On Sunday, December 1, 2002, at 01:28 PM, Andrew C. Oliver wrote:
Wow.. I really do feel like I'm at the Congress of Vienna. People think I'm the one who is too negative!
I think you're missing the point here. Regardless of the verbiage used, if this whole community thing comes to fruition, it becomes a de facto representation of the face of the Apache community.
FWIW, I'm -1 on the whole thing. I'm here to help grow a community around open-source software, not around a bunch of touchy-feely self-promoting web pages--if I want that, I'll join some weblog site somewhere. Apache.org is not the place for this.
I work on Apache stuff in part because I like having my mind opened by really smart developers who oddly enough "self select". I can code anywhere.
If you'll look the home pages haven't become that at all. They're all short little bios or "here is where you can find my homepage" type stuff. Some are "here's things I'm working on and here's my proposed solution to this and that"..
I'm interested in having a place where I can quickly look up the basics of the guy who walks up to me at an ApacheCon or JUG meeting or something and says "I'm so and so" .. . I sneak off and say "oh yeah that guy"... I'm interested in knowing more about the men (and women, but lets face it there just ain' that many) behind the email addresses, bringing that personal touch to the community. For me that personal touch errodes the antipathy that seems to be coming from the "other side of the isle"..
That is a noble goal, and I support this goal, although I do not think that an organized soapbox is the right way to do this. The short little "here's the link to my homepage, oh and I work on this and that project" pages are great. Anything other than that is off limits in my book.
I'm interested in bringing others closer to the community whom currently do regard it as some kind of "star chamber". .(I'd say thats the prevalent view) I notice a lot of folks share these views, but I can tell there is a whole other side whom hold the exact opposite opinion.
If having a homepage on apache.org becomes one of the valued privileges
one gets after being accepted into the ASF, then we will only be replacing
the star chamber with an ivory tower (with a megaphone).
As others have said earlier in this discussion, this does not further the goals of the ASF.
It keeps coming back down to this: open (we sit on the left) closed (you sit on the right)
Woah there! The word "open" is an extremely loaded word in real-life to begin with. You can't possibly address a group of people who write "open source software" and divide this discussion on these lines.
By the mere fact that anyone who is interested in software development within the ASF may join this mailing list and /openly/ discuss this and other topics means that we are all part of an open forum. I do not think it is fair to shun everyone who doesn't agree with your opinions on the creation of a community.apache.org website as "closed".
and it really keeps being that simple.
I hear from the other side "lets make sure we silence these voices before they get too loud" and I guess I tend to think "if they get too loud I'll ignore them".. In fact the web pages are awesome for this because I don't even have to filter...Just don't go to them if they offend your sensibilities.
But I keep hearing "we don't want to talk, but you shut up too" and that is just....depressing.
Nobody here is saying that people can't have their homepages or blogs, they're just saying not to do it on an apache.org website.
-aaron
