There's been a great discussion of Open Source and open specs and all that kinda stuff the past few days, triggered by John Robb, catalyzed by Uncle Dave.

I happen to work on a small open source project -- JOE, a Java-based cross-platform (Windows/Mac/'ix'n'ux) OPMLizing outliner. So I've been especially tuned in to the discussion.

(Just BTW, I don't do JOE for money, I do it for (many forms of) love. And a whole raft of other non-economic reasons. Cuz open source projects DON'T make much standard ECONOMIC sense (they DO make lotsa other kinza sense, but all that's besides the point, another time, blah blah blah ...)

Anyways: the other day, Dave happened to mention JOE (and OmniOutliner, a Mac outliner) on Scripting News.

Yow. Our flow meter spiked. JOE downloads followed.

What a nice thing for Dave to do. Yes, JOE is a friend scratch that stone cold hormonal LOVER of OPML, and that's a Good Thing for all OPMLoids. The more OPML tools, the OPMLier, and OPML is indeed a VERY GREAT THING [just-watch-what-it's-gonna-catalyze-it's-just-STARTIN'-to-rock].

BUT: JOE's an outliner, and Dave builds outliners, heck he's one of the godparents and progenitors and great goshamighty p.t.barnums of outliners, and so one might think he could see JOE (and OMNI) as competition for his own company's (excellent revolutionary web-shattering mind-bombing) tools. And so he might.

(Me, I don't see it that way, since Dave's tools are much much more than outliners, they just use outliners as a foundation. But again, that's moot, doesn't really matter for this posting).

Small-minded folk might wonder WHY would Dave act like this ???

Mind expansion time: The point is this: Dave knows Flow. The Power of Flow. The Beauty of Flow. The Goodness of Flow. The Win-Win-Win-Win-Win of Flow. You flow my way, I flow your way, ya give flow, ya get flow, others see this and join in on the fun, pretty soon, we're all surfing a happy big flowin' wave of our own communitarian making. And the surfboards just keep on agettin' cooler'n'cooler'n'cooler ....

Anyways: Thanks, Dave! for the flow. It's one of the things you do best. You flow selflessly all over the place. A Master of Plumbing. Plastic Man in Cybernia. We all bow, and flow right back atcha. Yowza!

ps - Flow is Love   5:28:12 AM    

About 14 years ago, I was writing docs for a BigCo.

I wanted to describe what a user did when they navigated their GUI with a mouse.

I came up with the phrase "mousing around".

One of the things I LOVE about English is its democracy. If you come up with some word or phrase, and enuf people pick up on it, Voila!, it's part of the language. No Academy Anglaise running socio-bureaucratically-correct exclusion filters.

Unfortunately, I had an editor, and she was, as is the tendency among editors, a tad conservative and non-word-fun-loving. She couldn't let the 'mousing around' phrase past her pillbox. She had never heard it nor seen it from any source other than me.

During the next year and a half, I started to see the phrase in print. More and more frequently. Hah hah. Whenever I did, I made a hyper-enlarged copy at the corner xerox and left it silently on her desk.

"We coulda been innovators ! They say this company doesn't know how to invent anything, that we just refine and bloat and market the hell out of other folks' ideas. Well, we can invent words, phrases, vocabularies, whole conceptual spaces, it's cheap and fun, it's a good use of our power, we just have to dare to relax and giggle a bit!!", I silently spewed.

I like mousing around. I love having no editor.   4:50:37 AM