On Wed, 2011-03-23 at 11:53 +0100, Dave Neary wrote: > Hi, > > A quick note on meritocracies. > > Andrew Flegg wrote: > > According to Imad Sousou at the last TSG meeting[1], the MeeGo > > Technical Steering Group consists of two seats: > > > > * Intel (Imad Sousou) > > * Nokia (currently vacant after Valtteri Halla left Nokia) > > Companies typically don't have inherent merit. To cite one example, when > Mitchell Baker left AOL (I can't remember whether she resigned or was > laid off, it's irrelevant), AOL decided to appoint someone to take over > from her as Chief Lizard Wrangler. But Mitchell said "Hello, I'm still > here - I don't work for AOL any more, but I'm *still* the Chief Lizard > Wranger" - and people followed her, and not the AOL appointee. > > I had understood that the TSG was made up of Imad & Valtteri, not Intel > & Nokia. Has Valtteri resigned from the TSG officially? > > Combined with appointments of companies (whose representatives, with the > exception of Yonghui Wang of China Mobile, have not sent even one email > to any MeeGo lists) this makes MeeGo look less & less like a meritocracy > and more & more like a collection of corporate partnerships. > > This has benefits too, don't get me wrong - there's nothing inherently > wrong about an Eclipse Foundation-type trade association, but it is not > what has been announced & reiterated, and what I believed the project > leaders wanted the project to become. If the nature of the MeeGo project > changed on February 11th, it would be nice to know.
Dave, I think you're dramatising here. Companies might not have inherent merit, but maintainers, be it an individual or a corporation, have /actual/ merit in an open source project. When the roof is on fire, the maintainer may have to step up and make decisions, regardless how unpopular they might be. It is his (intellectual and/or financial) investment that is on stake, and it is the maintainer who has to take responsibility on the outcome of a project. I don't want to rebuff criticism globally, but on meego-dev it's always about the meritocracy aspect, never about the maintainer aspect. MeeGo is still very young by any account, meritocracy is not something you build up in a few months. This is my personal opinion, I'm not a manager or leading engineer, well, except for leading characters into my text editor. - Rob _______________________________________________ MeeGo-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.meego.com/listinfo/meego-dev http://wiki.meego.com/Mailing_list_guidelines
