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All of a sudden, it seemed like everyone moved over to Plurk. This was about the time I took my little summer vaca from SL, and so I haven’t even given a serious look to Plurk, but my superficial examination has left me thoroughly confused. I guess it’s like Twitter on steroids, with all the pressure to microblog and keep up with other folks’ microblogs, but with the added pressure of a reputation rating called “karma”! No thanks.

I don’t Skype, for the same reasons I don’t use voice. I’m not much into machinima, so I don’t post videos to YouTube. I’ve given Lively a quick try and it crashed for me about ten times in half an hour, and besides I’m not happy about the fact that you can hit and slap (assault) other avatars without their consent. I still use Google chat occasionally to talk with Lanna when we can’t be in-world, but as I’ve noted before it’s a sorry substitution for SL. I belong to a few Ning groups, such as SL Bloggers and Fashion Finds, but to be honest I rarely use them.

Then there’s Facebook. I will admit, I have two Facebook accounts, one for RL and one for SL. (And no, my Second Self is not friends with RL me, so don’t bother checking!) I enjoyed using Facebook as Kit at first, but what I’ve since realized is that what I really enjoyed was using the Scrabulous application on Facebook to play Scrabble with friends, and that’s it. Which, besides being a time-waster and a huuuuuge copyright infringement, really doesn’t have anything to do with Facebook as a platform in and of itself. And the platform just started to annoy me, with all the invitations to install new applications, half of which I don’t understand and don’t really care to. (Why do I care to be a zombie? Or buy and sell my friends?)

Industrial AgeInformation Age Focus on measurable outcomesFocus on strategic issues using participation and empowerment Individual accountabilityTeam accountability Clearly differentiated-segmented organisational roles, positions and responsibilitiesMatrix arrangement - flexible positions and responsibilities Hierarchical, linear information flowsMultiple interface, 'boundaryless' information networking Initiatives for improvement emanate from a management eliteInitiatives for improvement emanate from all directions

There is only one layer between the community of Linux developers and Linus: the "trusted lieutenants". They are a dozen hackers that have done considerably extended work on a particular part of the kernel to gain Linus' trust. The "trusted lieutenants" are responsible to maintain a part of the Linux Kernel and lots of developers sent their patches (their code) directly to them, instead of Linus. Of course, apart from Linus that has encouraged this to happen, this informal mechanism represents a natural selection by the community since the "trusted lieutenants" are recognised [by the community] as being not owners but simple experts in particular areas [57] and thus, their 'authority' can always be openly challenged. This does not mean that Linus has more influence than they have. Recently, "Alan Cox (one of the "trusted" ones) disagreed with Linus over some obscure technical issue and it looks like the community really does get to judge by backing Alan and making Linus to acknowledge that he made a bad choice" [58].

In 1991, Linus Torvalds made a free Unix-like kernel (a core part of the operating system) available on the Internet and invited all hackers interested to participate. Within the next two months, the first version 1.0 of Linux was released. From that point, tens of thousands of developers, dispersed globally and communicating via the Internet, contributed code, so that early in 1993, Linux had grown to be a stable, reliable and very powerful operating system. The Linux kernel is 'copylefted' software, patented under the GNU GPL, and thus, nobody actually owns it. But more significantly, Linux is sheltered by the Open Source (hacker) community. From its very birth, Linux as a project has mobilised an incredible number of developers offering enhancements, modifications/improvements and bug fixes without any financial incentive. Despite the fact that an operating system is supposed to be developed only by a closely-knit team to avoid rising complexity and communication costs of coordination (Brook's Law), Linux is being developed in a massive decentralised mode under no central planning, an amazing feat given that it has not evolved into chaos. Innovation release early and often: Linus put into practice an innovative and paradox model of developing software. Frequent releases and updates (several times in a week) are typical throughout the entire development period of Linux. In this way, Linus kept the community constantly stimulated by the rapid growth of the project and provided an extraordinary effective mechanism of psychologically rewarding his co-developers for their contributions that were implemented in the last version. On top of this, in every released version, there is a file attached which lists all those who have contributed (code). Credit attribution if neglected, is a cardinal sin that will breed bitterness within the community and discourage developers from further contributing to the project. According to conventional software-building wisdom, early versions are by definition buggy and you do not want to wear out the patience of your users. But as far as the Linux development stage is concerned, developers are the users themselves and this is where most innovation is created (Figure 8). "The greatest innovation of Linux is that treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle route to rapid code improvement and effective debugging" (Raymond, 1998a).