Linus: I'm taking time off and getting help from people who are (probably) trained to understand people's emotions.
RMS: Armed only with email archives, I generated a novel solution from inside my own head and tested it against feedback arriving back to my own head from a smattering of individuals.
What every happened to, "Gee, I don't know the answer to that question. Perhaps I should ask an expert for help."
What's so wrong with engineering a novel solution to a difficult problem? Are you suggesting that hackers cannot hack behavior and must rely on the medical community?
> What's so wrong with engineering a novel solution to a difficult problem?
If there are outstanding effective approaches in fields outside of one's area of expertise, everything.
At least one should seek the guidance of people who study these problems for a living. I don't see any evidence that RMS did that-- his only footnote refers to his own article wrt pronouns.
The hacker ethic is great. But if it is seen not as a supplement to prior art but as an alternative to it-- as you seem to imply-- that's a real problem.
RMS: Armed only with email archives, I generated a novel solution from inside my own head and tested it against feedback arriving back to my own head from a smattering of individuals.
What every happened to, "Gee, I don't know the answer to that question. Perhaps I should ask an expert for help."