newspeak

Confessions of an ex-developer – Matt Gemmell.

A very interesting read, especially since I’ve just returned from Oscon 2014, where there were many enthusiastic developers and a strong emphasis on things cloud. Also some interesting lacunae. But to the point Matt raises. It’s by no means peculiar to programming. Try keeping up with any field where differentiated identity and process can lead not more surely to profit and that competitive edge than better things and methods. Biotech, pharma, genomic and bioinformatics come to mind. Making something open source introduces is an increasingly ambiguous business gesture, and not simply a collaborative mobilization, if it ever was.

While reading the essay, I wondered if it would make sense to have a track at a major conference on this theme, on the logic and logistics of this coding babble. The upcoming Open World Forum, in Paris, has a related theme, on infrastructure identity in open source development, and plausibly this could be attached to it. But the CfP closed 15 July, I believe, and besides, I think this issue merits the sort of attention a series of talks by experts can offer–and then also some form of follow up, so that something can be said to result that’s actually constructive (if not a solution) from the identification of a problem.