Herds of cats (was: Guido at Google)

[Nicola Musatti]

Cameron Laird wrote:
> In article <1135273624.592241.180820 at g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> Nicola Musatti <nicola.musatti at gmail.com> wrote:
> 			.
> >Ah, the closed source days! Back then you could just buy the company
> >and be done with it. Now you have to chase developers one by one all
> >over the world... ;-)
> 			.
> You propellor-heads (I write that in all fondness, Nicola) are
> all laughing, but I'm certain that the right elaboration of
> that proposition could make it into the *Harvard Business Review*
> (or *IBM Systems Journal*, which seems to have tilted irreversibly
> in that direction).

I was only half joking, actually. Compare Python to Delphi. If a
company wanted to acquire control over Delphi, they'd try and buy
Borland; to acquire control over Python what are they to do? Well,
hiring Guido and Alex is probably a step in the right direction ;-) but
would it be enough? Programming languages are not the best example, but
if you change it to Mozilla and Opera my argument makes more sense.

> Actually, there's already a considerable literature on how pro-
> grammers are like other nasty professionals in exhibiting more
> loyalty to their community than to their employers.  Generalize
> as desired.

Well, it's still better than PHB's who, in my experience, are only
loyal to themselves and in general have more power to put other
people's jobs at risk than programmers. 

Cheers,
Nicola Musatti