[Discuss] an "Enterprise" Linux for desktop

[blu at nedharvey.com (Edward Ned Harvey)]

> From: markw at mohawksoft.com [mailto:markw at mohawksoft.com]
> 
> Changing existing paradigms is usually a bad
> practice unless there is sufficient evidence a new paradigm is better.

The same is true of everything that is being developed by anyone anywhere.
Even if you invented a car that consumes negative thoughts and emits love
and happiness as the waste product, or even if you were abolishing slavery,
or promoting voting rights for women or african americans in the U.S. a few
decades ago, people who are entrenched in the existing paradigm will oppose
your invention, and you might end up murdered if it's sufficiently important
or whatever.

It's impossible to get everyone to agree that any new change is positive.
So those decisions are left to the people who have localized control over
whatever it is.  Those people are driven by something - usually monetary -
and they're designing whatever they're designing because they think it's
better that way.  If they paused until everyone was in agreement, nothing
would get done, and they would be removed from their position of influence
over the project.

Sometimes the changes are unpopular (vista).  But they may still be
justified as a stepping stone to something better (win7 is definitely better
than xp).

As you mentioned, if a feature makes it into a product, was there ever
justification to put it in?  And if it's later removed, was there
justification to take it out?  Well sometimes things get into a product
because it was easy given the architecture, although the architecture may
later change.  Sometimes it's something some dude cares about who's actually
implementing it.  No, it's not always well thought out, and it doesn't
always need to be.  In fact, it's necessary that to some extent it cannot be
thoroughly thought out.

Perfection is the enemy of progress.  Plus it's subjective.