On 1/25/12 9:35 PM, Graham Lauder wrote:
On Thursday 26 Jan 2012 02:50:20 Rob Weir wrote:
On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 7:08 AM, Graham Lauder<g.a.lau...@gmail.com> wrote:
Second, new features and function, worthy of consideration by this
community as a 'Apache OpenOffice 4.0' release will be the primary focus
for the IBM volunteers working in the project at Apache, after the
project successfully completes the Apache 3.4 release. See the AOO 4.0
Feature Planning wiki page here: *http://s.apache.org/hW*
IBM "volunteers?" _I_ volunteer. I don't get paid to be here, I come
here only on my own time. That's what volunteers do, if someone is
picking up a salary to work on AOO code that's hardly volunteering,
except maybe in "doublespeak". Tsk! However, whatever they're called,
it will be good to see them pushing along 4.0, we are at a point now,
having been out of the market for such a lengthy time, that with the new
release there needs to be a substantially different product.
Let me challenge your views on this. Anyone who participates in this
project does so because they get more out of it than they put into it.
Further, they would be insane to participate in the project under any
other conditions. What they put in is obvious: their time, their
skills, their experience, their care, their overly long emails, etc.
What they get out is less tangible, but it still exists. In some
cases it is a salary, in other cases it is enjoyment, or experience,
reputation, etc. Cash payments are they only form of reward. Even
those who think they are participating for purely altruistic reasons
are doing so to enhance their self-image, imagining themselves to do
altruistic deeds. This is just basic balance of energy. An animal
will not survive long if it chases down and kills prey where the
returned calories are less then those expended in the hunt. Since no
one has a gun to our heads, forcing them to work on this project,
everyone here is a volunteer. Everyone is free to go or remain, or
participate to whatever level they feel gives them a sufficient reward
(of any form) for their investment in the project. Even those who
are employed had and have a choice of jobs they could take. Maybe
they took their current job because it gave them the opportunity to
continue participation in the project? Any illusion about this basic
fact, such as the the project has self-less martyrs and course
mercenaries, is just sentimentality and does not really promote clear
thinking. The form of your personal reward for working in the project
has zero impact on your rights, abilities, prerogatives, status or (to
me at least) the weight of your arguments in this project.
Challenge away, I never said: people that volunteer, do it for altruistic
reasons, not sure where you read that. I will clarify:
I simply stated that IBM's motives were certainly not altruistic I just have
no idea what they are, and given that a corporation is a sociopathic beast I
would really like to know what they are, but in the absence of an OOo related
mission statement, I have to try deduction.
I also stated that someone paid by a corporate member to participate in this
community cannot be called a volunteer. Take your argument to the extreme and
you could say that every one _lives_ voluntarily because they decided not to
top themselves this morning. A ridiculous argument. Volunteer = someone who
has to sacrifice personal time outside of their daily mortgage paying work, to
contribute.
Everyone participates in an Open Source project for various reasons, some may
be their own and some may be employers and all do it for some form of reward
whether it be cash or something more esoteric. There are a lot of people who
do this as part of their 9 to 5 who are not what I would call volunteers.
should we now feel offended? Probably not because it's hopefully only
the personal view of a single person. I think many of the full-time
employed community members are here with passion and spent a lot of more
time in the project than necessary by their contracts.
And hey if they do it mainly in the their day job, it's totally fine. As
long as their contribution to the project is something that brings the
project forward. From my personal experience open source can only work
if you have both individual as well as full-time employed community
members. Take a look to any other huge open source project and you will
notice that it is always the same. If Novell and RedHat for example
wouldn't sponsor the developers who are currently doing huge parts of
the development work, the project wouldn't really make progress on the
code level or with feature development.
The return I got from a project is always bigger than that what I am
able to give as an individual.
I for example had other job offers as well but IBM convinced me to join
their team and continue to work on the project where I really have
passion for. And yes Don and Rob did a great job to transport IBMs view
and vision so that I finally joined IBM. And hey IBM is a great company
with a history of more than 100 years ;-)
I repeat myself it's the together that makes open source projects
successful. When you take a look back, Sun/Oracle developers drove the
project forward from a technical perspective, but the many other
volunteers in the community worked on the brand recognition, did the
translation work, did marketing, worked on documentation, etc. All this
was important and necessary to make OpenOffice successful.
And it's the same here. The members of this project whoever it is can
bring the project forward. We are all equal. If somebody is thinking
that things can be done better, it's up to this community member to
simply do it in a way that is aligned with our project rules. Nobody
should wait that others do the job as it sometimes was in the past.
How
do I know this? Easy, this list dies over the weekend.
I don't know which list you read over the weekend but I got enough
emails even over the weekend. And often I reply to them also. But of
course I often take a break and spent more times with my family and
friends ;-)
Juergen
