sometimes do outstanding work that we need to ensure that we are not taking away their ability to profit from and live by the few outstanding things each person can do in his lifetime. I continue to be amazed by the arguments people actually appear to believe are opposite to mine, or useful in whatever other way to argue against what I have said. something here is clearly incomprehensible to people who still believe in free software as a solution, but I don't ask you to agree, I only ask you to think. fools agree or disagree before they have thought, brilliant people think without considering agreement. freeing software is a means to an end, not an end in itself. if the end needs different means at different times, the old means will work towards different ends. but most people think in terms of what they see today, not in terms of what they want to help come true in the long run. today we have some free software and some serious problems, and some problems have gone away because we have some free software, but tomorrow, we will have more serious problems because we have some more free software. if the goal is to remove some more serious problems, are we still doing the right thing? I think not, and I don't think the effects will be seen for many years to come, just like the Internet bonanza will kill a whole bunch of previously profitable companies and industries so thoroughly that we may see a decade of unhealthy growth by those who have the guts to hold out for what worked and wasn't hyped. when the world didn't end with the commencement of the new millennium, people will return to their senses and again start behaving as if they were going to live for 30 more years at least, which most of them are. well, maybe I have time to earn a degree in curing post-fin-de-siècle-depression, as in "shit, it didn't all blow up. _now_ what do we do?" #:Erik -- suppose we blasted all politicians into space. would the SETI project find even one of them?