On Mon, 2006-09-04 at 13:38 +0200, Kai Backman wrote: > On 9/4/06, Charles Schulz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > thank you for your points: indeed, art and/or multimedia content is not > > the same thing as software, this we knew. > > So I'm preaching to the choir, I hope my clumsiness can be excused.. :-) > > >> btw. I think Chad is on the right track with the FOSS thing. Treating > >> forks well, be they small or big, is the sign of a wise project. > > Except that OOo premium is not a fork. Except that Kami is part of our > > community. > > True, if we have plans to integrate it into the mainline; then it's > by definition a branch... I think what Chad was referring to was "part > of our community". People working on a fork should be considered part > of the community. Sometimes good forks (GCC/EGCS?) are done by people > working for both the mainline and the fork. > > If Premium was a fork, why should Kami stop being part of the community? ;-)
There is a school of thought that if someone decides to do something unilaterally that is not an "official project" it somehow excludes them from the community. The only thing I can see that would exclude someone is if they exclude themselves. (I suppose doing something illegal that got you sued by the community or ignored by everyone might be a possible version of exile) Its always struck me that a strength of Open Source is that people have the freedom to innovate even if there is disagreement. Natural selection will in the long term determine who was right. Its rather futile to try and control volunteers, all that can be done is to make it easier or harder for them to contribute. If its made hard enough they become disaffected and do something else so you lose the resource or they do the same thing by producing a fork because they believe they can still do it better. Management is all about getting the best use from the resources available and where volunteers are the main resource the most effective management is not going to be the same as with hired staff. Different motivation. Ian -- www.theINGOTS.org www.schoolforge.org.uk www.opendocumentfellowship.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
