Autocoding project proposal.

[phil hunt]

On Fri, 25 Jan 2002 02:30:22 GMT, Timothy Rue <threeseas at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>What's the name of that childrens story about a chicken, mother hen, who
>has this goal to make bread. But she ask all the farm animals if they
>would like to help her plant the grain, then later when the wheat has
>gown she ask them all if they would help her harvest the grain, than asks
>if they would help her grind the grain, etc...
>
>Each time she asks them, they all come up with an excuse not to.
>
>But then she gets to baking the bread and the smell all the farm animals
>could and all of them wanted some...
>
>What is the name of the nursery story? Do you know?
>
>
>Funny how nobody wanted to help, except when it was all done, but the
>part about eating the bread.

Why should we help you with your project? What've you ever done for 
us? Furthermore, don't think that you can get us to help you by
scolding us for our lack of enthusiasm -- that won't work.

Consider my Herbivore project[1]. I had the idea that an opportunistic
email encryption system -- where public keys are exchanged, and email
encrypted and decrypted automatically -- would encouraghe lots of people
to encrypt their email. If I had done nothing about this, it would have 
remained just an idea.

If someone says "here's a really cool idea, won't someone else
implement it for me", then nothing will get done. After all, if it
isn't worth the innovator's time to develop it, why should it be 
worth anyone else's?

>But how will you really know how far it is, unless you investigate it
>yourself?

How about you describe it clearly for us here? I suspect that if you
can't do so within a few paragraphs, your ideas aren't fully formed.

>And if you dont and then say what you have above, what am I to
>think of you and those who follow the direction you have taken? You are
>waiting for the bread to be baked and even taken out of the oven and
>sliced up and buttered for you?

There are loads of interesting computing projects I could work on,
but there are only 24 hours in a day, I can't do everything. I use
the Linux kernel, the Apache web server, the KDE user environment,
the Python language, without having contributed any code to any of these;
am I then lazy?

>I'm asking for help in creating this tool. 

Create something that works -- it doesn't have to work very well, but
it must have some small functionality. Then you will likely get some help,
if others find the project interesting too. At least, that is what I have
found.



[1] <http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html> for details.

-- 
===== Philip Hunt ===== philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk =====
One OS to rule them all, one OS to find them,
One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them,
In the Land of Redmond, where the Shadows lie.