Re: [openhealth] [Fwd: Re: [n-gaa] Is Open Source Good for Innovation?]

[Thomas Beale]

Tim.Churches wrote:
>
>
> There is no proclaimed editorial group - but as I said, most good
> articles do have at least one person who really cares about the content
> of the article - often the person who wrote it originally. This
> "editorial team" is, as I said, self-appointed, unproclaimed and
> entirely de facto - it exerts influence by persistence and doggedness in
> correcting what it feels are retrograde changes to each article. And
> yes, it is not uncommon for there to be multiple "editorial teams"
> (often just different individuals) at war over an article - hence the
> conflict resolution procedures:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_resolution
>
reflecting on your comments above, I tried "Intelligent Design"  - 
interesting to see what turned up - Wikipedia has a concept of 
vandalism, disablement of editing and conflict resolution for that 
situation

- thomas



 
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Re: [openhealth] [Fwd: Re: [n-gaa] Is Open Source Good for Innovation?]

[Thomas Beale]

Nandalal Gunaratne wrote:
>
>
> Thomas Beale <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Linus may have "an iron fist control " (though I doubt it), but there 
> are many FOSS projects that don't! They seem to be doing equally well.
I investigated quite a lot about how he works when using BitKeeper, 
because the whole of Linux was on BitKeeper at one stage. I am not at 
all convinced that any non-trivial project with any kind of longevity 
can survive and grow without a proper engineering team at the core. If 
there is no "editorial" control to maintain the design vision, it won't 
work. are there any counter-examples?

- thomas



 
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Re: [openhealth] [Fwd: Re: [n-gaa] Is Open Source Good for Innovation?]

[Richard Schilling]

The evolving work-social phenomena are sure interesting. Toyota, and 
agriculture research adopting the approach is pretty cool.

I believe there are a LOT of companies incorporating open source work 
into RFPs and proposals to get a contract without even talking to the 
original developers - this is restricting the pool of talent and time 
going into open source projects, unfortunately.

As the article suggests you have to control code submissions to keep the 
quality of the product high.  And protecting the image/brand of an open 
source project is just as important as rejecting bad code submissions. 
Trademark, copyright, and making sure an author's contributions are 
advertised properly are all too important... Linus being a great example.


Richard


David Forslund wrote:
> http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5624944
> 
> is the link to the article I intended to post.
> David Forslund wrote:
> 
>>I thought folks might like to see this article.   Any comments?
>>
>>-Dave
>>
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  
> Yahoo! Groups Links
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
> 
> 



 
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Re: [openhealth] [Fwd: Re: [n-gaa] Is Open Source Good for Innovation?]

[Nandalal Gunaratne]

Thomas Beale <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
 
 Linus may have "an iron fist control " (though I doubt it), but there are many 
FOSS projects that don't! They seem to be doing equally well.
 
 NandA
 David Forslund wrote:
   
 
 > http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5624944
 >
 > is the link to the article I intended to post.
 > David Forslund wrote:
 > > I thought folks might like to see this article.   Any comments?
 > >
 > > -Dave
 > >
 this brings back a big debate about among this group where I was 
 lambasted by some for suggesting that you still had to do engineering 
 and have some control to make open source software work. In the words of 
 the article, what you always need is a focussed editorial group and 
 change management policy to make sure the thing being built isn't just a 
 wall covered in grafitti - there has to be a gatekeeper.  The reason why 
 Linux works so well is that Torvalds is himself the iron fist of control 
 over the whole thing - he is the gateway, the editorial board and the 
 change manager (I think he has a couple of workers above the 
 lieutenant's level).
 
 Why Wikipedia doesn't have one is a mystery to me. Why it is as good as 
 it is (however good you think it is) is also a mystery.
 
 - thomas


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Re: [openhealth] [Fwd: Re: [n-gaa] Is Open Source Good for Innovation?]

[Tim.Churches]

Thomas Beale wrote:
> Tim.Churches wrote:
>  >
>  > >
>  > > Why Wikipedia doesn't have one is a mystery to me. Why it is as good as
>  > > it is (however good you think it is) is also a mystery.
>  >
>  > It is wrong to think of wikipedia as an open source/open content
>  > project. In fact, it is about 1 million separate open source/open
>  > content projects (that is, articles), each with their own project team.
>  > All the good projects (articles) have a small "editorial" team, often
>  > just one person, which really cares about them. If someone else makes a
>  > worthwhile contribution, it is allowed to stand. If someone else
>  > degrades the content, then the editorial team changes it back to its
>  > former state. Often content goes through many cycles of degradation and
>  > restoration, but the editorial team usually wins through sheer
>  > doggedness. And the overall, average direction of change across the 1
>  > million articles is towards the better, although it is easy to find
>  > examples of articles which spiral down. But most get better.
>
> but as far as I know there is not even a signalling mechanism for the
> editor (how does she know she's the only one) to know about changes?

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Watching_pages

> Where is the editorial group proclaimed? I made some additions once and
> never ran into any editorial mechanism.

There is no proclaimed editorial group - but as I said, most good
articles do have at least one person who really cares about the content
of the article - often the person who wrote it originally. This
"editorial team" is, as I said, self-appointed, unproclaimed and
entirely de facto - it exerts influence by persistence and doggedness in
correcting what it feels are retrograde changes to each article. And
yes, it is not uncommon for there to be multiple "editorial teams"
(often just different individuals) at war over an article - hence the
conflict resolution procedures:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_resolution

>  > However, if wikipedia articles were not based on the wiki-wiki roll-back
>  > paradigm, the whole thing would collapse. As it is, the self-appointed
>  > editorial team for each article can roll back changes with a few clicks
>  > of the mouse. Self-appointed? Yes, just like the way in which leaders of
>  > almost all open source software projects are self-appointed. Both OSS
>  > and wikipedia are meritocracies in which power and position is gained by
>  > doing things - writing software or writing articles.
>
> Of course I agree with the sentiment, but I don't see where the
> editorial groups are constituted.

They are not constituted, they are de facto. Perhaps "team" was the
wrong word - more often there are de facto, self-appointed editorial
guardians for articles. But quite often these guardians get together to
back one another up. And yes, sometimes they fight.

Tim C



 
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Re: [openhealth] [Fwd: Re: [n-gaa] Is Open Source Good for Innovation?]

[Thomas Beale]

Tim.Churches wrote:
>
> >
> > Why Wikipedia doesn't have one is a mystery to me. Why it is as good as
> > it is (however good you think it is) is also a mystery.
>
> It is wrong to think of wikipedia as an open source/open content
> project. In fact, it is about 1 million separate open source/open
> content projects (that is, articles), each with their own project team.
> All the good projects (articles) have a small "editorial" team, often
> just one person, which really cares about them. If someone else makes a
> worthwhile contribution, it is allowed to stand. If someone else
> degrades the content, then the editorial team changes it back to its
> former state. Often content goes through many cycles of degradation and
> restoration, but the editorial team usually wins through sheer
> doggedness. And the overall, average direction of change across the 1
> million articles is towards the better, although it is easy to find
> examples of articles which spiral down. But most get better.
but as far as I know there is not even a signalling mechanism for the 
editor (how does she know she's the only one) to know about changes? 
Where is the editorial group proclaimed? I made some additions once and 
never ran into any editorial mechanism.
>
> However, if wikipedia articles were not based on the wiki-wiki roll-back
> paradigm, the whole thing would collapse. As it is, the self-appointed
> editorial team for each article can roll back changes with a few clicks
> of the mouse. Self-appointed? Yes, just like the way in which leaders of
> almost all open source software projects are self-appointed. Both OSS
> and wikipedia are meritocracies in which power and position is gained by
> doing things - writing software or writing articles.
Of course I agree with the sentiment, but I don't see where the 
editorial groups are constituted.

- thomas



 
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Re: [openhealth] [Fwd: Re: [n-gaa] Is Open Source Good for Innovation?]

[Tim.Churches]

Thomas Beale wrote:
> David Forslund wrote:
>  > http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5624944
>  >
>  > is the link to the article I intended to post.
>  > David Forslund wrote:
>  > > I thought folks might like to see this article.   Any comments?
>  > >
>  > > -Dave
>  > >
> this brings back a big debate about among this group where I was
> lambasted by some for suggesting that you still had to do engineering
> and have some control to make open source software work. In the words of
> the article, what you always need is a focussed editorial group and
> change management policy to make sure the thing being built isn't just a
> wall covered in grafitti - there has to be a gatekeeper.  The reason why
> Linux works so well is that Torvalds is himself the iron fist of control
> over the whole thing - he is the gateway, the editorial board and the
> change manager (I think he has a couple of workers above the
> lieutenant's level).
> 
> Why Wikipedia doesn't have one is a mystery to me. Why it is as good as
> it is (however good you think it is) is also a mystery.

It is wrong to think of wikipedia as an open source/open content
project. In fact, it is about 1 million separate open source/open
content projects (that is, articles), each with their own project team.
All the good projects (articles) have a small "editorial" team, often
just one person, which really cares about them. If someone else makes a
worthwhile contribution, it is allowed to stand. If someone else
degrades the content, then the editorial team changes it back to its
former state. Often content goes through many cycles of degradation and
restoration, but the editorial team usually wins through sheer
doggedness. And the overall, average direction of change across the 1
million articles is towards the better, although it is easy to find
examples of articles which spiral down. But most get better.

However, if wikipedia articles were not based on the wiki-wiki roll-back
paradigm, the whole thing would collapse. As it is, the self-appointed
editorial team for each article can roll back changes with a few clicks
of the mouse. Self-appointed? Yes, just like the way in which leaders of
almost all open source software projects are self-appointed. Both OSS
and wikipedia are meritocracies in which power and position is gained by
doing things - writing software or writing articles.

Tim C



 
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Re: [openhealth] [Fwd: Re: [n-gaa] Is Open Source Good for Innovation?]

[Thomas Beale]

David Forslund wrote:
> http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5624944
>
> is the link to the article I intended to post.
> David Forslund wrote:
> > I thought folks might like to see this article.   Any comments?
> >
> > -Dave
> >
this brings back a big debate about among this group where I was 
lambasted by some for suggesting that you still had to do engineering 
and have some control to make open source software work. In the words of 
the article, what you always need is a focussed editorial group and 
change management policy to make sure the thing being built isn't just a 
wall covered in grafitti - there has to be a gatekeeper.  The reason why 
Linux works so well is that Torvalds is himself the iron fist of control 
over the whole thing - he is the gateway, the editorial board and the 
change manager (I think he has a couple of workers above the 
lieutenant's level).

Why Wikipedia doesn't have one is a mystery to me. Why it is as good as 
it is (however good you think it is) is also a mystery.

- thomas


 
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Re: [openhealth] [Fwd: Re: [n-gaa] Is Open Source Good for Innovation?]

[David Forslund]

http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5624944

is the link to the article I intended to post.
David Forslund wrote:
> I thought folks might like to see this article.   Any comments?
>
> -Dave
>




 
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Re: [openhealth] [Fwd: Re: [n-gaa] Is Open Source Good for Innovation?]

[David Forslund]

Sorry about the mailer stripping the message. 

Dave
David Forslund wrote:
> I thought folks might like to see this article.   Any comments?
>
> -Dave
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
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[openhealth] [Fwd: Re: [n-gaa] Is Open Source Good for Innovation?]

[David Forslund]

I thought folks might like to see this article.   Any comments?

-Dave


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