The Left Field

Master Foo chews on a fork

The cold winds of recessionary pressures were blowing around Pentementi Mountain as the two technologists made their way to Master Foo's cave near the summit. The WIFI signals had long disappeared from their netbook gadgets but text messaging still worked on their cellphones. Contact with the valley below helped them feel connected to the Twenty First, or was that the Twentieth?, Century.

"Master Foo", they shouted. "We come without an appointment and beg your indulgence. Would you have a few minutes to advise us on an enterprise application development strategy question we are struggling with?"

Master Foo was twiddling his beard with one hand and twiddling the control knobs on his MP3 player with the other. It was not clear if he heard the question or simply saw the two perplexed technologists in the distance. He beckoned them to approach. While they did so, he wrapped his legs into full lotus and took a chakra aligning, mind focusing, spine straightening, deep breath. His hands sat in his lap, thumbs touching, cradling what looked like a 4 GB USB Compact Flash card in his hands.

"Master Foo, we have an application we are developing for an enterprise. The application needs a module to do XYZ and there is a very good open source module, under a liberal license, that does XYZ very well."

"The day will come, when that is true for all values of XYZ", said Master Foo. "It is the universal law of causes and conditions at work. The one-ness of all things, the no-self, I am your source code and you are mine for we are one and we our source code is inter-dependent to the point of oneness. This is technological 'Annata', as my friends and I refer to it on the Pali IRC channels."

The technologists exchanged puzzled glances as Master Foo beamed one of his famously enigmatic smiles. He raised a bamboo cane just as the second technologist was about to start talking. Disconcerting images of Dr. Greg House flashed in the minds of the technologists, but they kept their silence and let Master Foo speak.

"Let me guess how it goes from here", he began. "You have found that module XYZ is perfect except for one or two critical things that it just doesn't do. You want to implement those yourself and are wondering how best to do it. Part of you thinks that forking the code is the way to go. After all, the critical missing things are valuable and will lead to a competitive edge."

From the slow nodding of the technologists it was clear that Master Foo was on the right track. He continued, waving the bamboo cane around in the air as he did so.

"The other part of you thinks that contributing the new functionality back to the community is a better option.

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