Adam Tauno Williams said the following on 05/10/2013 10:15 AM:
NO. This indicates an incorrect and ideological understanding of Open Source. Open Source is in no way like 'democracy'. in democracy every coach potato with an axe to grind or imagined grievance gets to vote. it does not work that way in Open Source.
Open Source is a tyranny of the contributor. Plain and simple. You write code - you win. You whine - nobody cares.
Ah, you're talking late C20th and C21st century western democracy where the voting is about money and lobbyists and political parties and has become what E A Poe warned of, the Tyranny of the Mob. This is about "Demos" - the people - but about "Electos" - the electoral process, as in money and media rather than "for the Greater Good of The People" or even Richelieu's "Good of The State". Back when, in the days of your Founding Fathers the democratic process actually meant something and people cared and were active - were contributors - in the political process. Not you "Free Press" is Bug Business or semi-literate teenage bloggers. But "code" - no, I disagree. I had a coder who worked for me one who was bloody awful at it. I realised he wrote awful code because he liked debugging. So I put him in testing & debugging and he loved it and everyone's productivity improved. Not only is there testing, there's UI design (which coders are usually poor at), documentation (which coders are usually poor at), packaging, organizing conferences (or release parties) and more. But you are right about whining. It get back to that quotation from Horace - if you don't like it, then contribute. The thing is that there are many ways to contribute. Sometimes its the design, the idea, the architecture. Take Steve Jobs as an example - he wasn't a coder but so many Apple products are attributable to his vision. I'm sure you can think of many examples in FOSS where non-coders have contributed immensely. Regular readers will recall that I've mentioned that I don't set up machines for code production but for writing. Once as a PM (see above) I found I was a better writer of English than of code, better at diagrams, better at explaining how things work or how designed should be or are implemented. There's a lot more to a product than just writing the code. Many coders eventually realise this when they run into a brick wall; sadly many executive managers don't see it, they don't see that projects need co-ordinating, that graphics and UI and help files and Q&A and support all contribute to the project. For commercial project that lack of understanding is fatal; for FOSS projects is a much slower death and while often unacknowledged, FOSS does allow those other contributors to have a role in the long term success. That being said, sometimes you get geniuses who not only code but do all the other stuff ... A proper democracy is one where the people are involved and active and not sheep. Poor voter turnout, single issue voting, voting for a party because its the party you support rather than the policy ... somewhere you can't tell the difference between the mob and the sheep. -- System Integrity Revisited Rebecca T. Mercuri and Peter G. Neumann Inside Risks 127, CACM 44, 1 January 2001 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org