Some personal OSS principles

  • While most others seem to believe that learning what we are taught is the path to success, I believe that figuring out for yourself what you want and how to get it is a better path.
  • While most others seem to believe that having answers is better than having questions, I believe that having questions is better than having answers because it leads to more learning.
  • While most others seem to believe that mistakes are bad things, I believe mistakes are good things because I believe that most learning comes via making mistakes and reflecting on them.
  • While most others seem to believe that finding out about one’s weaknesses is a bad thing, I believe that it is a good thing because it is the first step toward finding out what to do about them and not letting them stand in your way.
  • While most others seem to believe that pain is bad, I believe that pain is required to become stronger

Ray Dalio in his Principles manifesto.

When I reflect on years of OSS implementations, I find Ray Dalio’s principles above to be a contrarian view that I also share… But the question is, that if I share his contrarian view, is it actually contrarian? If all of you share the contrarian view then it wouldn’t seem to be contrarian at all.

There are a lot of very clever people in OSS, with lots of very clever thoughts and lots of strong opinions. With that comes the perspective that most OSS experts fall into the “most others” category. But without being inside the head of others (well obviously), is this just some sort of perception / bias that we all hold about others?

I’d love to get your thoughts. What do you think on his principles above? Please respond with an answer of “Ray’s view” or “most others”

BTW. These list quoted above is just a very small sub-set of a very interesting set of theories in Ray’s manifesto. I definitely recommend having a read through it here, but noting that it is quite long.

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