Open Source and Russell's Paradox"At UC Berkeley, my adviser kept pushing me into more and more esoteric math courses. Many years later, after he passed, his admin mentioned to me it was because he felt that's where my calling was - although never mentioned it to me!But it often helps in understanding difficult problems, like that faced by open source. Open source is now in a form of Russell's Paradox - if any coherent condition may be used to determine a set, then the self-reference of open source implies collecting all elements of itself regardless of propriety and correctness. This explains the need to collect all source elements - good, bad, indifferent, proprietary - under the rubric of "open source" before any modification of the set is allowed. It is continually self-referent and indeterminant. The state set is not properly formalized. So perhaps my adviser's interest for me was not wasted." |
back | William Jolitz 04/21/2012
