Source copyable software is better than artificial life

Aaron Watters (aaron@vienna.njit.edu)
Thu, 29 Sep 1994 13:08:40 GMT

I don't know a lot about this artificial life stuff
-- but I'm suspicious of anything Newsweek gets goofy about
-- and I suspect its primary use is as another money extraction tool
to be applied by ai labs to the department of defense
(and more power to 'em).

Nevertheless in wondering why free software is so good these days
it occured to me that the propagation of free software is one gigantic
artificial life evolution experiment, but the metaphor isn't perfect.

Programs are thrown out into the harsh environment, and the bad ones
die. The good ones adapt rapidly and become very robust in short
order.

The only problem with the metaphor is that the process isn't random
at all. Python _chooses_ to include tk's genes; Linux decides
to make itself more suitable for symbiosis with X, etcetera.

Free software is artificial life, but better.
Aaron Watters
Department of Computer and Information Sciences
New Jersey Institute of Technology
University Heights
Newark, NJ 07102
phone (201)596-2666
fax (201)596-5777
home phone (908)545-3367
email: aaron@vienna.njit.edu