@lxo quite right.

But, I do question if atleast some initiatives aren't just hubris without understanding what people want (my pet peeve is me-too projects - GNU Sather?). Sure, there are many initiatives with ulterior motives, like proprietary software, and highlighting their inadvisable aspects is welcome. But implementations supporting the alternative always miss the train. Contrast that to the endurance of something like Emacs, which wasn't me-too material once it got ported to Unices.

wow, I wasn't familiar with GNU Sather! I recall having been interested in Eiffel very long ago, but there wasn't a Free Software implementation. maybe if GNU Sather had gained more visibility, people could be using it instead of Java or, more recently, Rust.

now, IIUC its history, it started elsewhere, and then it was contributed to GNU. it would probably not make much sense for GNU to reject that kind of contribution. if people want to do that kind of computing (programming in an Eiffel-like language), they should be able to do that in freedom, and that's what GNU aims for. but that gripe doesn't seem to bear much relationship with the point of the blog post, does it? if it does, I couldn't see the connection.

@lxo it was more about Sather, less about GNU, an example I wanted to call hubris-driven social initiative (no real need out there). I think the sort of social change that has democratic impediments probably is hubris rather than an actual alternative.

I agree GNU wasn't hubris-driven, and also that it succeeded. I never understood why people expected it to solve later challenges too! At best, GNU could have explicitly supported others tackling those challenges, like the #4opens criteria.

well... you know the US never outlawed slavery, right? it still allows enslavement of prisoners. but even countries that actually outlawed slavery, that was democratically difficult to accomplish at first. it takes time for morals to change, especially when they challenge economic privileges.

I don't think it's fair to label Sather as hubris. The way Rust is pushed is more like it, because Ada is already there. But even when it comes to Sather, we're looking at it from an advantage point of hindsight. When you start working on something that could be really useful if it gets adopted, but for whatever reason it isn't, one might think it shouldn't even have been tried, but truth is that we never know what is going to gain adoption. If whatever fails to gain it gets labeled as hubris, you're teaching people never to try, never to take such risks. There was great potential in Sather, just as there was great potential in the Hurd. The potentials were not fully realized, but that doesn't translate to hubris, they were and are worth the shot.

Just like drives against enslavement have never been hubris, eve if they haven't quite succeeded everywhere.

@lxo To explain my Sather-bashing bent of mind, I would rank project ideas by need in the GNU era and see if the needy ones got worked on.

A C compiler, libc, either Hurd or Linux, desktop environments, code forges. I think the first 2 worked out well (for society, but also for corporates). Maybe it should have been HaikuOS for the 3rd (better suited to society)! GNUstep was the right way for the 4th, since Apple didn't (couldn't) trip up libobjc. I guess it was a problem of plenty on the 5th.