Thomas Haws and I had a short private exchange about the Linux vs.
Windows thread, which I've attached with his permission.
A lot of us are enthusiastic about building open source software that
fits with our faith and convictions. Unfortunately, we're getting a
little distracted. We (myself included) need to recognize that while
our purpose is the same, our backgrounds and skills are quite different,
and it is unrealistic to believe that we can resolve our differences here.
Therefore, I'd like to suggest certain topics should not be discussed on
this list. Even if we are able to maintain complete courtesy as we
discuss conflicting viewpoints, some people don't follow the threads
closely and to them it looks like an unprofessional flood of email about
topics not related to this list.
We could be offending people by holding a courteous discussion! That
phenomenon is a strange but consistent outgrowth of mailing lists.
People not accustomed to the art of discussing things on mailing lists
don't understand it and it troubles them.
We really don't want newcomers to feel offended, so we need to stay
focused. As for myself, in the future I'm going to pretend that when I
post on this list, I'm going into a church for a quorum meeting. It's
true that conflicting viewpoints occur in quorum meetings, but smart
participants quietly stay out and smart leaders gently defer the
discussions.
We are likely to run into some of the following topics on a regular
basis, and I suggest they should always be deferred to other discussion
areas (personal blogs would be a good choice):
- Which operating system is best.
- Which programming language or framework is best.
- The aptitude and skills of people using particular operating systems.
- The aptitude and skills of people using particular programming
languages and frameworks.
- The practices of controversial vendors/employers like Microsoft and SCO.
- Tabs vs. spaces.
- Emacs vs. Vi.
- IDEs vs. text editors.
- Static vs. dynamic typing.
- Coding style standards.
- SQL naming styles.
- RDBMS vs. OODBMS.
- When to use XML.
- When to use AJAX.
- Web services vs. REST.
- Centralized vs. decentralized architecture.
- GPL vs. BSD licensing (which is more Free?)
- The correct interpretation of copyright licenses.
- The patent system.
- What constitutes a usable user interface.
- The trustworthiness of Wikipedia and other online sources.
- Current political topics like global warming, the current president,
the war, illegal aliens, gas prices, etc.
- Top-posting, bottom-posting, excessive quoting, and other email
quoting styles. Because we have newcomers here, every popular email
style should be acceptable.
- Reply-To header munging and related mailing list administration.
- Mysterious doctrinal questions like the Church's stance on evolution.
I'm basing this list on subjects I've observed in other groups that
invariably lead to conflicts. Do I need to clarify any of these? Did I
miss some? These aren't hard rules, and I think we'll be judged less by
whether we adhere to the rules and more by how we avoid conflicts. I
apologize for involving myself in a few of them. (I need to blog more
often so I don't feel the need to post my opinion where it doesn't belong!)
There's also the ever-present meta-topic, discussion about discussion.
I'm engaging in that right now. It's not possible to eliminate it, but
we can reduce its flow. Let's not do it much.
I hope no one feels discouraged just because we got a little distracted.
Consider the process of building a temple: you start with the same raw
materials that you'd use to build any other kind of building, but the
result is different because the goal is different. We're still building
this little organization and learning how to build it the right way. At
first, the organization might look like any other, but in time, we'll
end up with something special.
Open source developers often don't mind a little distracting conflict
because it helps them learn, open up, and get to know each other. But
this is not a typical group of open source developers, so I think we
have to forgo certain discussions on this list. In its place, we have a
common faith and testimony, and that's going to take us further than
distracting conflicts would.
Shane
--- Begin Message ---
Thomas Haws wrote:
> Is there anything I can do to pen this contention monster I unleashed
> with my thread? I feel terrible seeing the discussion deteriorate into
> a "friendly" but wasteful partisan banter that is filling up inboxes and
> looking bad.
I may be partly to blame, since I've wanted to participate in
LDS-specific open source projects for years now, yet I can't
realistically participate in any project that's not cross-platform. My
desire to participate may be overwhelming my judgment.
I think others feel similarly. Some developers apparently feel they
can't participate unless the software is in .Net.
Obviously we could all build separate things that have no interaction
with each other, but IMHO that's what we're all doing already. We want
to build something together. It's also unrealistic to believe we can
all choose the same technologies or participate in the same project.
Perhaps we just need to make some ground rules. This group is about LDS
and open source. It is not about:
- The choice of operating system. This issue is as charged as the
divide between capitalism and socialism that exists even within the
church membership. Discussions about which OS is better should be taken
off the list immediately.
- Users of operating systems. No one should assume that users of a
particular OS have particular aptitudes.
- Controversial vendors like Microsoft.
These shouldn't be hard rules. It's OK to say that some software has a
good chance of being useful for building the kingdom. It's OK to say
that a lot of people who don't know a lot about computers run Windows.
It's OK to say that Microsoft Windows Vista is going to have some
feature that will directly benefit this group.
Shane
--- End Message ---
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