The Open-Soruce Big Bang

On why most of your hard problems were already solved by a fish, a mammal, and soon, an open-source solution The fish and the mammal who took the same examPut a dolphin next to a shark. Same torpedo body, same dorsal fin, same general business of being the thing other animals do not want to be downstream of. You would assume close cousins. You would be off by about 300 million years and an entire mountain of priorities. The shark is a fish. The dolphin is a mammal that got bored of land, walked back into the ocean, and re-derived the shark from first principles, because the ocean only accepts a narrow range of answers. This is convergent evolution, and the lesson is a little rude - the environment sets the problem, and the problem allows only so many good solutions. Build something fast in deep water and you will end up looking like a shark whether your ancestors were fish or college-educated land mammals. Nature does not award points for originality. It awards survival, and survival…